5 ms·

A related observation: I have between 4-8 *nix, MacOS, iOS, machines running on my home network at any given time. I’m using piHole (with base config) to block

by jtdev 7y ago

A related observation: I have between 4-8 *nix, MacOS, iOS, machines running on my home network at any given time. I’m using piHole (with base config) to block ad traffic. My blocked percentage hovers around ~10%... until I boot up my one Windows 10 machine, which spikes the blocked ad traffic to ~25% and remains that high -with zero applications running mind you - until I shutdown the machine, after which it quickly drops back ~10%. It seems that Windows 10 is essentially an ad and surveillance OS built for mining user data at this point.

dzink 7y ago
I’ve seen less on the Windows 10 Pro version (switched off all datasending features on install).
- starik36 7y ago
  How does one do that?
- parliament32 7y ago
  Enjoy having them silently re-enabled on the next update. Enterprise is the only version where you can actually disable and it'll stay disabled, because most regulated corps would consider "telemetry" a data breach.
  - blahyawnblah 7y ago
    I check them periodically and have never seen any of the settings turned back on.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      Me neither from updates, but I have random components of my system fail. Like the start menu search if you disable some telemetry services. It is telling that deactivating telemetry is the most significant feature of the enterprise edition.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    There was one update that turned Cortana back on. I think it was the major feature update before the "Creators Update". It was the one where everyone (or at least me) thought they got hacked like in a movie. My computer was randomly turned off. I turned it back on and instead of the login screen, it just was a glowing "All your files are exactly where you left them..." Took me like 5 minutes of not being able to use my computer to get through, only to find that I wasn't hacked... but that was something Microsoft hired and paid employees to do. With that in mind, they haven't done anything like that since. Hopefully people are super mad about it.
    - sandworm101 7y ago
      >> Hopefully people are super mad about it. Unusual windows activity, random rebooting associated with "updates", is a force of nature. People are beyond anger. They just accept it as part of the natural world. Linux guys like me are the angry man standing on the corner saying that the world doesn't need to be this way, that we can choose not to live like this. But if you believe that something is natural and unavoidable, eventually that guy in the corner looks genuinely crazy.
  - xbkingx 7y ago
    Odd. On the dozen Windows 10 PCs I've maintained from mixed vendors and self builds, some fresh installs, some upgrades from 7 or 8, I've never had any of these options reenabled. No fancy registry hacks or 3rd party blockers on 3/4 of the machines. A few have more aggressive telemetry disabling changes, and let me check this one... yeah, no changes. And this system has been abused, tweaked and untweaked 15 ways to bacon over the last 2 years on the same install. My guess is that people screw up their machines in a way that triggers some type of registry repair, or they encounter a problem and do a rollback or refresh in safe boot themselves, which will reset things like active services and scheduled tasks. Those fire up, see an unrecognized configuration, invalid entries, or missing entries, and reset those settings to a default. Seriously, I see these comments on things happening by magic in Win 10 - full apps installing themselves, setting gremlins flipping switches, advertisements eating people's children, etc.- and I've literally experienced NONE of them. Actually I had Error Reporting reenabled once after using the troubleshooting settings to clean the DNS cache instead of ipconfig. I've had plenty of issues to troubleshoot, mostly from my own tweaking, some out of my control, but the level of Win10 FUD is bizarre. tl;dr - More MS FUD. Don't use every hack posted by internet randos and check any deep customizations after using any automated repair tools.
    - parliament32 7y ago
      I promise it happens. https://www.pcgamer.com/hey-windows-stop-resetting-my-preferences-every-major-update/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hey-windows-stop-resetting-my-prefer... https://www.digitalcare.org/windows-10-update-changed-settings/ https://www.digitalcare.org/windows-10-update-changed-settin...
      - xbkingx 7y ago
