Most of the privacy settings that people are most worried about is tied into Cortana or more specifically what you allow Cortana to do on your behalf. You can simply choose not to use Cortana or to disable it entirely. Google Now & Siri support the same functionality but ironically don't give you the settings to disable it, so nobody bats an eyelid.
Beyond that you only really have so called "basic telemetry." Which tells them when you launch a Windows 10 "app" and some basic computer information. But even without that setting/ability the apps themselves could conduct the same reporting (via direct HTTP requests), the only reason it is even a setting is because Microsoft unified it to make developers lives easier and to better aggregate the information their side.
Are people legitimately concerned that when they launch the XBox music app that Microsoft knows you did? Even without the Windows telemetry they could just look at their own server logs since the XBox Music app utilises so many web resources (e.g. images). The same is true with any developer, any app, on any platform.
Ultimately the whole thing is a bunch of noise and no substance. Nobody can actually point to exactly what specific information Microsoft is even taking, and have even less data yet still to back up any claims.
In all of these discussions on HN, the only ones bringing up "worries" about Cortana features have been people defending Windows 10 (and now Windows 8 and 7) data collection. It's easy to disable and, if you choose not to use it, it won't collect data anyways. The same can't be said of telemetry.
> Which tells them when you launch a Windows 10 "app" and some basic computer information
Actually it's not clear what else is being collected, because Microsoft won't disclose what's being collected. Is there evidence that only data about usage of Windows store apps is being collected?
> But even without that setting/ability the apps themselves could conduct the same reporting
Which would be needed to take into account when deciding on if that app should be used. Just to be clear, that means the application I choose to run might be collecting analytics, but my OS is also collecting analytics on the applications I'm choosing to run because it thinks it should.
> Nobody can actually point to exactly what specific information Microsoft is even taking
Yes, because Microsoft won't tell anyone what it's collecting!
> and have even less data yet still to back up any claims
As a baseline, you yourself talked about how we know they're collecting information about application usage. That right there is undesirable behavior for many that we have plenty of evidence for.
Microsoft has disclose what is being collected[0]. People just choose to ignore it and making conspiracy theories instead. So where is the evidence that Microsoft is lying?
[0] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...
> Which would be needed to take into account when deciding on if that app should be used.
How? Neither iOS, Android, or Windows restrict HTTP. Any app can conduct analytics and unless you're running them one by one and analysing the packet dumb you wouldn't be the wiser. At least Windows tells you.
But that's what all this is about. Most other major operating systems conduct similar activities but there is no public outcry about that... Why the double standard?
> Yes, because Microsoft won't tell anyone what it's collecting!
Yes they do[0].
> That right there is undesirable behavior for many that we have plenty of evidence for.
But not something you can readily avoid. I'd go as far as to say that the vast majority of apps or applications send basic telemetry back to the manufacturer, it is the norm now, and has been the norm since before 2007.
let's quote them:
> Security. Information that’s required to help keep Windows secure, including info about telemetry client settings, the Malicious Software Removal Tool, and Windows Defender.
> Basic device info, including: quality-related info, app compat, and info from the Security level
Notably vague, no "conspiracy theories" needed.
And you're still missing the point that even the specifics that have been explicitly disclosed are still enough to be objectionable to some.
edit: I missed the much more extensive list of what is being collected via "basic" telemetry:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...
It's great they disclose more information than I thought they did, though this list is actually far worse than I had guessed.
> Most other major operating systems conduct similar activities but there is no public outcry about that... Why the double standard?
what other major operating system doesn't let you opt out of telemetry-like reporting?
Incredibly, incredibly easy fix: just let people opt out of telemetry reporting.
If this list is far worse than you'd guessed, why were you worried at all? Nothing on this list looks like personal information. It's basically just a hardware profile and useful but not invasive system information like when your computer crashes. It doesn't appear to record any of my information.
I would prefer source code, but someone will eventually do packet captures to figure at least some of it out.
People have been drum beating this privacy stuff for over six months now. But they seem to lack specific evidence, so now I invite you to present it.
Not when you consider the fact that they're being so damned sneaky about it.
First, the idea that you have to run an enterprise OS to turn off (not "set to basic", but turn OFF) the tracking says volumes. Just by having it default would meet the goals of collecting development/troubleshooting/debugging info since most people won't change the defaults.
Next up, there's the fact that Microsoft has gone out of their way to make it hard to turn off anyways by hard coding addresses and ignoring registry keys. The only way for a home user to stop all tracking is to firewall an ever changing list of IPs.
Third, you do not know what they are tracking or not tracking. The communications are secure and the application closed source.
It's more the attitude these actions belie than the actions themselves, IMO. It's a very quiet, but distinct disdain for the user. "Yes, you paid $100 for our OS, but you didn't think you actually controlled it, did you?"
