4 ms·

The problem with telemetry/analytics is not that they exist. The problem is, no one knows what they do, and everyone's afraid they may send something sensitive.

The problem with telemetry/analytics is not that they exist. The problem is, no one knows what they do, and everyone's afraid they may send something sensitive. Give me a dialog somewhere, in which I would be able to see what's going to be sent (in somewhat human-readable format - i.e. not binary but a slightly commented source for that binary), a place to ask questions ("hey, there's a weird long hex string among the data - what does it encode?") and I'll be completely satisfied, and even praise them for doing things the smart and conscious-user-friendly way. Well, as long as telemetry doesn't send something I consider sensitive, like an actual screenshots or keystrokes, of course.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Individual events in analytics data may be human-readable, but you can't call a list of 10,000 events human-readable.
- mr_overalls 10y ago
  Does 'grep' have an analog in Microsoft-world?
  - aplc0r 10y ago
    Windows has Select-String in Powershell and findstr in cmd.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  Not a problem at all. Show me a sample entry (per event type) rather than a full list. Say, some app has 10000 buttons and counts how many times each button was clicked. Something like "Clicks data: 3 clicks on button #1 (and 9999 more buttons [expand])" and I'm happy. If there are 10000 different event types - uh, okay, I'll glance over whenever I see something sensitive (like screenshots or keystrokes) and then maybe I'll review it in my spare time. At least I know I can review the whole thing whenever I feel like so. Upd: I mean, remember the myths about the telemetry. That send webcam pics, start odd network activity upon seeing files named after Hollywood movies and whatever. They'd be debunked in no time. ANd there are real concerns as well - insider previews had (or still has) keyloggers. I'd better know how sensitive the data this keylogger sends, because it could be the whole raw text data, or it could be... err... say, a list of frequencies a letter was recognized from hand drawing (which is a completely different story).

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

Individual events in analytics data may be human-readable, but you can't call a list of 10,000 events human-readable.

mr_overalls 10y ago
Does 'grep' have an analog in Microsoft-world?
- aplc0r 10y ago
  Windows has Select-String in Powershell and findstr in cmd.
drdaeman 10y ago
Not a problem at all. Show me a sample entry (per event type) rather than a full list. Say, some app has 10000 buttons and counts how many times each button was clicked. Something like "Clicks data: 3 clicks on button #1 (and 9999 more buttons [expand])" and I'm happy. If there are 10000 different event types - uh, okay, I'll glance over whenever I see something sensitive (like screenshots or keystrokes) and then maybe I'll review it in my spare time. At least I know I can review the whole thing whenever I feel like so. Upd: I mean, remember the myths about the telemetry. That send webcam pics, start odd network activity upon seeing files named after Hollywood movies and whatever. They'd be debunked in no time. ANd there are real concerns as well - insider previews had (or still has) keyloggers. I'd better know how sensitive the data this keylogger sends, because it could be the whole raw text data, or it could be... err... say, a list of frequencies a letter was recognized from hand drawing (which is a completely different story).