(This usually evokes disbelief. If you think I'm wrong, please consider what you would do if it turned out I was right. Then, if you're on Windows 10, lookup your "speech, inking & typing" settings. This is where they ask permission to do this. It is turned on by default.)

"We also collect your typed and handwritten words to improve character recognition and provide you with a personalized user dictionary and text completion suggestions."

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/speech-inking-...

It's a pity because the kernel and surrounding subsystems are getting better with each Windows release.

Maybe something like nLite can be used to create a Windows image that doesn't contain the nasty stuff, but then an update would reinstall them

The icing on the cake is that even when using Windows Enterprise edition in a Windows Domain, you cannot control what updates are installed as you could before. This is a huge problem because stuff you don't want will be slipped back in.

They just lost their mind.

Those 8 words change are what we're talking about. A keyboard app obviously needs to use your data to improve auto-correct.

When it starts sending that data off-device, however, that's a whole different ballgame.

No, that's not obvious, in fact that would be the opposite of what a keyboard's auto-correct should do. Because the whole point of having auto-correct is for the keyboard to correct my mistakes, not learn from them or from the mistakes of other people that also don't know how to spell.

For this reason for example Swype on iOS has been basically unusable for me, because it makes more mistakes than I do. And no matter the implementation, now every time I choose to override the auto-correct decision for a certain word, I always end up pausing because I fear that from then on, the word will be added so some personal dictionary that I don't want. Basically learning from what the individual types is a disservice to the individual.

Also, on iOS custom keywords need explicit permission for accessing the Internet. And on Android I found no mention anywhere that Google's Keyboard sends telemetry to its parent. People just assume that for some reason.

Or to make the general dictionary pick up on new terms automatically and give them to other windows users.

Edit: The full quote is actually:

> 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.

Which means they don't send EVERYTHING so it's not really a keylogger (unless you also count the keyboard-helping stuff keyloggers?).

Furthermore on that link, it seems to me that the data they would be sending to their servers is the ones about the other services like speech/handwriting to feed into their system to machine-learn recognition.

And it is all turn-off'able which is a plus.

It seems like most people will assume the worst, I am not saying you're wrong but it doesn't seem like some "malware" thing like other people are saying..

> Which means they don't send EVERYTHING

In any mathematical or logical context, "some" can be a proper subset of "all" or equal to "all". Any lawyer or judge thinking logically would agree. If the matter had to be confronted in court, Microsoft's legalese covers the case where they capture and store everything.

Another way they can hedge is by not capturing something innocuous and uninteresting, like words you type into Microsoft Help or Group Policy Editor. Now they can say that they don't capture and store every single thing.

(Also, my "malware" comment was about the forced upgrade to WinX, not about WinX itself, as I have even noted in the last sentence.)

It sure seems like they can have an easy access to the source code..

Unbelievable

I've yet to see any actual technical evidence of this. Quoting their very unspecific legal documents is hardly evidence of anything.

The traffic is encrypted, and no one has been able to MITM it yet, as far as I know. But Microsoft has confirmed in the press that yes, they do this.

And until someone bothers to do a MITM we really don't know what that means.

>The traffic is encrypted, and no one has been able to MITM it yet, as far as I know. But Microsoft has confirmed in the press that yes, they do this.

Are you sure? Unless they're specifically trying to prevent such you should be able to just drop in your own root certificate and MITM it with the tool of your choice.

In the end, it's customers who have bought their computers and should retain ultimate agency over their hardware and what Microsoft is doing isn't necessarily in their customers' best interest because it puts undue, poorly communicated risks on them. Most users aren't equipped with necessary background knowledge to evaluate these risks so aren't even capable of consciously accepting them.

edit: oh it's you ryan. I'm sure you already know all this. :)

I honestly don't understand what's going on. This looks like one of the most idiotic thing an IT company has ever done, and Microsoft doesn't care. They don't even try to explain it. And they fucked up big time - rarely any kind of scandal from the computing world reaches the general public, but this one did. I've been asked by random people for advice on whether or not to upgrade; people seem to know Win10 is "evil" and are annoyed by nagging.

Worse than 7 on the same hardware? Absolutely, emphatically, YES. I.e. downgrade, QED.

"Win7 means you have pretty old hardware" - well, let me see here. I'm typing this on a top-of-the-line 2016 ultrabook, with Windows 7. Exactly because this is a work tool (like "for people to do some productive work on"), enterprise tends to prefer boooooring older OS over colorful cloudcloudcloud spyware.

