23 ms·

Is Windows 10 still telling what you're doing even if you don't want it to?

171 points by LinuxBender 8y ago

fusl 8y ago
As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all over the place, etc. Conclusion: GDPR was made to help monopolies grow even larger and prevent smaller companies/start-ups from ever growing more than just a little bit. Change my mind?
- conanthe 8y ago
  That's modern socialism. In communism company directors needed to be members of the party, in modern socialism it is enough that they bring stuffed envelopes. In exchange party makes sure that competition can't grow big enough (unless they can provide stuffed envelopes). EU is rotten to the core but has so great PR the gullible defend it with passion.
  - sctb 8y ago
    Please don't post handwavey stories for political flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- partiallypro 8y ago
  That's how most regulations work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Agree. And that pretty much sums up the banking system.
- izzydata 8y ago
  That is probably a standard side-effect, but I doubt the GDPR was proposed with the intent of helping the Google, Facebook and Microsofts of the world.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  GDPR really should only apply to companies beyond a certain size. Or at least, the requirements for small companies should be less stringent.
  - blub 8y ago
    Small companies can and do abuse personal data just as well. I'll never forget how some period tracking app that my partner was using was updated with much more invasive privacy policy terms. It was take it or leave it, no way to use the app any more except by clicking the accept button. It was a small European start up that did this. So yes, GDPR applies to all sizes of companies.
  - Justsignedup 8y ago
    That would be exploited SO FAST! Embed my 1-person company's widget. I will collect everything and send it to big boys. Same way as you funnel money through a shell corp to avoid taxes.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      In the US, we have rules to stop this sort of thing for e.g. background check data. If you collect personally identifiable information from a third party, it's the same as if you collected it yourself.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    The requirements for small companies are less stringent.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > The requirements for small companies are less stringent. Conditioning various minor requirements on entity size is no help if they don't actually reduce the complexity. Otherwise the cost of determining what they have to comply with is as expensive as the cost of determining what they have to do to comply. What smaller entities need is an entirely separate framework with fewer, simpler, narrower rules that don't have to be as robust against a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes because smaller entities don't have a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes. Then you can have an entirely different set of robust arbitrarily complex rules that all only apply to companies with more than 1000 employees because they can afford to handle the complexity.
- oconnore 8y ago
  > Change my mind? 1) regulators are bringing first rounds of sanctions against Google, Facebook, and large Banks. 2) the sort of data GDPR protects is typically only valuable for larger companies -- you're definitely not running a small business selling to <10,000 customers if your business model is selling data for, say, $6.18/user (Facebook's return).
- Cenk 8y ago
  It’s too early to tell wether large companies will be able to get away with this stuff under GDPR. If your small company is "getting fucked over" because if privacy laws, you’re doing something shady in the first place.
- Angostura 8y ago
  > Conclusion: GDPR was made to help monopolies grow even larger and prevent smaller companies/start-ups from ever growing more than just a little bit. Change my mind? The conclusion you should be coming to is that if Microsoft is doing this they will be hauled over the coals in a really quite painful way. Not this month or next, because the GDPR enforcers are snowed under at the moment. As for the “rules” small businesses have to follow to be compliant, for the most part I strongly believe that they just codify the things people should be doing anyway: Thinking about how you collect users data, why you need it; how long you keep it for; how you secure it; who you pass it to - how they use it. It’s not rocket science
  - Cenk 8y ago
    > Thinking about how you collect users data, why you need it; how long you keep it for; how you secure it; who you pass it to - how they use it. Yes – Plus how you tell the people who’s data you are collecting about this.
- setquk 8y ago
  So it's ok for small companies to leak personal data? Doctors' surgeries are small companies here in the UK. The issue here is that literally every company across the world doesn't give a crap past the end of their nose and has abysmal data protection policies in place because it affects the bottom line. They introduced local legislation to help this and a few large fish got fined and that was it. Ultimately it wasn't worth doing anything about it because it wasn't an operational risk. GDPR is about making it a major operational risk to do a shitty job. The rules should be the same for every company and the fines proportional, which they are. The "sheer amount of rules" isn't a lot really and you owe it to your customers. Conclusion: most of the anti-GDPR whiners are worried about spending on data protection and training because it hurts the bottom line. Change my mind?
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Major operational risk is not linear. Joe's Coffee shop doesn't have an army of lawyers to defend their collection and us practices that would possibly be lawful, while BigCorp has an army of lawyers to successfully defend their unlawful practices. Even if the fines scale (I don't know what the punitive measures are) the cost to litigate won't.
    - rcxdude 8y ago