        That first article is just a random journalist (user) Windows rant. I'd give it a 90% chance the root cause was user error. The second mentions: 1) Drivers being replaced, which is often cited as the overwhelming contributing factor of system instability. It was a huge factor specifically when the driver model changed in Vista and shotty 3rd party drivers is often credited as the single biggest reason Vista flopped. They're anal about drivers, but MS provides ways to prevent drivers from being updated automatically. They list printers being uninstalled as a separate thing, but probably same root cause. Printers and their software hold the top ranking on the "WTF is all this shit?" Scale. Ads turned back on? Never happened on any of these systems. There might have been some feature that was added in an early release (both articles were written in 2017), but if there was, it was a toggle in the settings to disable it. Default apps being reset actually DID happen to me once, now that I think about it. It's literally a 5 second fix, which is why I forgot about it. That article also links to MakeUseOf articles that promote installing 3rd party apps to do things like redirect Cortana, set default programs, etc. Gee, use some rando internet person's hack to change default apps and at the next update the default apps are reset to default? Must be Microsoft's fault. Let's mess with Cortana, which can be used to recommend (advertise) apps and services by examining the user's history (telemetry). What? All the telemetry tweaks and ad settings have changed. OMG MS you so bad! Sorry, M$ you so bad! (Gotta have that late 90s childish Developers Developers Developers rage.) The overwhelming takeaways are: A) If you're going to spend hours of your life at the computer, spend 30 minutes looking over the settings for each major release, which happens once every year or so. Same goes for your phones/tablets. B) Use the tools provided to tweak first and resort to 3rd party hacks only if they're reversible, you know exactly what they do, and you could perform the same changes manually.
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  "less ads" for $99 [1] isn't a great value proposition to me. [1] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrade-windows-10-pro/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrade-windows-10-pro/
ashleyn 7y ago
Windows Defender's realtime protection in Windows 10 is also terrible. Practically monopolises an entire core at all times. To make things worse, you cannot permanently disable it without a GPO. And Microsoft is known to keep taking GPOs out of Pro.
- pault 7y ago
  It's light-years better than the Symantec garbage my employer force installs on every machine. It literally takes over thirty seconds to open vscode, compared to less than five without it. Every single operation, from reading an email to opening a file takes a factor of 5-10x longer than it should. It makes me want to scream. I tried to tamper with it once in a fit of rage and got permanently booted off the network. That was an awkward visit to the IT office.
- rasz 7y ago
  reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender" /v "DisableAntiSpyware" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderApiLogger" /v "Start" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderAuditLogger" /v "Start" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f
creeble 7y ago
Similar experience here. Not to mention the seemingly-continuous/mysterious "update bandwidth". When I boot up a Windows machine at my vacation condo with a 2Mbps DSL line (okay, yeah, but it's all I can get), it sucks it completely dry for an hour or more, with nothing about updates or anything meaningful appearing on the Windows screen at all. What's it doing? Who knows. edit: clarity
- Gracana 7y ago
  Windows 10 has a "this is a metered connection" option that might help in that situation. I use it when tethering my work laptop to my phone, and it seems to prevent that sort of abuse.
- swinglock 7y ago
  Windows 10 has a P2P Windows Update service, maybe that's it. Look under the Delivery Optimization settings.
FullMetalBitch 7y ago
I have two windows 10 behind pihole with over 1.051.698 domains blocked and I am rarely over 10%
- jtdev 7y ago
  Did you customize the allow domains?
  - FullMetalBitch 7y ago
    What do you mean the allow domains? It seems windows pro receives less ads than home so it may be that. Anyway there have been times where I was doing heavy browsing where I got over 20% and some times over 25%. I also block everything from facebook. My top blocked domains today are: self.events.data.microsoft.com, activity.windows.com, watson.telemetry.microsoft.com and reddit.map.fastly.com
    - panpanna 7y ago
      These don't even sound as ad site: self.events.data.microsoft.com, activity.windows.com. Maybe you are blocking some legitimate traffic, forcing it to retry many times?
      - codedokode 7y ago
        Collecting telemetry against user's will is not a legitimate traffic.
throwaway808080 7y ago
I was in the Windows org for a bit and this is one of the reasons why I quit Microsoft. I couldn’t live with myself that I am working on something that frustrates users by shoving ads in their face. Every time our tests ran the windows menu showed ads. Edge default home page showed ads. An OS was supposed to be on the users side and Windows wasn’t. I quit and have been much happier. Although I work for a tracking company so may be I am a hypocrite. But my current employer has strong ethics when it comes to GDPR, DNT cookie, No cross domain tracking Yada yada.