IMNSHO, this is just a bunch of schmucks with KPIs based on new WinX installs. "Screw the userbase over? No problem, as long as we meet our bonus targets." This feels just like the old Evil Empire, IE6-style. Kudos to the Windows team for single-handedly wiping out all the goodwill the "new and improved MS" has been trying to build up for the past few years: nah, underneath it's still the same MS we used to know, just with a new paint job.

That I agree with, and it's mind-boggling why they're doing this. As you said, it basically wiped out all the goodwill MS was building over the last few years.

It's probably not going to work out for them, given the number of issues people still seem to have about 10 even after using it for extended intervals, but I think it's fear of another XP, not malice or anti-competitive practice, that's driving this.

Well, there's a reason for that. Software seems to change way too fast and it breaks the most basic expectations people have (which I think are very good) - that if a piece of software works, it should continue to work. If I buy a machine that has Windows and Microsoft Word on it, I should expect the OS to boot up and Word to open the documents I made with it for as long as the hardware itself doesn't deteriorate. My programs shouldn't suddenly stop working because they don't feel like it. My OS shouldn't suddenly update to a different looking one because "fuck you, that's what you want anyway". And they definitely should not do any of that in the middle of you working.

I am one of those who often disable / delay auto-updates. Because of the times I had my computer reboot when I stepped out to get a tea. Because of the times I auto-updates for apps burned significant chunks of my transfer when I was using a mobile connection.

But more generally, it's a balancing act - for everyone who is running in an environment where they have everything locked out and they just want an application to keep running, there's also plenty of people who leave their machines running public services connected to the Internet with no firewall, antivirus, or anything of that nature, and refuse to install updates because it interrupts the service.

I think Microsoft decided they'd rather be shit on by consumers for forcing automatic updates than be shit on by everyone for a poor security record ever again.

I just think it came about as a result of a number of rational and ethically ~neutral decisions, rather than the level of deliberate malice and anticompetitive practice the Microsoft of the 90s had.

For example, I submit that it is extraordinarily unlikely that Microsoft will actually end the Win10 upgrade program on July 29th, because their primary goal is to migrate as many people away from their aging older platforms as possible, onto a platform they can find ways to monetize into infinite incremental upgrades.

Does 10 even have higher system requirements than 7?

[0] - Just recently I've been "fixing" such one laptop for a friend of my mother - it was barely strong enough to lift its own Windows installation. I made it much more useful by just replacing the RAM die with a one I pried off a broken laptop that serves as an "organ donor". Hell, I found getting moar RAM to be a quick solution for most of the lower-end laptops that get "too slow".

[1] - this happens for mobile too (as I experienced first-hand), so my rule of thumb is that in terms of computers and smartphones, buying cheap is worse than not buying at all

But seriously: 2 GB on Windows (7) is still usable, even though not entirely comfortable. (Of course, on LXLE, 2 GB is a lot, but that's an entirely different can of worms)

What makes us think the US is so different after the stuff that's gone down in recent years?

I genuinely consider it a possibility that this is linked to the panic over terrorism and that governments now have access to the data being hoovered up on practically everyone by Microsoft.

Of course I have no evidence. So the best that can be said objectively is that we cannot know either way, but still my gut is sending me warning messages.

(also read https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ )

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

> For legal reasons

> We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:

> * meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.

> * enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.

> * detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.

> * protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.

Want to expand on that a little? Presumably the above quote is regarding skydrive etc.

For example: https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-persona...

(when googling the phrase cited by kuschku, the first link is to reddit and there it links to edri).

That alone can be turned into "we can share whatever we want with anyone whenever we feel like it" very easily, you realize that?

The proper solution would be

> We will share personal information with governments if we are required by law to do so.

Nothing more, nothing less.

On a more serious note, "everyone does that" makes it okay? Really?

DanBC didn't write anything which could imply he believes that "If you want privacy, you must be a child molester or a terrist".

His comment is stating what google does and gives a pretty strong example, not justifying what they do.

What I meant is that almost all companies will invade privacy to prevent and detect certain crimes. MS does it, but so do Google, Apple, etc etc.

Just like on iOS! I can just now, or later for my pending upgrade. It pops up everyday.

Note that I would have no problem updating my iphone if it didn't force me to install the latest Xcode to keep developing on it.

This is a particularly shitty meme, can we just stop with it?

>IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, including MSFT UX Guidelines, hello there hypocrisy)

This is how windows updates have always worked, no?

>breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX)

>while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.")

These do not malware make.

>erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?")

Try to decide which. Erasing and hiding are two completely different things. And again, this does not make it malware as I doubt they're intentionally deleting anyones files.

>is very difficult to revert

Significantly easier than any previous windows version. If you don't want it, why would you install it? You can just decline the install when the installer starts.

>phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.)

Yes and so did every windows version before it. Significant parts of the new telemetry have also been backported. Oh, and malware writers certainly don't claim that.

>Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel.

No.

No, that's explicitly not how MS updates worked: up to now, they were updates to existing OS, not automatic reinstall.

If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto.

Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both). I don't give a flying fork if that was intentional, it should not have happened, full stop.

In other words, FU, astroturfer. Take your piece of crap and shove it. (Yes, your wonderful Windows Nein has given us about a man-year of unplanned maintenance so far, so you see how happy I'm about it)

A semantical difference really, previous windows updates just didn't include major UX revamps.

>If I don't want it, I don't get asked if I want it: 19:00 there was a working Win7 box, 07:00 next day, there was a broken steaming pile of something, apparently Windows 10. No prompts, full auto.

surely you got an EULA prompt, no?

>Program files: deleted. Users folder: moved into some other location (both).

I certainly agree that microsofts QA has failed horribly here.

>In other words, FU, astroturfer.

One could easily accuse you of the same.

Who exactly got an EULA prompt on an unattended, locked workstation with nobody at the sear? As I say, the downgrade was full auto: evening W7, morning W10.

Blame your OEM, they're responsible for keeping their drivers functional. Microsoft didn't just go behind OEMs backs and do this.

>Who exactly got an EULA prompt on an unattended, locked workstation with nobody at the sear? As I say, the downgrade was full auto: evening W7, morning W10.

That's certainly strange, are you sure it wasn't just the W10 installer? Or did it really go straight to the login screen?

Oh wait. That's what we did, found that the drivers weren't there, and FRIKKIN DECIDED NOT TO UPGRADE because of this. Acceptable risk of running a recently EOLed product and all that.

Nope, nope nope nope, Microsoft knows better: "here's your new nonfunctional box, not our problem anyway."

No, not an installer: a fully upgraded, but - sadly - significantly dysfunctional W10 (Note that other users around the thread offering similar experiences, so your insistence that it can't ever ever happen sounds very much like wishful thinking). As I said: we have repaved from backups, installed GWX Control Panel, and disabled Windows Update. Personally, I am pretty angry about that last thing, too - but I had no power over mgmt: thanks to your poisoned update, they don't trust it to actually bring security fixes any more, quite the contrary: you, in effect, have mounted a denial-of-service attack on us via WU and nobody cares if it was intentional - "Windows breaks by itself when you need it the least" is now firmly believed by everyone affected (we are considering a move from Win altogether, because for all we know, you might have some other control channel up your sleeve for pushing some more "upgrades").

Seems very meta :D

Obvious reason is they want people to upgrade. Personally I can see why they would be frustrated with people refusing to upgrade a decade old OS even when the upgrade is free.

edit: 7 year old OS.

Opening up shop in the morning and finding that none of your equipment works anymore, despite having been perfectly fine yesterday is EEEEEEXACTLY the reason people are refusing to upgrade (because no drivers for WinX, because fuck you that's why, Where Do You Want To Go Today - Windows X Or Windows Ten?). Replacing Microsoft's frustration of "the adoption charts are not high enough" with my frustration of "okay, companywide downtime while IT repaves from backups and scrambles to block the now-rogue vendor" works for them (externalizing costs, hooray!). In the shortest of short terms only, alas - the trust we had in the OS is gone, this could happen again (e.g. at any time in the future MS could decide that their old OS cannibalizes the sales of their Windows Up To 11, or whatever). NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

(Technically, "we want you to upgrade because we want you to upgrade" is a bit of circular reasoning)

You know, being faster and cleaner, added features, reverting what they borked up with 8. What they managed to achieve is a public disgust when someone mentions "windows updates" (in case Windows wasn't mocked enough already).

Good job MS.

Why?

They can just end support for old versions per their EULAs and shut-off access to the update servers.

Canonical doesn't care if I'm still using 8.04, they have no responsibility or liability for old releases. Why would MS be any different?

There's a deeper reason for this upgrade push but I don't know what it is.