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In that case, it seems the root cause of your concerns about other Internet users is that updates for their systems from the OS developer are no longer consider

In that case, it seems the root cause of your concerns about other Internet users is that updates for their systems from the OS developer are no longer considered trustworthy. Given that the developer in question has something of a track record now of delivering potentially unwelcome updates, such caution is reasonable. So I think you're aiming at the wrong target here. In any case, the vaccination argument only works if it's defending against a real threat. If there's a genuine security issue here, perhaps it is. On the other hand, if this update really is causing otherwise absent telemetry software to be installed, not installing that telemetry software is hardly a threat to other Internet users.

duxup 7y ago
I'm not 100% sure I understand all of what you're saying. Generally if you disable updates, you disable them all, so that means security updates too. If a given update isn't a security update and you disabled all updates ... you're still going to miss it if it was a security update too.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Generally if you disable updates, you disable them all That isn't necessarily true at all. Indeed, the basis of this very story is that Microsoft has been providing updates for older versions of Windows that included only the security patches (i.e., not new features, telemetry, and any other stuff that might change the behaviour of system in ways its user doesn't want). In terms of your "vaccination" strategy for the Internet, these patches are the ones that matter. However, in this case, Microsoft might have bundled one of the things that people have been trying to opt out of -- telemetry -- into one of the updates labelled as security only. If they really have, that would be a further significant breach of trust, and given their recent track record with pushing telemetry, GWX and so on, a lot of people are no longer even willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, to the point that some people are no longer applying updates from Microsoft at all, in some cases including security updates. That is bad for almost everyone, and it's been directly caused by Microsoft's repeated abuse of the update system to push user-hostile changes.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    Indeed. The October 2018 update erased my archive of digitized home videos. Thankfully I had backups because it took me a while to notice and some of the reallocated disk space had probably been overwritten by then. Microsoft's stunning lack of respect for its users is the reason I almost never got to see my grandfather smile again.

duxup 7y ago

I'm not 100% sure I understand all of what you're saying. Generally if you disable updates, you disable them all, so that means security updates too. If a given update isn't a security update and you disabled all updates ... you're still going to miss it if it was a security update too.

Silhouette 7y ago
Generally if you disable updates, you disable them all That isn't necessarily true at all. Indeed, the basis of this very story is that Microsoft has been providing updates for older versions of Windows that included only the security patches (i.e., not new features, telemetry, and any other stuff that might change the behaviour of system in ways its user doesn't want). In terms of your "vaccination" strategy for the Internet, these patches are the ones that matter. However, in this case, Microsoft might have bundled one of the things that people have been trying to opt out of -- telemetry -- into one of the updates labelled as security only. If they really have, that would be a further significant breach of trust, and given their recent track record with pushing telemetry, GWX and so on, a lot of people are no longer even willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, to the point that some people are no longer applying updates from Microsoft at all, in some cases including security updates. That is bad for almost everyone, and it's been directly caused by Microsoft's repeated abuse of the update system to push user-hostile changes.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Indeed. The October 2018 update erased my archive of digitized home videos. Thankfully I had backups because it took me a while to notice and some of the reallocated disk space had probably been overwritten by then. Microsoft's stunning lack of respect for its users is the reason I almost never got to see my grandfather smile again.