by jtdev 7y ago

dzink 7y ago

I’ve seen less on the Windows 10 Pro version (switched off all datasending features on install).

starik36 7y ago
How does one do that?
parliament32 7y ago
Enjoy having them silently re-enabled on the next update. Enterprise is the only version where you can actually disable and it'll stay disabled, because most regulated corps would consider "telemetry" a data breach.
- blahyawnblah 7y ago
  I check them periodically and have never seen any of the settings turned back on.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Me neither from updates, but I have random components of my system fail. Like the start menu search if you disable some telemetry services. It is telling that deactivating telemetry is the most significant feature of the enterprise edition.
- jrockway 7y ago
  There was one update that turned Cortana back on. I think it was the major feature update before the "Creators Update". It was the one where everyone (or at least me) thought they got hacked like in a movie. My computer was randomly turned off. I turned it back on and instead of the login screen, it just was a glowing "All your files are exactly where you left them..." Took me like 5 minutes of not being able to use my computer to get through, only to find that I wasn't hacked... but that was something Microsoft hired and paid employees to do. With that in mind, they haven't done anything like that since. Hopefully people are super mad about it.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    >> Hopefully people are super mad about it. Unusual windows activity, random rebooting associated with "updates", is a force of nature. People are beyond anger. They just accept it as part of the natural world. Linux guys like me are the angry man standing on the corner saying that the world doesn't need to be this way, that we can choose not to live like this. But if you believe that something is natural and unavoidable, eventually that guy in the corner looks genuinely crazy.
- xbkingx 7y ago
  Odd. On the dozen Windows 10 PCs I've maintained from mixed vendors and self builds, some fresh installs, some upgrades from 7 or 8, I've never had any of these options reenabled. No fancy registry hacks or 3rd party blockers on 3/4 of the machines. A few have more aggressive telemetry disabling changes, and let me check this one... yeah, no changes. And this system has been abused, tweaked and untweaked 15 ways to bacon over the last 2 years on the same install. My guess is that people screw up their machines in a way that triggers some type of registry repair, or they encounter a problem and do a rollback or refresh in safe boot themselves, which will reset things like active services and scheduled tasks. Those fire up, see an unrecognized configuration, invalid entries, or missing entries, and reset those settings to a default. Seriously, I see these comments on things happening by magic in Win 10 - full apps installing themselves, setting gremlins flipping switches, advertisements eating people's children, etc.- and I've literally experienced NONE of them. Actually I had Error Reporting reenabled once after using the troubleshooting settings to clean the DNS cache instead of ipconfig. I've had plenty of issues to troubleshoot, mostly from my own tweaking, some out of my control, but the level of Win10 FUD is bizarre. tl;dr - More MS FUD. Don't use every hack posted by internet randos and check any deep customizations after using any automated repair tools.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    I promise it happens. https://www.pcgamer.com/hey-windows-stop-resetting-my-preferences-every-major-update/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hey-windows-stop-resetting-my-prefer... https://www.digitalcare.org/windows-10-update-changed-settings/ https://www.digitalcare.org/windows-10-update-changed-settin...
    - xbkingx 7y ago
      That first article is just a random journalist (user) Windows rant. I'd give it a 90% chance the root cause was user error. The second mentions: 1) Drivers being replaced, which is often cited as the overwhelming contributing factor of system instability. It was a huge factor specifically when the driver model changed in Vista and shotty 3rd party drivers is often credited as the single biggest reason Vista flopped. They're anal about drivers, but MS provides ways to prevent drivers from being updated automatically. They list printers being uninstalled as a separate thing, but probably same root cause. Printers and their software hold the top ranking on the "WTF is all this shit?" Scale. Ads turned back on? Never happened on any of these systems. There might have been some feature that was added in an early release (both articles were written in 2017), but if there was, it was a toggle in the settings to disable it. Default apps being reset actually DID happen to me once, now that I think about it. It's literally a 5 second fix, which is why I forgot about it. That article also links to MakeUseOf articles that promote installing 3rd party apps to do things like redirect Cortana, set default programs, etc. Gee, use some rando internet person's hack to change default apps and at the next update the default apps are reset to default? Must be Microsoft's fault. Let's mess with Cortana, which can be used to recommend (advertise) apps and services by examining the user's history (telemetry). What? All the telemetry tweaks and ad settings have changed. OMG MS you so bad! Sorry, M$ you so bad! (Gotta have that late 90s childish Developers Developers Developers rage.) The overwhelming takeaways are: A) If you're going to spend hours of your life at the computer, spend 30 minutes looking over the settings for each major release, which happens once every year or so. Same goes for your phones/tablets. B) Use the tools provided to tweak first and resort to 3rd party hacks only if they're reversible, you know exactly what they do, and you could perform the same changes manually.
PascLeRasc 7y ago
"less ads" for $99 [1] isn't a great value proposition to me. [1] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrade-windows-10-pro/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrade-windows-10-pro/