      The regulatory agencies don't start with litigation. If you are unintentionally out of line they will contact you to fix it first, and if you do so in good faith that will be the end of it.
      - linuxftw 8y ago
        How do they find your are in compliance or not, through what methods? Anonymous complaint? Random audit? What if you decide you are in compliance and what they deem unallowable is critical to your business? I know what bigcorp's strategy is! Outsource data collection to a 'marketing analytics' firm that specializes in 'GDPR compliance'. Sounds like a new boutique consulting industry. Similar situations exist for small businesses in the US already, we call them the "IRS" While you might argue that if you don't cheat on your taxes you have nothing to fear, the IRS might decide you took some deductions you shouldn't have, pay up or litigate. If you successfully defend? Oopsies, we might audit you again for the same thing next year (happened to a friend of mine)!
- simion314 8y ago
  Do you have or plan to have a product? What data are you collecting and do you share/sell it? Do you collect more then you need? If yes why and is it hard to provide the option to the user not to collect non essential data ? What part of GDPR is the one that is giving you a lot of work and you think is a disadvante for a small startup? If the answer is that I want to move fast and not think about securing the data, making it easy to delete etc then moving fast is not an excuse, you should secure the data from the start, follow the laws when the data is leaked etc
- api 8y ago
  Regulation in general tends to be a regressive tax. Larger companies have the bureaucratic overhead to handle it and can also often lobby or litigate their way around it. If they do get tripped up they can pay the fines or hire lawyers. Smaller companies have neither the time nor the money to deal with regulatory complexity.
- Derek_MK 8y ago
  Now that I think about it, yeah, I think Microsoft is probably gonna land in some big trouble with GDPR because of this. There's not really a way out of it because of how little control they give the user. I think it's just going to take time, because there's so many high-profile GDPR cases going on right now. Plus, it's not like the big companies can afford to get hit by GDPR in a way that small companies can't. GDPR fines are based off of the company's revenue, which works well for preventing Microsofts from making more money from doing it anyway and paying the fine.
- sjellis 8y ago
  > what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement Nope. The GDPR is a European-style regulatory framework: it sets out principles and expects people to apply them in a reasonable and sensible way. The national regulating agencies are there to steer organisations into doing the right thing, rather than beating them up when they don't. I have literally telephoned the UK regulator and had a polite conversation when I needed a clarification of a particular point in their (most clearly written) online guidance. The regulators do have strong powers so that large and well-funded companies can't just deploy lawyers to get away with things. Cambridge Analytica is one obvious case: they tried to play games with a GDPR regulator, and got a very hard smack-down.
blub 8y ago
Another nail in the coffin of MS telemetry apologists. Really, MS is freaking evil when it comes to this stuff. Wonder which asshole greenlighted this huge telemetry push. Must have been sanctioned from the very top.
- setquk 8y ago
  Names.. Satya Nadella is directly responsible here. There has been no response from him on petitions about it. Google the various sources: Ben Evans is responsible for enforcing the state of affairs on .Net core at least. https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 Joey Ailleo, Powershell PM said this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18629942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18629942 "I'm a huge privacy advocate, but telemetry doesn't have to be a dirty word. With PowerShell Core, we went through an RFC process to define our telemetry goals and implementation[1], we publish our data to a public dashboard[2], and all of the telemetry source code is out there in the open[3]. Our telemetry enables to help drive prioritization and decisions around platform/OS usage, and disabling it as simple as setting an environment variable[4]." That's basically MSFT policy: 1. Telemetry is good for you 2. We do X, Y, Z (but forget to mention the times they got it wrong like the environment variable didn't work on Debian packages they built for .net core). 3. Default is opt out, if you can (windows 10 pro has no opt out option). 4. Stick fingers in ears. MSFT, you can go to hell at this point. This is just disrespecting and abusing your customers. I will ALWAYS put a privacy respecting vendor at the top of the list.
  - jake_the_third 8y ago
    Thank you! Although this information is out their, compiling the people involved into a list like this makes for much easier research.
- miaklesp 8y ago
  If you don't like, just don't use.
  - scarygliders 8y ago
fromthestart 8y ago
So Windows is sending browsed URLs to Microsoft? What exactly is "data about recently opened websites?" What data specifically?
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Your web history is still 'data'.
neves 8y ago
I try to use the buggy Windows 10 Microsoft family screen time features to control how my children use the computer. Unfortunately it is a global configuration. I must also allow Microsoft to collect my data.
- huxflux 8y ago
  2018 - when convenience conquered piracy.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
The recent MS behavior is baffling, like one suffering multiple personality disorder. Policies both customer-friendly and actively hostile at the same time. Leadership really needs to get everyone "on the same page" (groan) and decide if they want to stick with being evil or not.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  Agile software development practices. Nobody created a user story for 'respect user's settings during upgrades'. If I had to guess, the settings were renamed/refactored and default values were enabled by default. Or perhaps the 'system upgrade service' doesn't talk to the 'system user setting services' and has no way to discover those settings. There's so many innovative ways to write terrible software, Microsoft is truly a pioneer in this area.
