doctorfrog on 21/8/2015 at 03:22
Quote Posted by Thirith
Sure, that's fair enough. My reply was to your comment about W10 making your computer a "tightly controlled storefront", and that simply doesn't gel in any way with my experience of it.
While we're being magnanimous, I'm sorta with you as well, because it doesn't affect me currently either. My label was misapplied, but I do see each new device or platform coming out being storefronts first: phones, e-readers, tablets, with the PC being somewhat unconquered territory.
WingedKagouti on 21/8/2015 at 09:35
Quote Posted by heywood
This agreement applies to the long list of services at the bottom of the first link above. It is possible that a person could use Windows 10 without any of these services and therefore not be bound by this agreement, but that is unlikely in practice.
For those unwilling to click the links and look at which services are covered:
Quote:
Account.microsoft.com
Advertising.microsoft.com
Arrow Launcher
Bing
Bing Apps
Bing Desktop
Bing Dictionary
Bing in the Classroom
Bing Input
Bing Maps
Bing Navigation
Bing Reader
Bing Rewards
Bing Search app
Bing Toolbar
Bing Torque
Bing Translator
Bing Webmaster
Bing Wikipedia Browser
Bing.com
Bingplaces.com
Choice.microsoft.com
Citizen Next
Cortana
Default Homepage and New Tab Page on Microsoft Edge
Device Health App
HealthVault
Groove
Maps App
Microsoft account
Microsoft Family
Microsoft Health
Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Wallpaper
Microsoft XiaoIce
MSN Dial Up
MSN Explorer
MSN Food & Drink
MSN Health & Fitness
MSN Money
MSN News
MSN Premium
MSN Sports
MSN Travel
MSN Weather
MSN.com
Next Lock Screen
Office 365 Consumer
Office 365 Home
Office 365 Personal
Office 365 University
Office Online
Office Store
Office Sway
Office.com
OneDrive
OneDrive.com
OneNote
Onenote.com
Outlook.com
Picturesque Lock Screen
Pix Lock
Skype
Skype in the Classroom
Skype Manager
Skype Qik
Skype WiFi
Skype.com
Smart Search
Snipp3t
Spreadsheet Keyboard
Sway.com
Translator
UrWeather
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Writer
Windows Movie Maker
Windows Photo Gallery
Xbox and Windows Games published by Microsoft
Xbox Live
Xbox Music
Xbox Music Pass
Xbox Video
The important stuff for Win 10 is: Microsoft Accounts, Cortana,
Default Homepage and New Tab Page on Microsoft Edge, Office 365, OneDrive, OneNote, Skype, Bing (integration with the default search functionality) and Smart Search.
Use a local account to log in. Disable Cortana. Use an alternate browser and office package. Avoid Skype. And finally disable online searching from the Start menu.
It's doable but it does take a bit of work, and Microsoft are likely betting on most people not doing those things. The funny thing is that doing that is also part of how you avoid most of their data collection that people have been talking about.
Tony_Tarantula on 23/8/2015 at 23:27
Got some more info from another forum:
[quote='[Name Removed]' dateline='1439754649']
Oh man......
The technical community isn't liking Windows 10 in the least bit - essentially almost every keystroke you type on the new machine is sent to Microsoft.
To explain on a 'meta' level, essentially Bing / Cortana integration in this new OS upgrade has permission to send your usage in the Start Menu to Microsoft - MS claims this is anonymized, but it has been proven repeatedly that correlative analysis can rather quickly distinguish users (While millions of people have computers, far fewer than you think have the same plugins/applications/browsers/geolocation/data/etc. allowing you to be identified)
From the privacy policy:
Quote:
"When you interact with your Windows device by speaking, writing (handwriting), or typing, Microsoft collects speech, inking, and typing information—including information about your Calendar and People (also known as contacts)—that helps personalize your experience. This information improves your device's ability to correctly recognize your input, such as your pronunciation and handwriting. You can turn the Speech, inking, and typing setting (which is called Getting to know you) on or off in Settings.
Note: If you want to use Cortana, you must have Getting to know you turned on.
We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions.
Some of this data is stored on your device and some is sent to Microsoft to help improve these services. You can turn the Send Microsoft info about how I write setting on or off in Settings."
However, turning it off isn't as easy as you'd expect:
Even if you "deactivate" their tracking, you cannot prevent your data being sent to Microsoft from continuing. The file in question is described below:
(
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/)
Quote Posted by "arstechnica"
Windows 10 uses the Internet a lot to support many of its features. The operating system also sports numerous knobs to twiddle that are supposed to disable most of these features and the potentially privacy-compromising connections that go with them.
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, these controls don't appear to be sufficient to completely prevent the operating system from going online and communicating with Microsoft's servers.
For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to (
www.bing.com) to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.
And the implications:
(
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053695)
Fortunately these industries are often notoriously behind on technology, so very few offices will be upgrading to Windows 10 anytime soon, I reckon.
(
https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/windows-10-privacy-spying.html)
Quote Posted by "thn"
In our previous articles, we raised concern about Windows 10 privacy issues, including its controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature. Also, to cope up with these issues, I provided you a one-click solution [ (
http://thehackernews.com/2015/08/secure-install-windows-10.html) ] to fix all privacy compromising features that allow Microsoft to track users.
But unfortunately, all those efforts got wasted because Microsoft still tracks you, even after you harden your Windows 10 privacy to an extreme level by disabling all privacy-infringing settings.
This time the culprits are - Cortana and Bing search.
Windows 10 features, including Cortana and Bing search, continue communicating with Microsoft's servers and sending it data, even after you turned the features off.
A Technical Analysis done by Ars showed that even when you tell Microsoft to not to make any Internet-related inquiries by changing various privacy settings, it appears that Windows 10 still communicate with the software giant's servers for different information.
The shadiest part about all of this was that Windows 10 was a free upgrade from certain older versions. Well, any Economist would tell you "TINSTAFL," which means There Is No Such Thing As Free Lunch. Your hidden cost is your data being sent over
unencryptedchannels to Microsoft. To get a bit more technical, this will also present a security vulnerability as a third party could attack using man in the middle to retrieve this unencrypted data.
I don't recommend this upgrade - due to massive privacy concerns. If privacy is something you care about, do not upgrade to Windows 10, or switch to a different operating system. If W10 has some features you need, and for some of you this might be the case, I'd highly suggest partitioning your Hard Drive, installing a different Operating System (there are numerous tools available for this) and only using the Windows partition
only when you need it.
Couple that with what we know about PRISM, and this also means that anything you do on Win10 is also visible to the various government and intelligence agencies that have access to Microsoft's servers.
