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https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry "This project collects usage data and sends it
by turrini 8y ago
https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry
"This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default, and can be enabled with the SEND_TELEMETRY build flag."
Even on a simple calculator.
- yellowapple 8y agoI'm not sure if I should be disturbed or amused by Microsoft putting telemetry in (at this rate) literally every one of its products. Like, what the hell do they even track? I guess the obvious ones are things like application crashes, but now I'm curious if they have the data on the most common calculations, folks' favorite numbers, etc.
- abakker 8y agoI mean, I guess it would be cool to know what kind of operations people are doing most often? Maybe you send different ads to people who only use addition/subtraction than people who use sin / cos?
- mgkimsal 8y agoor target people who use large numbers with financial planning ads, for example?
- dvtrn 8y agoNot like I'm going anywhere with this, just morbidly curious but...this is spoken (typed) in parody/jest, right?
- mgkimsal 8y agoi can't even tell anymore...
- justinclift 8y agoDon't give them ideas. ;)
- Kye 8y agoAre there that many rich physicists?
- sebazzz 8y agoTelemetry is not used for ads, but since it is open-source you can check and get a pretty good idea what they actually send.
- gpm 8y agoHere is the list of events, the jokes seem pretty on point to me: https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1ea143da02c773ac18d1bb9a2e/src/CalcViewModel/Common/TraceLogger.cpp https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1... A small selection: constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_INVALID_INPUT_PASTED = L"InvalidInputPasted"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_VALID_INPUT_PASTED = L"ValidInputPasted"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITFLIP_PANE_CLICKED = L"BitFlipPaneClicked"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITFLIP_BUTTONS_USED = L"BitFlipToggleButtonUsed"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_ANGLE_BUTTONS_USED = L"AngleButtonUsedInSession"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_HYP_BUTTON_USED = L"HypButtonUsedInSession"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_FUNCTION_USAGE = L"FunctionUsageInSession"; constexpr auto EVENT_NAME_BITLENGTH_BUTTON_USED = L"BitLengthButtonUsed"; Do you have a source for "not used for ads"?
- howeyc 8y agoHow can you be sure it's not used for ads, their privacy statement says they do[1]: "You provide some of this data directly, and we get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experiences with our products." "Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to: ... Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers." [1] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/privacystatement https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/privacystatement
- AbsoluteHawxy 8y agoYou're looking for: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/privacystatement#mainadvertisingidmodule https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/privacystatement#mainadv... (data seems different on the US site?) TL;DR: AdvertisingID handles ad tracking in windows and can be opted out of during install, in settings and globally on your account. AFAIK you can also wipe any previously tracked data. AID tracking is unrelated to telemetry. Telemetry does not contribute to advertising at all unless "tailored experiences" is enabled in settings, and even then the data is mostly used for Microsoft to suggest features and fixes for problems.
- megy 8y agoWhat would you imagine with differentiate +/- people to sin users?
- criddell 8y agoI'm pretty sure I've entered 58008 in every calculator I've ever touched. That's probably in my Microsoft file somewhere...
- yellowapple 8y agoAnd I'm sure your ads are targeted accordingly ;)
- kevinventullo 8y agoThe Scientific/Math/Programmer expanded calculators have a bunch of features. Maybe they can test how often the "cube root" button is used versus Arcsinh or something.
- selimthegrim 8y agoThis is actually pretty relevant because TI has been goofing up the cube root function in its calculators for decades.
- copperx 8y agoIs there a bug in there?
- selimthegrim 8y agoTI will tell you, “It’s a feature.” Play around with the cube root of negative real fractions ( with even and odd denominators) and integers (starting with -1) and see what you find.
- megy 8y agoHow is that telemetry relevant? The bug needs to be fixed no matter how many people use it.
- selimthegrim 8y agoTI doesn’t think anyone actually uses it in a nontrivial manner.
- theunamedguy 8y agoI have a hard time believing this and can't find any details online. Source please?
- selimthegrim 8y agoI should specify I mean the ones they market to middle and high schools , TI-89, Nspire, and etc
- Titanous 8y agoHere's what they are actually collecting: https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/master/src/CalcViewModel/Common/TraceLogger.cpp https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/master/src/Calc...
- starik36 8y agoSo nothing really nefarious then.
- turrini 8y agoBecause it is a simple calculator. Now think about what they might be collecting from the rest of the system. All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.
- _Microft 8y ago"MAIL_FOLDER_LIST_EXPANDED", "REFRESH_INBOX_BUTTON_USED", ... :P
- dtrailin 8y agoYou don't have to imagine, you can view the data for yourself: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-data-viewer-overview https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-...
- badrequest 8y agoIf we're expected to trust the party spying on us to reveal exactly the extent to which they spy on us via their proprietary, closed-source spying data viewer tool, then we deserve exactly whatever the fuck it is we end up getting.
- tux3 8y agoIf they cheated on the documentation matching the binary to try and sneak in more telemetry, the backlash would be phenomenal. I don't know if Twitter could handle that kind of load =] It's always good to trust but verify, although here the the safeguard is pretty strong.
- djsumdog 8y agoOn my windows machine I use Windows 10 Firewall Control (and outbound LittleSnitch type thing .. except crappy). I don't think it was calculator, but there was some other basic Microsoft app that wanted to make an outbound connection. I remember thinking, "WTF?! Why would this need to connect to the Internet ever." .. maybe it was calc. Is this telemetry currently enabled on the released version or is it only in the OSS code?
- bradleybuda 8y agoBuilt-in applications are great opportunities to dogfood new platform features. I'm speculating, but calculator may have added telemetry as a way of testing the relevant SDKs, APIs, data visualization systems, etc, not necessarily because a PM a Microsoft somewhere actually cares what percentage of users press the "multiply" button.