So... minus four in a short amount of time. Would anyone care to explain how I'm incorrect about any of this?
I don't want certain Win 7 machines that I own/maintain to ever upgrade to Windows 10. Didn't ask for it. Don't want it. Just go away and let me do my job. Microsoft provides me no official way to disable that horrendous popup. I expect that shit from shady browser toolbars, and bundled crapware, not Microsoft.
Microsoft seems to think the users can't be trusted with options to disable Updates, Telemetry, and other BS services. I absolutely HATE having to ever reboot my windows machine. It is extremely critical for me to have my dev box be rock stable and running 24/7. I frequently used to go months without ever rebooting it. Also, with Win 7 I could just set the Update behavior to "don't call us, we'll call you". With Windows 10 I'm forced to muck around with services and group policy just to get my machine to update and reboot on my schedule, rather than Microsoft's.
As a customer of MS, I despise these methods, as I continue to use their OS, because there simply isn't any other alternative. All I can hope for is people who don't specifically need Windows to switch to other OSs en masse. At this point I could be swayed into thinking that its a good idea to support anti-microsoft efforts even if they are not based in facts (as you point out, nobody has shown exactly what they collect), just to obtain the result that you want.
There are many alternatives to using Windows as your host OS.
Siri can be disabled. Location tracking to improve contextual understanding can be disabled separately if you don't want to disable Siri completely. If you disable Siri, all data is deleted. You're also informed of exactly what data is uploaded.
> Beyond that you only really have so called "basic telemetry." Which tells them when you launch a Windows 10 "app" and some basic computer information. But even without that setting/ability the apps themselves could conduct the same reporting (via direct HTTP requests), the only reason it is even a setting is because Microsoft unified it to make developers lives easier and to better aggregate the information their side.
Does Microsoft let you disable this? Apple offers you a prompt like this one http://imgur.com/aBzTNsV on every major (x.y) update, and shows you what data is being uploaded (as well as letting you disable it) in settings.
Enterprise customers are fine because they have controls for everything, but small offices running Windows 10 Pro aren't so lucky.
If I buy a new car and it (by design) has a speedometer that sometimes shows the wrong speed or sometimes makes the lights malfunction and I get traffic tickets, do I have no right to be upset with the car manufacturer simply because I routinely speed and roll stop signs?
And most of the history you fill out when seeing a new doctor has nothing to do with whether or not they can get old records -- they want the same information even if they have the old records.
If those offices aren't hiring someone who knows those things, they're probably not HIPAA compliant for many other reasons as well.
Even if they are using purpose built software, by default Cortana watches what you type in everything and sends samples (at least) to Microsoft. You can turn Cortana off, but you can't uninstall it or even stop it from running and you can't be sure that Microsoft won't just turn it back on anyway (unless you are an enterprise customer).
I just don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just allow all of that stuff to be turned off by everybody? I could be pretty happy with Windows 10 if it respected my privacy more.
Just type "gpedit.msc" into run. Then follow this[0].
[0] https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Turn-off-or-uninsta...
I used Powershell scripts to uninstall a bunch of the bloatware (XBox Music, Money, etc...) and they just come back. It's very frustrating.
"Microsoft Builds Trove From Windows 10 User Data To Support Bing, Cortana"
Plus them collecting data from windows 8(.1) and 7 users without any proper warning/message to user is wrong.
I still can't imagine why Microsoft would think it's worth the bad publicity to not offer the option to disable telemetry, considering how few people tend to deviate from defaults in general, and how tiny a percentage of their users even care about privacy to begin with (evident from the commercial success of Windows 10).
They've been getting so much goodwill for all the other great things they've been doing lately. It just seems downright foolish to squander all of that for a few extra basis points in their telemetry data from those rare few users who care about privacy but are forced to use Windows 10 anyways for whatever reason.
Those who care about privacy but do have a choice in OS will simply avoid Windows 10 altogether because of the mandatory telemetry, which is telemetry data that they wouldn't be getting anyways. A certain percentage of these people could be Windows 10 users if it weren't for the mandatory telemetry. Would they really rather have people using other OSes, than having them use Windows 10 without giving them telemetry data?
So many aspects of their position on this issue seems completely irrational to me.
Yes, a much more accurate description than the GP's would be that the "new Microsoft" isn't letting single executive edicts set corporate policy for many things, such as how all teams should interact with the open source communities, instead letting teams themselves make that decision and then supporting them in doing so. The natural result is that many developers within Microsoft come from or have extensive experience with open source and so will embrace it when given the opportunity.
It feels like less a change in philosophy of "open source is our future" and more of one that good decisions can come from the bottom up (and a little bit of "yeah, the whole 'linux is a cancer' thing was really stupid").