  - sls 8y ago
    .
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      Come'on I was taking a shot at dogmatic agile beliefs and Microsoft in one swing! I mean to say that strict adherence to 'agile' without qualified engineers and management results in obvious features missing because the left hand isn't talking to the right hand. The jab at Microsoft is to imply they employ such a detrimental process because it's the only conceivable way to arrive at such a poor quality product. I don't think Microsoft is engaging in what it believes is predatory behavior, I'm confident that someone in a suit somewhere is cooking up all these 'good ideas' about collecting 'metrics' and their underlings faithfully implement these 'good ideas.' Their behavior is bad, I don't condone it. I also don't use Microsoft products (see username).
    - Forge36 8y ago
      Let's phrase it differently: agile causes two teams to desync. If for whatever reason to teams become siloed and are agile: if their sprints don't line up, then requirement thrashing causes agile hell. A needs Y B is working on X Given timelines: B must quickly switch to Y or A must implement it without support from B. The biggest problem I have with software development is coordinating 100 TEAMs to operate on the same page (I own a library of interesting and old functionality at my company). This happens on occasion, without someone to reign in affected parties: things rot faster from be features than can be managed
nickjj 8y ago
I don't get it. This article and Reddit post is very misguided. Why are people upset that you're sending data to Microsoft if you enable the settings in Windows that specifically allow Microsoft to collect this data? Maybe I'm biased since I run Windows 10 Pro but you can simply turn off activity history and set your diagnostic settings to basic. Now your non-anonymous data won't be sent to MS (unless they are secretly sending it against your will which is a totally different topic than this article). I don't even have a "privacy dashboard" that this article and the Reddit post speaks of because I log into Windows with a local Windows username, not a Microsoft Live account. If you're concerned about privacy, why would you login to your OS using a Microsoft Live account? This really sounds like people using the default settings without looking into protecting their privacy then saying Windows is evil because they didn't check into the settings of their operating system. In other words: 1. Use a local Windows login, not MS Live 2. Set your diagnostic data to basic 3. Disable activity history Also as a bonus step, if a big content update happens in the future and it introduces features that sounds like it's an invitation to be spied on, double check your settings after patching to make sure they're disabled. It is lame that telemetry exists in the first place, and don't get me wrong, I hate things like being forced to patch / reboot for MS updates but if you volunteer to use Windows, it's the price we have to pay for the time being.
- ep103 8y ago
  4. Install Latest Windows Updates 5. Find that these settings have been set back to enabled again. 6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 every Tuesday. 7. Discover MS is still sending data, regardless of your settings. ^^ The above is why.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    Those are shady steps taken by MS but I don't experience them with Windows 10 Pro. Maybe it's only isolated to Windows 10 Home? I still double check all of my privacy settings after a major content patch, but so far so good. I keep nearly everything disabled too (basic diagnostics, limited access to my webcam / microphone, Cortana is disabled, no timeline, etc.).
guelo 8y ago
As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal. The ads, the nags, the surveillance. It is not an operating system I can use anymore. They have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out.
- amatecha 8y ago
  Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linked with their home computer usage because they thought they have to. Just seems so predatory and manipulative. I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
  - exodust 8y ago
    I'm about to set up a new PC for a relative with Win 10 Home, parts have just arrived. Any advice on set up procedures or things I can do to keep Microsoft from spying on them and collecting their data? Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
    - 8y ago
ajmarsh 8y ago
I've been using https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy with good success. Automate with the orchestration tool of your choice.
zwaps 8y ago
They now say this is related to the diagnostic level set to full. This is clearly not true. I have disabled ALL privacy related settings, set activity X to off and have the level set to basic since install. Microsoft still displays search queries and apps I used on the activity dashboard. Clearly someone "messed up". (Collect now, apologize later)
- craftyguy 8y ago
  I mean, at this point, you're only hurting yourself by continuing to use/support a product which does things you do not want, right?
datavirtue 8y ago
For some reason, I and it seems like most users, are just not concerned about Microsoft collecting this data. It's nothing compared to Google and Facebook. It's sort of like complaining about a zit while a kodiac bear is ripping your leg off.
gigama 8y ago
Yeah I stopped using Windows years ago. However my clients still get stuck buying 10 on new computers. I try to explain the downsides but mostly they resign themselves to it since they don't want to learn a new OS. Best I can do is only setup local accounts for them, turn off OneDrive, and have them run O&O's shutup program periodically (like monthly) to help mitigate Microsoft's pervasive, invasive data collection: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Still not 100%, but a dripping faucet is better than the default firehose of telemetry tracking.

