6 ms·

When I turned off my Windows 10 Telemetry, I expressed a clear choice that I'd rather not give my data, and it's fine for my voice to not be heard. I just reall

When I turned off my Windows 10 Telemetry, I expressed a clear choice that I'd rather not give my data, and it's fine for my voice to not be heard. I just really don't care about Windows 10 that much. On the other hand, I turned on all the telemetry for OctoPi, Steam, and a bunch of other softwares I care about. I want my voice to be heard for those cases. Just curious, what's so inexcusable about that?

saagarjha 7y ago
Because telemetry, by default, subverts consent of what I’d like to share: I may care about feature X and would like you to know I am using it, but I may not trust that you’re not also logging me when I do sensitive operation Y that I might not want to share (or even want to share with you that I used feature X at 10 PM on Friday). Perhaps it would be better if programs let you review telemetry data before you sent it, but I am unsure if anyone will actually do this or if people can meaningfully take the time to essentially review and opt out of things they don’t want to share.
- nocturnial 7y ago
  I disagree because telemetry collects _your_ data. This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. Your data => you can and have to right to alter it. The problem is those companies view it as their data for which you have no right to modify it. Let alone chose to transmit it at all. Before anyone replies this would invalidate telemetry, ask yourself this question: "If you see a spike in data that makes no sense, isn't that an indication that somehow your data collection policies are pissing off people?"
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. I really don't have the time or malice to do this. I can and do move on to something else.
Olreich 7y ago
Most web telemetry packages are extremely creepy, either by sharing all the data with tons of third parties, or by slurping up insane details to try to specifically fingerprint each user. Trying to tell users that they have to opt in to that sort of tracking for their voice to be heard is inexcusable. Not all software telemetry is that creepy, but things like google analytics definitely are.
ozi 7y ago
Yeah, exactly. "Inexcusable" seems a bit extreme. Are you suggesting companies spend 10x on manual user research? Are you willing to pay more for a product because of increased costs to understand what users actually want?
- roblabla 7y ago
  Yes, I expect them to do manual user research. And “making the users pay” is the wrong way to frame this - product pricing and labor aren’t that tightly correlated. Besides, When we bought magazines the editors didn’t know what stories people were reading or what words you were spending more time reading. When you buy a tool the manufacturer doesn’t know how you use it. Why software gets a free pass at getting all that data for free without asking is beyond me. What I expect are for regulations to eventually hit this industry.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ozi 7y ago
    > wrong way to frame this this is the reality of how businesses operate. > product pricing and labor aren’t that tightly correlated. If you're the staff accountant, sure. You're technically correct. If you're the CFO and I'm trying to convince you we need to spend $1M on user research instead of $100K, you can be sure this is taken into account when modeling monetization strategies to recoup R&D costs.
    - Legogris 7y ago
      > this is the reality of how businesses operate. It's the reality of how a subset of industry operates, which doesnt make it less wrong.
- Legogris 7y ago
  Call me stuffy, but somehow I think that, for example, Ms Office managed to have more user-friendly UX (Clippy and performance aside) back when they had 0 telemetry.
cgriswald 7y ago
How I use a software is not an indication of how I want to use a software. It’s what I’m doing with the options the software has given. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be like everyone else, and an inefficiency in the software will be spotted and fixed so the software will be slightly easier to use. In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own; and even if other users would want to do these things, I’m one of very few actually doing them. So... I don’t really want to trade potentially a lot of personal information just for... I don’t know... to make it easier for developers to develop for the lowest common denominator rather than me?
- hinkley 7y ago
  It's not even the options the software has given. It's the options you have awareness and recall of being given. It's very valuable feedback to hear, "wait, it does that?" Yeah, we spend a quarter million dollars on a feature that our users don't even know exists.
- hilbert42 7y ago
  "How I use a software is not an indication of how I want to use a software." Exactly. The ergonomics of much software is pretty damn terrible with users struggling to get done what they want to do. Thus, developers who rely on telemetry only cement-in bad problems. It's for this and privacy reasons I always turn telemetry off.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh. > In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things product managers are most interested in knowing about because they either want to properly implement that functionality, or they already have it and they want to know if they’re doing a bad job of getting their customers to adopt it. It’s incredibly unlikely that you’re such an ultimate power user that what you want out of the product is so unique that you’re inventing your own usage patterns that others aren’t also following. I completely agree that you should have the right to not share your information with anybody you choose. But if you choose not to share any information about your use case with the company that makes the product, then you don’t have much right to complain about it not doing what you want it to.
jrockway 7y ago
Windows 10 telemetry is pretty scary. I used to do the Windows Insider program, but noticed that they want to collect every website you visit, which seemed a little much to me. Now every week or so Windows complains that I'm not getting insider builds anymore and asks me to reenable the telemetry. The hilarious thing is that I still am getting those builds; when my computer "blue screens" it's green and claims to be a prerelease build. Makes me wonder if they really turned off telemetry.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Office telemetry is worse. There are many cases where your data goes up to Microsoft.
  - vezycash 7y ago
    There are many cases where your DOCUMENT is uploaded to Microsoft. Much clearer.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I haven't heard of this, do you have any references?
      - Spooky23 7y ago
        It’s hard to find now with O365, but the process that reported bugs to Microsoft post crash would always do it by default. It’s not as big of a deal now that most users upload everything anyway.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  What's your build number? You may still be on an Insider build and since a new "stable" build hasn't been released, Windows had nothing to upgrade to.
  - jrockway 7y ago
heroprotagonist 7y ago
I wish there was a simple one-button toggle to turn it off completely, but there's not.
- rndomsrmn 7y ago
  try hosting your own dnscrypt-proxy in combination with https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists. That will turn off most trackers on your entire network.
  - heroprotagonist 7y ago
    Some MS apps will explode if they can't send telemetry. I tried it with MS Teams and it just kept bloating memory until it had to be killed. A mitmproxy config worked there to fake a 200 response to the telemetry endpoint and keep memory down.
CivBase 7y ago
Customers should not have to surrender their information to be accounted for by the business they pay. Giving a business your data is an act of charity. It should never be an expectation. Yes, it costs more to collect the data manually. It usually costs more to behave ethically when you aren't legally required to.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  I get where you're coming from, and this is a problem, but this isn't a practical or pragmatic stance. Typical web/app tracking is orders of magnitude cheaper than research. > Yes, it costs more to collect the data manually. Not just that, but you also get data biased to people willing to spend two hours answering questions for a $25 Amazon gift card.
  - CivBase 7y ago
    > Not just that, but you also get data biased to people willing to spend two hours answering questions for a $25 Amazon gift card. Sure, but the whole point of this article was that the telemetry data is also biased. There is no magic bullet. Your options are to get biased data the cheap way or the ethical way. Either way, the data is biased and you have to consider that when making decisions.
  - neiman 7y ago
    > Typical web/app tracking is orders of magnitude cheaper than research. It doesn't just ethics, and I think it should be "first, do no harm", as in, first, be ethical. Btw, opt-in metrics are ethical and cheap afaik. As for biased? all metrics are biased...
- pmontra 7y ago
  > Giving a business your data is an act of charity. It should never be an expectation. Alternatively the business could pay us to do that but obviously they resist the idea.
- matz1 7y ago
  Its not charity, I allow them to collect my data so that they can use it to improve the service.

