What's the problem with telemetry in general? For almost all of the important products I use I like to send usage info -- my expectation is that they're more likely to improve features that I use as a result.

And if you use a web app, e.g., Google Apps, they get all this data plus more (and completely not anonymized).

The biggest part of the problem is not being able to turn it off. I don't think most people would be bothered by the basic telemetry if this was an option for non-enterprise / education users.

That and not being able to see what it's sending out. I recently took a close look at the Privacy control panel on my iPhone. Not only does it give the option of turning off telemetry and ad data, but it also shows you exactly what is being sent back to the mothership.

This is what Windows 10 needs.

That's fine and I have no problem with telemetry being enabled by default. But there are lots of reasons users might want to shut it off.

A big one is that some people are on metered connections and that telemetry can cost money.

Don't want any extra network usage when i'm connected to my cell phone hotspot and using up my monthly data cap.

windows has a 'metered' mode for network connections. I don't know if this will stop said usage, but you could check

That's not true. Install and run wireshark then dial all you want, there will always be traffic every other minute or so to one of Redmond's servers from just idling.

I did just that, cannot reproduce.

Did you actually try this or is this based on one of those articles about the open beta of Windows 10 that had a lot more telemetry you couldn't disable?

I'll be the devil's advocate this time.

As you can see in gpedit, Cortana and Web Search is disabled. Why does explorer.exe need to access akamai or search.msn?

http://imgur.com/a/yiIxn

Some of those GPO policies no longer work, they're legacy.

Instead: Click Search, Hamburger Menu, Settings, Uncheck "Search Online and Include Web Results."

If you have OneDrive installed Explorer keeps a constant connection to Microsoft's servers to populate your OneDrive folders into the navigation pane.

OneDrive is also disabled, and your claim about GPO policies is blatantly nonsense, since that's what you use for Enterprise deployments.

Also, if you had actually researched before publishing, you'd known that Microsoft removed the disable option from the Hamburger menu during the Anniversary Update.

This is not a conspiracy theory but Microsoft blatantly crossing the line, I personally don't care since I'm not interested in joining the arms race against Telemetry, but not being able to easily disable an annoying persistent connection certainly leaves you a bad taste in your mouth.

> your claim about GPO policies is blatantly nonsense, since that's what you use for Enterprise deployments.

It says right in the GPO policies which operating systems they apply to. For example in your screenshot you set "Do not allow web search" to quote the policy itself that only applies to:

> Microsoft Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 with Windows Search version 3.01 or later

Doesn't do anything on Windows 10. So it isn't "blatantly nonsense." You are just playing with pro functionality you don't understand.

> Also, if you had actually researched before publishing, you'd known that Microsoft removed the disable option from the Hamburger menu during the Anniversary Update.

Nope. http://i.imgur.com/nzHBVex.png

As you can see I am on 10.0.14393 which is the Anniversary Retail Release and have the option.

Your point about various GPO settings being version specific is absolutely correct.

I will say that I definitely do not want to manage options via clicky-click. Local policy editing (and domain group policies in the enterprise) have been a replicable, scalable way to manage settings in a Windows environment since at least XP/Server 2003 (the earliest Windows client + server environments I've admin'd IIRC).

Configuration outside of LP/GP doesn't scale particularly well beyond personal use, I'd say and as such I get what the other poster was driving at.

The only thing I didn't do is to block MS servers in System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file. This is useless in my opinion, MS can always change them or add new ones.

Didn't they 'hack' it so it ignores MS servers listed in hosts file?

Curious about this too as I heard the same thing.

not hacked, just hardcoded IPs as a fallback path when resolving telemetry domains fails.

Good lord.

That didn't answer my question at all.

You said above:

> That's not true. Install and run wireshark then dial all you want, there will always be traffic every other minute or so to one of Redmond's servers from just idling.