If I were going back to step 0 with a startup today, I would not repeat my decisions to stick with AWS. Their stack is slow-moving and frustrating. The VPC rollout has been a slow motion car crash that is only righting itself in the past 3 months. Meanwhile Azure has amazing management tools and GCE has got well-supported containerization as its primary product interface. Both provide competitive rates and subsidies for small tech business, as well.
Do you have references for the assertion? I'm entirely happy to say I did the tests wrong, I did them as a trio of evening projects.
Thank you.
The DevOps trend, and developer mindshare is paramount regarding their cloud initiatives... Azure AD and Office 365 will keep things floating, but only Azure as a whole will keep it alive beyond XBox...
Microsoft is very good at tracking and keeping with developer mindshare, as well as adapting. They're also a large corporation with many nooks and crannies, so there are exceptions to everything. The change lately is the acceptance that windows is waning... and they have to shore up other areas even at the cost of windows for the larger company to survive... this is a colossal shift that can't be underestimated.
As a result initiatives that may have never seen the light of day around .Net as a whole, VS Code (with great go and node support), and a slew of other nice things coming from MS would never have seen the light of day. I am surprised how much I like using VS Code on OSX, I switched from Webstorm and Sublime, even with some rough edges in es6/7 syntax support. DNX and .Net Core stuff has me considering .Net and Mono again when I'd all but written them off.
I was forced to work with Azure late last year, and after writing some simpler wrappers using some of their APIs have to admit that I liked using them more than AWS. It's really interesting that the less I rely on MS, the more I appreciate the work they've put out there.
Similar to Google, Facebook, Twitter and others: They support open source, but not end-user control or privacy.
EDIT: Not a complaint, but it's very interesting that this was modded down. It's a simple, factual statement that I doubt the companies themselves would disagree with (though the truth is much more detailed).
And odds are there is an iPhone or Android phone in your pocket, its software metaphorically top heavy with instrumentation to track your ever engagement pattern with laser-like precision.
But Microsoft takes the brunt of this complaint because they're open, honest, and give you a scale of opt-outs. But mysteriously no one blames Ubuntu for doing the exact same things because... freedom?
Meanwhile, Microsoft has opened their entire core technology stack to outside scrutiny, adopted a radically user-centric approach to OS design, and taken a very risky and user-and-dev-friendly strategy regarding how apps are shipped and created.
I find this ceaseless double standard less than sweet, and indeed very much about bitterness.
The Win10 privacy thing isn't much different from what Apple now does by default, and all of it can be turned off. While it does gather data, it does so in the course of supporting functions that most users want like Cortana and smart search. Apple is also full of phone home stuff that must be deliberately turned off if you don't want it.
The fact is that the market has clearly indicated (1) a preference for free stuff that is supported by 'ecosystems' and indirect monetization, and (2) a willingness to trade privacy for convenience and features. You can't blame companies for complying with what the market clearly wants as indicated by consumer buying behavior. If people cared about security and privacy more than features and UX, they would vote with their dollars.
That's why I spent several hundred dollars on a copy of Windows. But can you imagine my reaction when Microsoft secretly installed tracking software to collect my personal data!?
Some times when I open up a new app, copy something into clipboard, or search on the web, there will be outgoing connections to akamai / microsoft servers.
I'm currently migrating to Linux because of this.
They are obviously trying to reinvent themselves partly in the image of Google, whose motto "Don't be evil" also sounds very hollow nowadays.
But I shudder when I think of a world where Google is built upon closed software.
[To clarify: I know that Google does not open most of their software. However, with their reliance on open source software they were a big driver for the legitimacy of the movement]
Which makes me agree very hard with your first point, btw.
As far as I know they give you the option to opt out of everything. Are they bad even for asking?
No, they don't, and two seconds of searching will confirm that for you. All many of us are asking is to be able to opt out of it.
Here is how a process of enforcing looks like: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3f38ed/guide_how...
It mostly doesn't apply to retail, and most of it won't work. Plus you'll disable useful functionality with no privacy implications if you follow it.
The only thing that changed since the preview build is that there are 3rd party tools to do the job for you...
The thing we now know as "telemetry" used to be opt-in, and they hide the opt-out control during initial setup behind a thing that is a link but doesn't look like one.
It can still be turned off after installation in the same exact way as the previous versions of Windows (enter "experience" in the Start menu search box), but most won't know that this control exists.
All the rest of the things causing people to freak out about privacy are related to Cortana, and the process for turning that feature set on is in-your-face opt-in, where it's clear that you're authorizing data sharing with them.
Unless you're running Enterprise or Education (both not available to single users), this is not true.
I'd imagine it'd be killable via group policy in those cases, wouldn't it?
Their open-source friendliness has unfortunately coincided with a decline of their respect for user privacy and choice (Windows 10). I find the "New Microsoft" bittersweet.