171 points by LinuxBender 8y ago

fusl 8y ago

As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all over the place, etc. Conclusion: GDPR was made to help monopolies grow even larger and prevent smaller companies/start-ups from ever growing more than just a little bit. Change my mind?

conanthe 8y ago
That's modern socialism. In communism company directors needed to be members of the party, in modern socialism it is enough that they bring stuffed envelopes. In exchange party makes sure that competition can't grow big enough (unless they can provide stuffed envelopes). EU is rotten to the core but has so great PR the gullible defend it with passion.
- sctb 8y ago
  Please don't post handwavey stories for political flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
partiallypro 8y ago
That's how most regulations work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- cm2187 8y ago
  Agree. And that pretty much sums up the banking system.
izzydata 8y ago
That is probably a standard side-effect, but I doubt the GDPR was proposed with the intent of helping the Google, Facebook and Microsofts of the world.
Wowfunhappy 8y ago
GDPR really should only apply to companies beyond a certain size. Or at least, the requirements for small companies should be less stringent.
- blub 8y ago
  Small companies can and do abuse personal data just as well. I'll never forget how some period tracking app that my partner was using was updated with much more invasive privacy policy terms. It was take it or leave it, no way to use the app any more except by clicking the accept button. It was a small European start up that did this. So yes, GDPR applies to all sizes of companies.
- Justsignedup 8y ago
  That would be exploited SO FAST! Embed my 1-person company's widget. I will collect everything and send it to big boys. Same way as you funnel money through a shell corp to avoid taxes.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    In the US, we have rules to stop this sort of thing for e.g. background check data. If you collect personally identifiable information from a third party, it's the same as if you collected it yourself.
- DanBC 8y ago
  The requirements for small companies are less stringent.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > The requirements for small companies are less stringent. Conditioning various minor requirements on entity size is no help if they don't actually reduce the complexity. Otherwise the cost of determining what they have to comply with is as expensive as the cost of determining what they have to do to comply. What smaller entities need is an entirely separate framework with fewer, simpler, narrower rules that don't have to be as robust against a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes because smaller entities don't have a huge team of lawyers finding loopholes. Then you can have an entirely different set of robust arbitrarily complex rules that all only apply to companies with more than 1000 employees because they can afford to handle the complexity.
oconnore 8y ago
> Change my mind? 1) regulators are bringing first rounds of sanctions against Google, Facebook, and large Banks. 2) the sort of data GDPR protects is typically only valuable for larger companies -- you're definitely not running a small business selling to <10,000 customers if your business model is selling data for, say, $6.18/user (Facebook's return).
Cenk 8y ago
It’s too early to tell wether large companies will be able to get away with this stuff under GDPR. If your small company is "getting fucked over" because if privacy laws, you’re doing something shady in the first place.
Angostura 8y ago
> Conclusion: GDPR was made to help monopolies grow even larger and prevent smaller companies/start-ups from ever growing more than just a little bit. Change my mind? The conclusion you should be coming to is that if Microsoft is doing this they will be hauled over the coals in a really quite painful way. Not this month or next, because the GDPR enforcers are snowed under at the moment. As for the “rules” small businesses have to follow to be compliant, for the most part I strongly believe that they just codify the things people should be doing anyway: Thinking about how you collect users data, why you need it; how long you keep it for; how you secure it; who you pass it to - how they use it. It’s not rocket science
- Cenk 8y ago
  > Thinking about how you collect users data, why you need it; how long you keep it for; how you secure it; who you pass it to - how they use it. Yes – Plus how you tell the people who’s data you are collecting about this.