saagarjha 7y ago

Because telemetry, by default, subverts consent of what I’d like to share: I may care about feature X and would like you to know I am using it, but I may not trust that you’re not also logging me when I do sensitive operation Y that I might not want to share (or even want to share with you that I used feature X at 10 PM on Friday). Perhaps it would be better if programs let you review telemetry data before you sent it, but I am unsure if anyone will actually do this or if people can meaningfully take the time to essentially review and opt out of things they don’t want to share.

nocturnial 7y ago
I disagree because telemetry collects _your_ data. This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. Your data => you can and have to right to alter it. The problem is those companies view it as their data for which you have no right to modify it. Let alone chose to transmit it at all. Before anyone replies this would invalidate telemetry, ask yourself this question: "If you see a spike in data that makes no sense, isn't that an indication that somehow your data collection policies are pissing off people?"
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > This means, in an ideal world, if you are pissed off enough about the company collecting it, you would have a chance to alter it and mess up their metrics. I really don't have the time or malice to do this. I can and do move on to something else.

Olreich 7y ago

Most web telemetry packages are extremely creepy, either by sharing all the data with tons of third parties, or by slurping up insane details to try to specifically fingerprint each user. Trying to tell users that they have to opt in to that sort of tracking for their voice to be heard is inexcusable. Not all software telemetry is that creepy, but things like google analytics definitely are.

ozi 7y ago

Yeah, exactly. "Inexcusable" seems a bit extreme. Are you suggesting companies spend 10x on manual user research? Are you willing to pay more for a product because of increased costs to understand what users actually want?

roblabla 7y ago
Yes, I expect them to do manual user research. And “making the users pay” is the wrong way to frame this - product pricing and labor aren’t that tightly correlated. Besides, When we bought magazines the editors didn’t know what stories people were reading or what words you were spending more time reading. When you buy a tool the manufacturer doesn’t know how you use it. Why software gets a free pass at getting all that data for free without asking is beyond me. What I expect are for regulations to eventually hit this industry.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ozi 7y ago
  > wrong way to frame this this is the reality of how businesses operate. > product pricing and labor aren’t that tightly correlated. If you're the staff accountant, sure. You're technically correct. If you're the CFO and I'm trying to convince you we need to spend $1M on user research instead of $100K, you can be sure this is taken into account when modeling monetization strategies to recoup R&D costs.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    > this is the reality of how businesses operate. It's the reality of how a subset of industry operates, which doesnt make it less wrong.
Legogris 7y ago
Call me stuffy, but somehow I think that, for example, Ms Office managed to have more user-friendly UX (Clippy and performance aside) back when they had 0 telemetry.

