Microsoft got pretty un-evil and then rapidly got very evil again a few years ago. The GWX debacle, advertising built into your OS, forced telemetry, turning one-off purchases into subscriptions, and now maybe the return of Embrace/Extend/Extinguish.

Microsoft _still_ does not let me turn off "Basic usage data/telemetry" being sent to them.

I tried to call them about it a month ago and they hung up on me. The one computer in my house running windows is still blocked with this popup.

You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB, even Pro is not enough to get out of Microsoft telemetry capture, including crash dumps (memory with sensitive info), keystrokes, screen grabs.

It used to be that Pro was enough when you could still turn the telemetry off (I seem to remember that being a thing in W10's early days, correct me if I'm wrong). But in the end, why should the user have to spend even more for a feature set that they'll never use to just protect their privacy? Greed and dark patterns are not acceptable.

Can you even buy enterprise as a private person? All I can see on their webpage is "request a quote" and the form requires a business name.

When I was researching this for personal use a while ago it looked like there should be a way to get a subscription for Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for $7/mo/user via third-party sellers [1] (CSP?). It looks like you can buy a subscription from CDW [2] (I've never used them).

[1]: https://blogs.windows.com/business/2016/09/01/windows-10-ent...

[2]: https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-e3-from-cd...

There's a 90-day trial, could be useful in a VM: https://www.howtogeek.com/273824/windows-10-without-the-cruf...

Windows 10 Enterprise is enough to disable tracking, you don't need LTSB for that (for those who don't know, LTSB/LTSC is a version of Windows without "modern" apps, like the Store or Edge)

> You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB

The won't sell it to you. I asked about it a Microsoft store and they had no way of selling it to me.

Please correct me if I'm wrong because Microsoft licensing is convoluted. I think the procedure is to acquire a Windows 10 Enterprise license, and then you install LTSB instead of the standard enterprise edition.

It may also be available via MSDN, subject to MSDN terms.

My guess: Will probably stay that way unless they suffer a major breach an this data starts showing up in wrong places.

Can you block it using a Pi-hole?

Of course, I have long since added this list[1] to my openbsd firewall. That is besides the point, I can (and do) also block all crap in my browser via extensions. That doesn't make the crap they are pulling legal and I refuse to click "accept" on the popup that is currently locking the machine from being used. If it does not change soon I will reclaim the license money via microsoft directly or court.

All my important machines run operating systems that do not have spyware built-in.

[1] https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker

That'll work while they continue to use dedicated hosts (eg, telemetry.microsoft.com) to collect the exfiltrated data. With a single update they can shift that collection stream to another host (windowsupdate.microsoft.com, or a skype host, etc) such that blocking it would break other stuff

Still I think there's a difference in how deep the intrusion goes. I can just not use Google (except it's harder on stock Android phones), but I can definitely go without Facebook by just not using it. Having my own Operating System to spy on me makes me a victim whatever I do. I can't really escape from that.

It's hard for me not to use Google's products because they're good, it's hard for me not to use Facebook's because they managed to lock me in using social pressure.

Just use an operating system that doesn't track you? There are plenty out there.

This is the most ridiculous comment I've seen all month. I don't know if it's due to ignorance or some PR department in Redmond. Microsoft is the worst by far when it comes to privacy violations and dark patterns. And it's obvious to anyone who's ever heard about Windows 10 in the news over the past few years. But let me break it down anyway.

First of all, Windows 10 is constantly stealing your personal info. To an extent not even possible to a website like Facebook since websites don't have direct access to your hardware. Some of the things they collect are:

- User contacts

- Calendar data

- Location data

- Keyboard input (keylogger)

- Microphone input (wiretap)

- Local files

- Installed programs

- How long you interact with programs

- Browser history

Have you ever read their 45 page policy document? It's chock full of goodies like:

>“We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to.”

Fun. If you want to disable this, you have to go through 13 pages of settings in the general settings menu, disable settings through their dumb cortana thing, go to an external website to disable more settings and sign up for a Microsoft account (which requires giving Microsoft your phone number). And these preferences can be magically reset by Microsoft whenever they feel like it.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-priva...

>3. This is the crucial one, and so fundamental to Windows 10’s tracking that Microsoft have stuck the setting on an external website, which they say is so that it’s on one easy dashboard, but I find it hard not to wonder if it’s in the hope that we don’t easily stumble across it while browsing Windows 10’s own Privacy menus. Said website is colourful and cheerful and can play a video at you talking about how wonderful targeted advertising is. Ignore the bumf and instead go directly here and set both options to Off. It’s the innocuous-sounding “Personalised ads wherever I use my Microsoft account” which is the likely root of all this, because having that on means Windows 10 itself becomes a hub for targeted ads. You’ll probably have set up Windows 10 with a Microsoft account, because it heavily encourages you to do so with talk of synchronised files and settings and a OneDrive cloud account during installation, but this means the OS is signed into that account all the time. As a result, Windows 10 itself has it spyglasses on, not just apps or pages that you’re signed into with your MS account. I notice that every time I go back to that page, the “Personalised ads in this browser” setting has silently turned itself back on again. This is concerning

Oh yeah, and updates can completely reset these settings, making all that effort pointless.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-settings-must-check-windows-...

>Recently, a very big update to Windows 10 was released, which brought with it some nice improvements. But what was not publicized in Microsoft’s fanfare was that the update very quietly reset your privacy settings, and reset the default apps back to Windows Store apps. Gee thanks Redmond.

Anyone who still uses Windows 10 in this day in age is a sucker. And anyone who believes these deluge of green accounts shilling for Microsoft is a double sucker.

My firewall is constantly going off that either Microsoft Photos, Microsoft Video or Microsoft Outlook is trying to send some data, even though I am definitely NOT using any of those products. I always permanently block the requests, but a few days later I get another firewall warning that one or more of these processes is trying to call home.

It would be fair to get rid of Windows from all EU public authorities, schools, etc. I really don't understand why is it still not done after so many years?

My guess would be lobbying.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open-source-e...

I had to learn and setup a firewall so that the following can be blocked in my home network from going out unnecessarily.

1. Microsoft 2. Google 3. Chinese IP cameras

Among these, Microsoft is the most scary. Then Google.

Microsoft are no better with their forced telemetry and resetting privacy settings.

They might not be collecting as much as Facebook and Google but god damn they are trying.

> Microsoft villianised over the decades seems to be better than Google and Facebook.

A villian doesn't become virtuous just because someone even worse turns up.

The criticism of Microsoft a few decades ago was in relation to Apple, OS/2, BeOS, Linux/BSD/etc. and I'm pretty sure those which still exist are still less villianous than Microsoft. Note that Apple is still villianous, but rather than just extorting their users directly, they prefer to extort everyone via massive tax avoidance.

> Have you paid XX money for a service that doesn’t show ads. Are you happy with it?

I make regular payments to the Free Software Foundation, Open Rights Group, Wikimedia, etc. and am generally happy with what they do. That's not always a direct contribution to the particular software I use, but it does support some things indirectly.

In relation to Microsoft, I hear that they charge money and show ads, and I mostly hear their customers complaining about their software and services rather than praising them. For example, the centralisation of Skype for spying purposes seems to have crippled its throughput; I saw someone struggling with this recently and suggested they try meet.jit.si which turned out to give a far smoother connection (since it's P2P, like Skype used to be).

Governments choosing not to levy taxes on Apple is not "extortion" by Apple.

Villains comes in all shapes and sizes.

MS was, and possibly still is, the classical abuser of market position. The kind that age old antitrust laws were written to combat.