setquk 8y ago
So it's ok for small companies to leak personal data? Doctors' surgeries are small companies here in the UK. The issue here is that literally every company across the world doesn't give a crap past the end of their nose and has abysmal data protection policies in place because it affects the bottom line. They introduced local legislation to help this and a few large fish got fined and that was it. Ultimately it wasn't worth doing anything about it because it wasn't an operational risk. GDPR is about making it a major operational risk to do a shitty job. The rules should be the same for every company and the fines proportional, which they are. The "sheer amount of rules" isn't a lot really and you owe it to your customers. Conclusion: most of the anti-GDPR whiners are worried about spending on data protection and training because it hurts the bottom line. Change my mind?
- linuxftw 8y ago
  Major operational risk is not linear. Joe's Coffee shop doesn't have an army of lawyers to defend their collection and us practices that would possibly be lawful, while BigCorp has an army of lawyers to successfully defend their unlawful practices. Even if the fines scale (I don't know what the punitive measures are) the cost to litigate won't.
  - rcxdude 8y ago
    The regulatory agencies don't start with litigation. If you are unintentionally out of line they will contact you to fix it first, and if you do so in good faith that will be the end of it.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      How do they find your are in compliance or not, through what methods? Anonymous complaint? Random audit? What if you decide you are in compliance and what they deem unallowable is critical to your business? I know what bigcorp's strategy is! Outsource data collection to a 'marketing analytics' firm that specializes in 'GDPR compliance'. Sounds like a new boutique consulting industry. Similar situations exist for small businesses in the US already, we call them the "IRS" While you might argue that if you don't cheat on your taxes you have nothing to fear, the IRS might decide you took some deductions you shouldn't have, pay up or litigate. If you successfully defend? Oopsies, we might audit you again for the same thing next year (happened to a friend of mine)!
simion314 8y ago
Do you have or plan to have a product? What data are you collecting and do you share/sell it? Do you collect more then you need? If yes why and is it hard to provide the option to the user not to collect non essential data ? What part of GDPR is the one that is giving you a lot of work and you think is a disadvante for a small startup? If the answer is that I want to move fast and not think about securing the data, making it easy to delete etc then moving fast is not an excuse, you should secure the data from the start, follow the laws when the data is leaked etc
api 8y ago
Regulation in general tends to be a regressive tax. Larger companies have the bureaucratic overhead to handle it and can also often lobby or litigate their way around it. If they do get tripped up they can pay the fines or hire lawyers. Smaller companies have neither the time nor the money to deal with regulatory complexity.
Derek_MK 8y ago
Now that I think about it, yeah, I think Microsoft is probably gonna land in some big trouble with GDPR because of this. There's not really a way out of it because of how little control they give the user. I think it's just going to take time, because there's so many high-profile GDPR cases going on right now. Plus, it's not like the big companies can afford to get hit by GDPR in a way that small companies can't. GDPR fines are based off of the company's revenue, which works well for preventing Microsofts from making more money from doing it anyway and paying the fine.
sjellis 8y ago
> what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement Nope. The GDPR is a European-style regulatory framework: it sets out principles and expects people to apply them in a reasonable and sensible way. The national regulating agencies are there to steer organisations into doing the right thing, rather than beating them up when they don't. I have literally telephoned the UK regulator and had a polite conversation when I needed a clarification of a particular point in their (most clearly written) online guidance. The regulators do have strong powers so that large and well-funded companies can't just deploy lawyers to get away with things. Cambridge Analytica is one obvious case: they tried to play games with a GDPR regulator, and got a very hard smack-down.

