3 ms·

This is Microsoft. They have a proven record of turning these toggles back on automatically without your consent. So you can opt out of them taking all of your

This is Microsoft. They have a proven record of turning these toggles back on automatically without your consent. So you can opt out of them taking all of your most private moments and putting them into a data set that will be leaked, but you can only opt out 3 times. What are the odds a "bug" (feature) turns it on 4 times? Anything less than 100% is an underestimate. And what does a disclaimer mean, legally speaking? They won't face any consequences when they use it for training purposes. They'll simply deny that they do it. When it's revealed that they did it, they'll say sorry, that wasn't intentional. When it's revealed to be intentional, they'll say it's good for you so be quiet.

nikanj 1y ago
A bug, or a dialog box that says ”Windows has reviewed your photo settings and found possible issues. Press Accept now to reset settings to secure defaults” This is how my parents get Binged a few times per year
- buran77 1y ago
  This feels different though. Every time you turn it off and then on again it has a substantial processing cost for MS. If MS "accidentally" turns it on and then doesn't allow you to turn it off it raises the bar for them successfully defending these actions in court. So to me it looks like MS tries to avoid that users ram MS's infrastructure with repeated expensive full scans of their library. I would have worded it differently and said "you can only turn ON this setting 4 times a year". But maybe they do want to leave the door open to "accidentally" pushing a wrong setting to the users.
  - forgotoldacc 1y ago
    As stated many times elsewhere here, if that were the case, it'd be an opt in limit. Instead it's an opt out limit from a company that has a proven record of forcing users into an agreement against their will and requiring an opt out (that often doesn't work) after the fact. Nobody really believes the fiction about processing being heavy and that's why they limit opt outs.
    - CMay 1y ago
      A lot of people have a terabyte or more of OneDrive storage. Many people have gigantic photo collections. Analyzing and tagging photos is not free. Many people don't mind their photos actually being tagged, but they are a little more sensitive about facial recognition being used. That's probably why they separate these out, so you can get normal tagging if you want without facial recognition grouping. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/group-photos-by-people-21065f48-c746-48ad-a98a-cbe4631631bc https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/group-photos-by-p... If you have a large list of scenarios where Microsoft didn't respect privacy settings or toggles, I would be interested in seeing them. I know there have been cases where software automated changes to Windows settings that were intended to only be changed by the user. Default browsers were one issue, because malicious software could replace your default browser even with lower permissions. Are you talking about things like that, or something else?
      - hulitu 1y ago
        > Analyzing and tagging photos is not free Then why they are doing it ? Maybe because CIA/NSA and advertisers pay good money.
        CMay 1y ago
        Because many people want it, expect it and value it. Most moms and old folks aren't going to fuss or understand privacy and technical considerations, they just want to search for things like "greenhouse" and find that old photo of the greenhouse they setup in the backyard 13 years ago. It's one thing if all of your photos are local and you run a model to process your entire collection locally, then you upload your own pre-tagged photos. Many people now only have their photos on their phones and the processing doesn't generally happen on the phone for battery reasons. You CAN use smaller object detection/tagging models on phones, but a cloud model will be much smarter at it. They understand some of this is a touchy subject, which is why they have these privacy options and have limitations on how they'll process or use the data.
        1y ago
zelphirkalt 1y ago
Of course, the problem with having your data available even for a day or so, lets say because that day you didn't read your e-mails, will mean, that your data will be trained on, used for M$ purposes. They will have powerful server farms at the ready holding your data at gun point, so that the moment they manage to fabricate fake consent, they are there to process your data, before you can even finish reading any late notification e-mail, if any. Someone show me any cases, where big tech has successfully removed such data from already trained models, or in case of being unable to do that with the blackboxes they create, removed the whole blackbox, because a few people complain about their data being in those black boxes. No one can, because this has not happened. Just like ML models are used as laundering devices, they are also used as responsibility shields for big tech, who rake in the big money. This is M$ real intention here. Lets not fool ourselves.
xattt 1y ago
There’s dark pattern psychology at play here. You are very likely to forget to do something that you can only do three times a year. The good news is that the power of this effect is lost when significant attention is placed on it as it is in this case.

nikanj 1y ago

A bug, or a dialog box that says ”Windows has reviewed your photo settings and found possible issues. Press Accept now to reset settings to secure defaults” This is how my parents get Binged a few times per year

buran77 1y ago
This feels different though. Every time you turn it off and then on again it has a substantial processing cost for MS. If MS "accidentally" turns it on and then doesn't allow you to turn it off it raises the bar for them successfully defending these actions in court. So to me it looks like MS tries to avoid that users ram MS's infrastructure with repeated expensive full scans of their library. I would have worded it differently and said "you can only turn ON this setting 4 times a year". But maybe they do want to leave the door open to "accidentally" pushing a wrong setting to the users.
- forgotoldacc 1y ago
  As stated many times elsewhere here, if that were the case, it'd be an opt in limit. Instead it's an opt out limit from a company that has a proven record of forcing users into an agreement against their will and requiring an opt out (that often doesn't work) after the fact. Nobody really believes the fiction about processing being heavy and that's why they limit opt outs.
  - CMay 1y ago
    A lot of people have a terabyte or more of OneDrive storage. Many people have gigantic photo collections. Analyzing and tagging photos is not free. Many people don't mind their photos actually being tagged, but they are a little more sensitive about facial recognition being used. That's probably why they separate these out, so you can get normal tagging if you want without facial recognition grouping. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/group-photos-by-people-21065f48-c746-48ad-a98a-cbe4631631bc https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/group-photos-by-p... If you have a large list of scenarios where Microsoft didn't respect privacy settings or toggles, I would be interested in seeing them. I know there have been cases where software automated changes to Windows settings that were intended to only be changed by the user. Default browsers were one issue, because malicious software could replace your default browser even with lower permissions. Are you talking about things like that, or something else?
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > Analyzing and tagging photos is not free Then why they are doing it ? Maybe because CIA/NSA and advertisers pay good money.
      - CMay 1y ago
        Because many people want it, expect it and value it. Most moms and old folks aren't going to fuss or understand privacy and technical considerations, they just want to search for things like "greenhouse" and find that old photo of the greenhouse they setup in the backyard 13 years ago. It's one thing if all of your photos are local and you run a model to process your entire collection locally, then you upload your own pre-tagged photos. Many people now only have their photos on their phones and the processing doesn't generally happen on the phone for battery reasons. You CAN use smaller object detection/tagging models on phones, but a cloud model will be much smarter at it. They understand some of this is a touchy subject, which is why they have these privacy options and have limitations on how they'll process or use the data.
        1y ago

zelphirkalt 1y ago

Of course, the problem with having your data available even for a day or so, lets say because that day you didn't read your e-mails, will mean, that your data will be trained on, used for M$ purposes. They will have powerful server farms at the ready holding your data at gun point, so that the moment they manage to fabricate fake consent, they are there to process your data, before you can even finish reading any late notification e-mail, if any. Someone show me any cases, where big tech has successfully removed such data from already trained models, or in case of being unable to do that with the blackboxes they create, removed the whole blackbox, because a few people complain about their data being in those black boxes. No one can, because this has not happened. Just like ML models are used as laundering devices, they are also used as responsibility shields for big tech, who rake in the big money. This is M$ real intention here. Lets not fool ourselves.

xattt 1y ago

There’s dark pattern psychology at play here. You are very likely to forget to do something that you can only do three times a year. The good news is that the power of this effect is lost when significant attention is placed on it as it is in this case.