- reaperducer 8y agoIt's not dogfooding if you unleash it on the public. Surely Microsoft has an accountant or two on staff. Let them test it in-house.
- TheAceOfHearts 8y agoWell, not unless they consider their users to be dogs.
- badfrog 8y ago> Even on a simple calculator. Why not? If they're paying people to build this software, they presumably want to make it good. With this data, they can learn all kinds of things to help improve future versions: when/why is it crashing, what features are people using most/least, are there patterns of clicks that suggest people are mis-understanding or mis-clicking certain features, etc, etc. edit: Another one that's often useful is looking at different usage patterns across countries. For example, if nobody in Israel is using COSINE, then there's likely a problem with the right-to-left internationalization that you should fix.
- bhauer 8y agoVirtually all of the complaints Microsoft receives about telemetry could be addressed by simply allowing people a global way to turn all telemetry for Microsoft apps off. If you want to support the improvement of apps by allowing this form of telemetry, you can leave it enabled. If you consider it a violation of your privacy, you should be able to easily turn it off. There's a lack of user control and a lack of transparency. Even if you are a Windows 10 Enterprise user (lucky you, you can turn off system telemetry, unlike the plebes who run Windows 10 Professional), and you turn off telemetry for Windows as a whole, does that include the Calculator or not? Maybe it does. It's really unclear to most people.
- reaperducer 8y agoIf they're paying people to build this software, they presumably want to make it good. I find it more likely that the real answer is they're trying to "maximize shareholder value." If Microsoft wanted to make good software, there are several thousand other things it could do other than collecting information on people using a calculator.
- justinclift 8y ago> Why not? If they're paying people to build this software, ... Even from people who Do Not Want their data collected for this purpose?
- zerohp 8y agoI had an interview last year with the Windows and Devices Group. On the day of the interview, I was told it would be with people that work on telemetry. One interviewer told me that keystrokes were being measured by conhost.exe. Not just for internal testing. He clarified that it was done on customer machines. It wasn't clear if they collected individual key presses because we were discussing something you could infer by knowing keystroke timing. Windows 10 is the most prolific malware in the world.
- DHowett 8y agoSpeaking as the engineering lead owning conhost.exe: I can't find anything in our code that would trace user input, or data effectively derived from user input, to even a local event stream. There are a couple instances where we trace API call timings, but only that of API calls initiated by an attached console application.
- cjones26 8y agoWhen are we going to see unlimited command line buffers :)?
- zadjii 8y agoHey, I work on the commandline team too - We can't give out exact timelines for anything we work on, but I can tell you that it's pretty high up on the backlog. It's closer now than it's ever been, that's for sure.
- mrtweetyhack 8y agoSaid the company whose device manager shows a webcam is disabled but can still be accessed by software.
- elken 8y agoOpen the code up then..
- 8y ago
- dtrailin 8y agoBasically every Android and IOS app you use collects telemetry (which you usually cannot disable) for UX purposes but suddenly when Microsoft does it it's a Big Deal. I don't see the issue with refining UX using anonymous data if it improves the product for the end users. Every high quality commercial app does this.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y agoF-Droid maintains a repository of open-source only android apps, and either doesn't allow apps that has telemetry or at least flags apps which may have such anti-features: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/
- rozenmd 8y agoYou can effectively disable telemetry in Android by getting Blokada from F-droid
- millstone 8y agoIs this data actually anonymous? I can't find anything saying so. Apple does not collect data at anywhere near this granularity, e.g. which buttons were pressed.
- reaperducer 8y agoBasically every Android and IOS app you use collects telemetry So it's OK, then. Jimmy jumped off a bridge, so it's OK if Johnny does it, too. No harm done! but suddenly when Microsoft does it it's a Big Deal No, it's a big deal because Microsoft feels entitled to collect information about people using... wait for it... a calculator. using anonymous data It's not anonymous. We know it's going to at least get a timestamp and IP address. I don't see the issue with refining UX Neither do I. Do it by bringing people in and testing the program on them, the way it was done for decades before "telemetry" became one of those SV euphemisms. Every high quality commercial app does this. No. They don't.
- smush 8y ago> Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default So it's not ideal from a privacy perspective to have to worry about usage telemetry in a calculator. But at least there is the silver lining of having telemetry disabled by default _somewhere_, even if it is only for dev builds.
- mikepurvis 8y agoTo be fair, it's a nightmare looking at reports that are all clogged up with crashes and whatever from your developers making messes at their desks running non-release code. Obviously one option is just a dev build flag in your telemetry payload, but I can see the logic in just turning it off altogether.
- kgwxd 8y agoI'm just surprised it's opt-in for dev builds.
- creato 8y agoDevelopers use software in weird ways. I've written scripts to hit buttons thousands of times for hours on end. It makes sense that they don't want developers' janky experiments polluting data used to drive design decisions.
- kgwxd 8y agoThen why the hell do .NET Core dev utilities have opt-out, and sometimes mandatory, telemetry?
- creato 8y agoThe label "developer" is relative. Any given product wants to exclude telemetry from developers developing the product itself. There's no need to exclude telemetry from developers using the product like a user. The point is to exclude developers running the software in weird ways to debug it. Not just to exclude anyone that calls themselves a developer.
- palisade 8y agoThis seems to be the reason they put the telemetry in. They were solving a bug related to the time calculation feature. And, needed to discover if any customers had issues after the change was made. https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1ea143da02c773ac18d1bb9a2e/src/CalcViewModel/DateCalculatorViewModel.cpp#L89 https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1...
- mrtweetyhack 8y agoSolve a bug in a calculator app needs telemetry? Jeez. I guess there's no other way. Every bug now needs to be solved with telemetry.
- pjmlp 8y agoThere is always the HN beloved ChromeOS as alternative.