3 ms·

Windows 11 "optional" telemetry collects the IP address, hardware address of any networked devices plus any networked drives that it finds. It also scans for bl

Windows 11 "optional" telemetry collects the IP address, hardware address of any networked devices plus any networked drives that it finds. It also scans for bluetooth devices and sends that data back. Why do they need this data? I don't know.

autoexec 4y ago
The same reason everyone wants the most mundane details of our lives and a multi-billion dollar a year industry has sprung up around the buying and selling of that data. Because they know they can use it to their own advantage, always at our expense. Microsoft has decided to use their OS as a data collection and ad pushing platform. The amount of dirt they must have on the average windows user is disturbing enough, but with office they get unprecedented insight into the internals of damn near every company including their own competitors. When my own company gave me a windows 10 machine, it came with Microsoft's keylogger enabled. First thing I did was tell them they should probably update the image they're using on new workstations to disable telemetry or at least make sure that every password and keypress wasn't being collected, but we still leak a ton of data to MS. Company data, employee data, and customer data. It's amazing how every company accepts it.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  > amazing how every company accepts it Is it though? I mean, you really don't have a choice. Entire industries are built up around Windows. Linux is definitely not capable of stepping in, and Apple seems content to keep macOS / iPadOS focused on high-end consumers only. For example, to contribute my own "anecdata", I tried switching to Linux recently (I will attempt to do so again, soon). In the 3 months, I had more issues than I've had in 3 years of using Windows. One such example is that KDE's multi-monitor support isn't that great (for example, KDE does not remember the size and position of any of its window anytime you resize or place them on any displays other than the left-most one - and this is maybe the best DE/WM Linux has to offer at this time for the general public), GNOME just seems to insist on their way or the highway. i3/Sway is a nice tiling wm which I daily-drove for a while. But it doesn't handle GUIs very well (unless that GUI is a web app) and forget switching between audio outputs and so on. It's a hassle until you key-bind and script everything. I imagine the Linux entire community suffers from the IKEA effect[0]. I'm perfectly capable of running Linux as my daily driver, and I really don't mind it at all. When Sway locks up at least daily because of swaylock (known bug for ~1y), and you're told not to use it, and Linux doesn't always want to wake up from sleep/suspend. Then you have to fiddle with the monitor every time it wakes or hard-code your display arrangement in a script.. and GNOME requires a ton of extensions just to accommodate my 'power-user' tendencies. The community isn't quite so nice - any issues I had was met with some variation of "lol you're doing it wrong", "buy better hardware lol" or a "donate ploxz!/?? we'll see if it gets pushed up". I'm semi-retired, so I don't have money to donate. I want to contribute in develoment, but have a hard time figuring out the right way forward. I don't have any faith that whatever I do develop will reach an audience (even as an open source project). They seem allergic to any type of GUI - and it shows. I made about ~10 bug reports and all except one went ignored. The one that didn't get ignored was close it because "WONTFIX". Fair enough. I understand that the community is built up around volunteers and I'm ok with that, too. I don't begrudge anyone, but when the community is sometimes toxic, issues don't get fixed, and I have to sysadmin my computer.. it's a struggle. I accept that, and that there will always be some issues. But, I need a break so I'm back on Windows. As a Linux sysadmin for over 15 years (ran macOS as my desktop) it's a rock-solid and amazing server OS but when it comes to desktop.. it has me wanting for more. Administrating over 100 individual servers using I don't want to sysadmin my desktop and I don't want to be trapped in Apple's walled garden. What do I do? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect This turned into a rant.. so I apologize for that.

autoexec 4y ago

The same reason everyone wants the most mundane details of our lives and a multi-billion dollar a year industry has sprung up around the buying and selling of that data. Because they know they can use it to their own advantage, always at our expense. Microsoft has decided to use their OS as a data collection and ad pushing platform. The amount of dirt they must have on the average windows user is disturbing enough, but with office they get unprecedented insight into the internals of damn near every company including their own competitors. When my own company gave me a windows 10 machine, it came with Microsoft's keylogger enabled. First thing I did was tell them they should probably update the image they're using on new workstations to disable telemetry or at least make sure that every password and keypress wasn't being collected, but we still leak a ton of data to MS. Company data, employee data, and customer data. It's amazing how every company accepts it.

deafpolygon 4y ago
> amazing how every company accepts it Is it though? I mean, you really don't have a choice. Entire industries are built up around Windows. Linux is definitely not capable of stepping in, and Apple seems content to keep macOS / iPadOS focused on high-end consumers only. For example, to contribute my own "anecdata", I tried switching to Linux recently (I will attempt to do so again, soon). In the 3 months, I had more issues than I've had in 3 years of using Windows. One such example is that KDE's multi-monitor support isn't that great (for example, KDE does not remember the size and position of any of its window anytime you resize or place them on any displays other than the left-most one - and this is maybe the best DE/WM Linux has to offer at this time for the general public), GNOME just seems to insist on their way or the highway. i3/Sway is a nice tiling wm which I daily-drove for a while. But it doesn't handle GUIs very well (unless that GUI is a web app) and forget switching between audio outputs and so on. It's a hassle until you key-bind and script everything. I imagine the Linux entire community suffers from the IKEA effect[0]. I'm perfectly capable of running Linux as my daily driver, and I really don't mind it at all. When Sway locks up at least daily because of swaylock (known bug for ~1y), and you're told not to use it, and Linux doesn't always want to wake up from sleep/suspend. Then you have to fiddle with the monitor every time it wakes or hard-code your display arrangement in a script.. and GNOME requires a ton of extensions just to accommodate my 'power-user' tendencies. The community isn't quite so nice - any issues I had was met with some variation of "lol you're doing it wrong", "buy better hardware lol" or a "donate ploxz!/?? we'll see if it gets pushed up". I'm semi-retired, so I don't have money to donate. I want to contribute in develoment, but have a hard time figuring out the right way forward. I don't have any faith that whatever I do develop will reach an audience (even as an open source project). They seem allergic to any type of GUI - and it shows. I made about ~10 bug reports and all except one went ignored. The one that didn't get ignored was close it because "WONTFIX". Fair enough. I understand that the community is built up around volunteers and I'm ok with that, too. I don't begrudge anyone, but when the community is sometimes toxic, issues don't get fixed, and I have to sysadmin my computer.. it's a struggle. I accept that, and that there will always be some issues. But, I need a break so I'm back on Windows. As a Linux sysadmin for over 15 years (ran macOS as my desktop) it's a rock-solid and amazing server OS but when it comes to desktop.. it has me wanting for more. Administrating over 100 individual servers using I don't want to sysadmin my desktop and I don't want to be trapped in Apple's walled garden. What do I do? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect This turned into a rant.. so I apologize for that.