That was my first impression as well. As someone who likes to understand what my computer is doing I was never aware that Windows Defender was anything more than the typical definition based AV.

Does this mean that Windows Defender is now something to disable on HIPAA compliant workstations because there is a chance that Defender thinks some medical records look suspicious and it decided to upload them for analysis?

But for the home and small business this stuff is amazing. It really continues the anti-"virus" analogy by effectively creating an immune system comprised of most Windows machines.

Users concerned with privacy would not be using Windows, given all of its other known telemetry issues and malware surface. Ie it might already have uploaded whatever was sensitive, even without needing to run a malware examination on it.

Apple and Microsoft products are full prize products, so I fully trusted they don't come with crap. Unfortunately Microsoft alinated their end consumers starting in 2012 with Win8, and Windows 10 and Office365/2016 are well known spying adware ladden. It's telling that Google products, given they are ad-supported, are well behaving and good citizens (e.g. adhere the users privacy settings) while MSFT products released in 2012 (or later) are not. Do like most users stay with Win7 (supported til 2020) and Office 2010, or move away if you can. They won't change except you show them with your money.

It's how Reality Winner's NSA files were sent to Kaspersky, too.

Just some food for thought. I never trust any "cloud-based" antivirus solution.

Reality winter printed out a classified document at work, I think you're confusing her with Nghia Pho, whom appears to have been the Kaspersky leak victim.

that may be true.... but...

all leading security vendors have cloud based solutions with some of them offering 'private-cloud' based solutions which if was the case what they should be using... I cannot fathom this sort of situation as an real 'accident' and not some other form of misinformation.

if you are not utilizing the global up-to-second cloud-herd communication and technology you are more susceptible to attacks than others that are utilizing them.

I believe the purpose of these solutions is literally economic warfare. We are making it astronomically more expensive to have successful attacks more than _once_ (_if_ security is done right) to occur by implementing cloud based automation and sharing of information.