ashleyn 7y ago

Windows Defender's realtime protection in Windows 10 is also terrible. Practically monopolises an entire core at all times. To make things worse, you cannot permanently disable it without a GPO. And Microsoft is known to keep taking GPOs out of Pro.

pault 7y ago
It's light-years better than the Symantec garbage my employer force installs on every machine. It literally takes over thirty seconds to open vscode, compared to less than five without it. Every single operation, from reading an email to opening a file takes a factor of 5-10x longer than it should. It makes me want to scream. I tried to tamper with it once in a fit of rage and got permanently booted off the network. That was an awkward visit to the IT office.
rasz 7y ago
reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender" /v "DisableAntiSpyware" /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderApiLogger" /v "Start" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f reg add "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderAuditLogger" /v "Start" /t REG_DWORD /d "0" /f

creeble 7y ago

Similar experience here. Not to mention the seemingly-continuous/mysterious "update bandwidth". When I boot up a Windows machine at my vacation condo with a 2Mbps DSL line (okay, yeah, but it's all I can get), it sucks it completely dry for an hour or more, with nothing about updates or anything meaningful appearing on the Windows screen at all. What's it doing? Who knows. edit: clarity

Gracana 7y ago
Windows 10 has a "this is a metered connection" option that might help in that situation. I use it when tethering my work laptop to my phone, and it seems to prevent that sort of abuse.
swinglock 7y ago
Windows 10 has a P2P Windows Update service, maybe that's it. Look under the Delivery Optimization settings.

FullMetalBitch 7y ago

I have two windows 10 behind pihole with over 1.051.698 domains blocked and I am rarely over 10%

jtdev 7y ago
Did you customize the allow domains?
- FullMetalBitch 7y ago
  What do you mean the allow domains? It seems windows pro receives less ads than home so it may be that. Anyway there have been times where I was doing heavy browsing where I got over 20% and some times over 25%. I also block everything from facebook. My top blocked domains today are: self.events.data.microsoft.com, activity.windows.com, watson.telemetry.microsoft.com and reddit.map.fastly.com
  - panpanna 7y ago
    These don't even sound as ad site: self.events.data.microsoft.com, activity.windows.com. Maybe you are blocking some legitimate traffic, forcing it to retry many times?
    - codedokode 7y ago
      Collecting telemetry against user's will is not a legitimate traffic.

throwaway808080 7y ago

I was in the Windows org for a bit and this is one of the reasons why I quit Microsoft. I couldn’t live with myself that I am working on something that frustrates users by shoving ads in their face. Every time our tests ran the windows menu showed ads. Edge default home page showed ads. An OS was supposed to be on the users side and Windows wasn’t. I quit and have been much happier. Although I work for a tracking company so may be I am a hypocrite. But my current employer has strong ethics when it comes to GDPR, DNT cookie, No cross domain tracking Yada yada.