blub 8y ago

Another nail in the coffin of MS telemetry apologists. Really, MS is freaking evil when it comes to this stuff. Wonder which asshole greenlighted this huge telemetry push. Must have been sanctioned from the very top.

setquk 8y ago
Names.. Satya Nadella is directly responsible here. There has been no response from him on petitions about it. Google the various sources: Ben Evans is responsible for enforcing the state of affairs on .Net core at least. https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/3093 Joey Ailleo, Powershell PM said this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18629942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18629942 "I'm a huge privacy advocate, but telemetry doesn't have to be a dirty word. With PowerShell Core, we went through an RFC process to define our telemetry goals and implementation[1], we publish our data to a public dashboard[2], and all of the telemetry source code is out there in the open[3]. Our telemetry enables to help drive prioritization and decisions around platform/OS usage, and disabling it as simple as setting an environment variable[4]." That's basically MSFT policy: 1. Telemetry is good for you 2. We do X, Y, Z (but forget to mention the times they got it wrong like the environment variable didn't work on Debian packages they built for .net core). 3. Default is opt out, if you can (windows 10 pro has no opt out option). 4. Stick fingers in ears. MSFT, you can go to hell at this point. This is just disrespecting and abusing your customers. I will ALWAYS put a privacy respecting vendor at the top of the list.
- jake_the_third 8y ago
  Thank you! Although this information is out their, compiling the people involved into a list like this makes for much easier research.
miaklesp 8y ago
If you don't like, just don't use.
- scarygliders 8y ago

fromthestart 8y ago

So Windows is sending browsed URLs to Microsoft? What exactly is "data about recently opened websites?" What data specifically?

craftyguy 8y ago
Your web history is still 'data'.

neves 8y ago

I try to use the buggy Windows 10 Microsoft family screen time features to control how my children use the computer. Unfortunately it is a global configuration. I must also allow Microsoft to collect my data.

huxflux 8y ago
2018 - when convenience conquered piracy.

mixmastamyk 8y ago

The recent MS behavior is baffling, like one suffering multiple personality disorder. Policies both customer-friendly and actively hostile at the same time. Leadership really needs to get everyone "on the same page" (groan) and decide if they want to stick with being evil or not.

linuxftw 8y ago
Agile software development practices. Nobody created a user story for 'respect user's settings during upgrades'. If I had to guess, the settings were renamed/refactored and default values were enabled by default. Or perhaps the 'system upgrade service' doesn't talk to the 'system user setting services' and has no way to discover those settings. There's so many innovative ways to write terrible software, Microsoft is truly a pioneer in this area.
- sls 8y ago
  .
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Come'on I was taking a shot at dogmatic agile beliefs and Microsoft in one swing! I mean to say that strict adherence to 'agile' without qualified engineers and management results in obvious features missing because the left hand isn't talking to the right hand. The jab at Microsoft is to imply they employ such a detrimental process because it's the only conceivable way to arrive at such a poor quality product. I don't think Microsoft is engaging in what it believes is predatory behavior, I'm confident that someone in a suit somewhere is cooking up all these 'good ideas' about collecting 'metrics' and their underlings faithfully implement these 'good ideas.' Their behavior is bad, I don't condone it. I also don't use Microsoft products (see username).
  - Forge36 8y ago
    Let's phrase it differently: agile causes two teams to desync. If for whatever reason to teams become siloed and are agile: if their sprints don't line up, then requirement thrashing causes agile hell. A needs Y B is working on X Given timelines: B must quickly switch to Y or A must implement it without support from B. The biggest problem I have with software development is coordinating 100 TEAMs to operate on the same page (I own a library of interesting and old functionality at my company). This happens on occasion, without someone to reign in affected parties: things rot faster from be features than can be managed