cgriswald 7y ago

How I use a software is not an indication of how I want to use a software. It’s what I’m doing with the options the software has given. If I’m really lucky, I’ll be like everyone else, and an inefficiency in the software will be spotted and fixed so the software will be slightly easier to use. In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own; and even if other users would want to do these things, I’m one of very few actually doing them. So... I don’t really want to trade potentially a lot of personal information just for... I don’t know... to make it easier for developers to develop for the lowest common denominator rather than me?

hinkley 7y ago
It's not even the options the software has given. It's the options you have awareness and recall of being given. It's very valuable feedback to hear, "wait, it does that?" Yeah, we spend a quarter million dollars on a feature that our users don't even know exists.
hilbert42 7y ago
"How I use a software is not an indication of how I want to use a software." Exactly. The ergonomics of much software is pretty damn terrible with users struggling to get done what they want to do. Thus, developers who rely on telemetry only cement-in bad problems. It's for this and privacy reasons I always turn telemetry off.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
It really sounds like you’ve never worked on a product team that actually used analytics tbh. > In practice, I’m just doing workarounds to accomplish things the telemetry won’t explain on its own This is one of the most obvious things people are looking for in analytics. People will always use your product in unpredictable ways to get the whatever functionality it is that they really wanted. This is one of the things product managers are most interested in knowing about because they either want to properly implement that functionality, or they already have it and they want to know if they’re doing a bad job of getting their customers to adopt it. It’s incredibly unlikely that you’re such an ultimate power user that what you want out of the product is so unique that you’re inventing your own usage patterns that others aren’t also following. I completely agree that you should have the right to not share your information with anybody you choose. But if you choose not to share any information about your use case with the company that makes the product, then you don’t have much right to complain about it not doing what you want it to.

jrockway 7y ago

Windows 10 telemetry is pretty scary. I used to do the Windows Insider program, but noticed that they want to collect every website you visit, which seemed a little much to me. Now every week or so Windows complains that I'm not getting insider builds anymore and asks me to reenable the telemetry. The hilarious thing is that I still am getting those builds; when my computer "blue screens" it's green and claims to be a prerelease build. Makes me wonder if they really turned off telemetry.

Spooky23 7y ago
Office telemetry is worse. There are many cases where your data goes up to Microsoft.
- vezycash 7y ago
  There are many cases where your DOCUMENT is uploaded to Microsoft. Much clearer.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I haven't heard of this, do you have any references?
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      It’s hard to find now with O365, but the process that reported bugs to Microsoft post crash would always do it by default. It’s not as big of a deal now that most users upload everything anyway.
jedieaston 7y ago
What's your build number? You may still be on an Insider build and since a new "stable" build hasn't been released, Windows had nothing to upgrade to.
- jrockway 7y ago

heroprotagonist 7y ago

I wish there was a simple one-button toggle to turn it off completely, but there's not.

rndomsrmn 7y ago
try hosting your own dnscrypt-proxy in combination with https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists. That will turn off most trackers on your entire network.
- heroprotagonist 7y ago
  Some MS apps will explode if they can't send telemetry. I tried it with MS Teams and it just kept bloating memory until it had to be killed. A mitmproxy config worked there to fake a 200 response to the telemetry endpoint and keep memory down.

CivBase 7y ago

Customers should not have to surrender their information to be accounted for by the business they pay. Giving a business your data is an act of charity. It should never be an expectation. Yes, it costs more to collect the data manually. It usually costs more to behave ethically when you aren't legally required to.

dehrmann 7y ago
I get where you're coming from, and this is a problem, but this isn't a practical or pragmatic stance. Typical web/app tracking is orders of magnitude cheaper than research. > Yes, it costs more to collect the data manually. Not just that, but you also get data biased to people willing to spend two hours answering questions for a $25 Amazon gift card.
- CivBase 7y ago
  > Not just that, but you also get data biased to people willing to spend two hours answering questions for a $25 Amazon gift card. Sure, but the whole point of this article was that the telemetry data is also biased. There is no magic bullet. Your options are to get biased data the cheap way or the ethical way. Either way, the data is biased and you have to consider that when making decisions.
- neiman 7y ago
  > Typical web/app tracking is orders of magnitude cheaper than research. It doesn't just ethics, and I think it should be "first, do no harm", as in, first, be ethical. Btw, opt-in metrics are ethical and cheap afaik. As for biased? all metrics are biased...
pmontra 7y ago
> Giving a business your data is an act of charity. It should never be an expectation. Alternatively the business could pay us to do that but obviously they resist the idea.
matz1 7y ago
Its not charity, I allow them to collect my data so that they can use it to improve the service.