I literally did exactly what you said. Shutdown all third party applications on a Windows 10 Pro machine, loaded Wireshark 2.2.3, filtered out all LAN traffic/broadcast traffic/etc and watched. Didn't see any traffic at all going to Microsoft nor anyone else, it is still running now and not a peep.

Now I have no doubt that if I waited long enough I would, since I have Windows Update enabled, use Microsoft for time synchronisation, and a handful of other things. But it definitely isn't "every other minute." I cannot reproduce that.

This is interesting, because I just did the same thing and there is plenty of garbage flying around to various akamai hosts every 20-60 minutes.

Is your system volume license or retail?

Retail. 10 Pro specifically.

Mine was activated as Win 7 upgrade to 10 during the Insider Program. Tested clean install in VM right now.

Maybe Microsoft tracks this and forces my in theory Retail copy to still act like some sort of guinea pig :/

Fair enough. From what I recall, the traffic was going to telemetry servers not time sync. Next time I play with Windows I'll holdon to the capture logs for proof.

I think the other side effect from all those regedit hacks was issues with Windows updates. In the end, my machine got stuck at installing October patches, rebooting then failing at 99% applying the patch, rebooting again, rolling back the patch, rebooting, trying to install the patch again. The non-stop CPU usage and reboots made me quit Windows for awhile.

What I don't get is, why do they have to store the telemetry data encrypted locally. Why can't I see what my computer is sending off.

Presumably so that other applications can't mine telemetry for nefarious reasons.

You might have stronger thoughts about your choice of OS if you saw what they really knew and stored.

Will you consider it bad if it sends a crash of your executable with all debug info/source code in it to Microsoft? How about it you are developing a competing product to microsoft one?

The low level of telemetry you're talking about is only available in Windows 10 Enterprise (good luck finding it) or Server editions, you need to set a GPO to get it.

My linux install does not have "telemetry" (which is really just a polite word for what people used to call "spyware").

Spyware and telemetry are not the same. Do you really think they are exactly the same?

Unremoveable software that is using my computer in ways I don't want it used? Yeah, I'd call it the same thing.

"Unremoveable" by all definitions but the dictionary one.

Really? So tell me how to remove all of their software, and make sure that it doesn't come back to my system. I'm not even being sarcastic when I say I'd love to see proof that it can be done.

You can't provide that guarantee for any software that can update itself, Ubuntu could turn it back on tomorrow. This link shows you how to remove it now, I'm sure people give up on updating guides like this in the future.

Currently it is possibly and easy to remove telemetry. And it only takes a few clicks to disable auto-update for Windows 10 by setting your wifi to metered, and a Google search to set your ethernet to metered.

Possible and easy?

I have to tweak the registry via shitty scripts like this one. Thats the opposite of how an OS should work

Incorrect. You could also use the default windows administration process of editing the Group Policy locally, or setting it via your domain controller. It only uses the registry here because that's the simplest way to do it with a script on any kind of machine setup.

If you'd rather do it manually, these steps do the same thing: http://i.imgur.com/HnFpmE6.png

Start > [group policy] > [enter] > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > All Settings > Allow Telemetry

Which, AFAIR, is only available on certain versions of Windows?

Additionally, has anyone checked to see if these same keys are changed by using lgpe?

That's why i said "any machine setup". The Home version does not have the Group Policy Editor, because it is not intended for people who should be messing with such things. And for people who have the knowledge, or the drive to mess with such things, keys for both Home and Pro go for ~16€ on amazon.de

> has anyone checked to see if these same keys are changed by using lgpe?

It does not touch the Wow6432Node entry, but given that as far as i know that exists for compatibility for 32 bit programs, i'm not sure it is necessary. Or it might be mirrored in by some kind of maintenance process.

How about "software that is using my computer in ways I don't want it used, inextricable from the software that I require"?

Yes, but the post is about Windows 10, not Linux.

My Ubuntu install has telemetry. It also defaults to sending information to Amazon.

I am pretty sure they removed that default in the new versions of Ubuntu.