nickjj 8y ago

I don't get it. This article and Reddit post is very misguided. Why are people upset that you're sending data to Microsoft if you enable the settings in Windows that specifically allow Microsoft to collect this data? Maybe I'm biased since I run Windows 10 Pro but you can simply turn off activity history and set your diagnostic settings to basic. Now your non-anonymous data won't be sent to MS (unless they are secretly sending it against your will which is a totally different topic than this article). I don't even have a "privacy dashboard" that this article and the Reddit post speaks of because I log into Windows with a local Windows username, not a Microsoft Live account. If you're concerned about privacy, why would you login to your OS using a Microsoft Live account? This really sounds like people using the default settings without looking into protecting their privacy then saying Windows is evil because they didn't check into the settings of their operating system. In other words: 1. Use a local Windows login, not MS Live 2. Set your diagnostic data to basic 3. Disable activity history Also as a bonus step, if a big content update happens in the future and it introduces features that sounds like it's an invitation to be spied on, double check your settings after patching to make sure they're disabled. It is lame that telemetry exists in the first place, and don't get me wrong, I hate things like being forced to patch / reboot for MS updates but if you volunteer to use Windows, it's the price we have to pay for the time being.

ep103 8y ago
4. Install Latest Windows Updates 5. Find that these settings have been set back to enabled again. 6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 every Tuesday. 7. Discover MS is still sending data, regardless of your settings. ^^ The above is why.
- nickjj 8y ago
  Those are shady steps taken by MS but I don't experience them with Windows 10 Pro. Maybe it's only isolated to Windows 10 Home? I still double check all of my privacy settings after a major content patch, but so far so good. I keep nearly everything disabled too (basic diagnostics, limited access to my webcam / microphone, Cortana is disabled, no timeline, etc.).

guelo 8y ago

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal. The ads, the nags, the surveillance. It is not an operating system I can use anymore. They have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out.

amatecha 8y ago
Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linked with their home computer usage because they thought they have to. Just seems so predatory and manipulative. I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
- exodust 8y ago
  I'm about to set up a new PC for a relative with Win 10 Home, parts have just arrived. Any advice on set up procedures or things I can do to keep Microsoft from spying on them and collecting their data? Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
  - 8y ago

ajmarsh 8y ago

I've been using https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy with good success. Automate with the orchestration tool of your choice.

zwaps 8y ago

They now say this is related to the diagnostic level set to full. This is clearly not true. I have disabled ALL privacy related settings, set activity X to off and have the level set to basic since install. Microsoft still displays search queries and apps I used on the activity dashboard. Clearly someone "messed up". (Collect now, apologize later)

craftyguy 8y ago
I mean, at this point, you're only hurting yourself by continuing to use/support a product which does things you do not want, right?

datavirtue 8y ago

For some reason, I and it seems like most users, are just not concerned about Microsoft collecting this data. It's nothing compared to Google and Facebook. It's sort of like complaining about a zit while a kodiac bear is ripping your leg off.

gigama 8y ago

Yeah I stopped using Windows years ago. However my clients still get stuck buying 10 on new computers. I try to explain the downsides but mostly they resign themselves to it since they don't want to learn a new OS. Best I can do is only setup local accounts for them, turn off OneDrive, and have them run O&O's shutup program periodically (like monthly) to help mitigate Microsoft's pervasive, invasive data collection: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 Still not 100%, but a dripping faucet is better than the default firehose of telemetry tracking.