But there is less concrete evidence to support the pirates’ most worrying claims.
less, or just none (e.g. the claim about data being sent from local disk)? In any case this is turning to be far from ideal for MS and makes me wonder if they really didn't see this coming when defaulting to not-so-private defaults: I already know people asking 'I heard this new Windows sends all your data to Microsoft, is that true?' because they picked up something vague about privacy in the local newspaper..
Any junior level engineer, product manager, or professional panhandler could have seen this coming. Microsoft is betting on their marketshare and the stupidity of their average customer, as they have always done in the past. Unfortunately, out of 4 OS releases, 3 have been outright failures (Vista, 8, 10), one was decent (7), and even your average computer using idiot is aware of the horrible software quality that Microsoft is putting out these days because they have to use it. While disasters like removing the Start button are much more prone to stir ill will in privacy-ignorant consumers than privacy concerns, I'm sure there are no shortage of bugs in Windows 10 to further antagonize Windows users to the point that they might start to care about privacy and see it as just another way they're getting fucked over by Microsoft (which it is). In my testing for example, the Edge browser is completely unusable and can't even paint its own window. With software like that and all the privacy concerns, it's likely Windows 10 will have even less adoption that 8. I guess all the executive shifting and layoffs really can't change Microsoft's root problems (but at least they're now releasing interesting open source software.)
I use a free operating system (Linux, currently Slackware) because I take property rights seriously. Years ago I decided that I did not want to use 'cracked' software and didn't have much money.
It doesn't matter much what the current implementation does, when Microsoft has asserted (and demonstrated in practice) that they can send arbitrary updates at any time (and without explanation).
This is an overkill I believe. Are Android devices banned from torrent sites? Chromebooks? Windows 10 is a cloud-based operating system, as is Android and ChromeOS -- most of the code runs locally, but it heavily relies on cloud functionality.
It is extremely naive to think that if MS tells you in the EULA that many services in the OS work based on the user behavior suddenly opens up new doors for spying. If MS wanted to spy on you, they could have done that already (they might or might not, I don't know, but it's certainly not the EULA that prevents them from doing that).
/snarky comment:
I guess most people on the torrent sites already give full permissions to the torchlight app on their phone.
Privacy issues is all about scale. When groups of people can be mapped, it allows for discrimination and prosecution and that thought scares people into submission. Android and ChromeOS users are small minorities, while if you monitor all Windows users you more or less can map out the whole community, and that is a very scary thought for a lot of people.
It's not overkill when a company scans every single file you have in your PC, keeps those logs on its servers, and then eventually can and likely will share that information with others, from law enforcement to MPAA or even advertising companies.
Microsoft has already admitted in its "privacy" policy that it can and will do such thing:
> “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 ---.” [1]
I mean - are you kidding me? Like "whenever we'll feel like it"? That's so reassuring that you respect your customers's privacy, Microsoft...Really solid privacy policy right there.
I'm glad to see HN's mindless love of Nadella going out the window. I've been railing against his leadership for quite some time and have often been told how wonderful he is, apparantly because he's not Steve Ballmer. I can't imagine anyone defending his policies now. This scenario is far, far worse than anything during the Ballmer/Gates years. Nadella may be the CEO that watches the world shift to a non-MS OS in significant, company threatening, numbers. Its incredible how he just couldn't deliver "Windows 7 but better," instead of this privacy nightmare OS.
And just to nitpick, we had to change our patching policy at work considering how badly QA has fallen under Nadella's watch. Pretty much every patch Tuesday is a problem for us. There's always a rotten patch that breaks something. I also am unimpressed by all the marketing surrounding the start menu coming back. Its barely a start menu, its just a panel to stick Metro-style widgets onto. The default widgets are a lot junk. The Win7 defaults of Documents, Computer, Control Panel, Printers, etc was near perfect from a productivity perspective.
Sounds like clickbait, did not find content interesting. It makes you think windows 10 users a banned by microsoft. Should be "torrent sites ban windows 10 users".
It is very well possible that behaviour like This will result in massive problems in the European Union with its much more atrict privacy laws. Microsoft should ask Intel about huge fines.
> It is very well possible that behaviour like This will result in massive problems in the European Union with its much more atrict privacy laws.
Unless TPP passes[1]. One of it's provisions may result in a weakening of privacy laws. Unfortunately it's hard to tell since the whole thing is secret.
This is small stuff, compared to the headaches MS and Windows 10 will have with foreign governments. Snowden showed us that the US regularly spied on the German, Brazilian, Mexican and French governments. I wonder how anxious those governments are for Windows 10 adoption.
Great news for Linux. Reading almost every comment (out of 270 atm), I see only good in this, windows will surely lose a small percentage of it's user base, and (hopefully) a lot more in the long run.
Ask HN: Could Win10 data leaks be managed by some kind of firewall or parental-control software? I mean, if we know what sites are being accessed, just block those sites.
Yes, but the lists I've seen look huge [1]. It also requires 3rd party software/hardware to block since the name resolution for many of the endpoints seems to be hardcoded into dnsapi.dll. There's also no guarantee that some security update will add additional server names that Windows can talk to. Basically you end up in a security arms race with your OS provider - which is hard if not impossible to win.
There are numerous sites (eg [1]) which claim to provide a list of FQDNs associated with Windows 10 telematics. These sites usually advise you to reroute those FQDN to localhost via the hosts file.
To my point of view this is a endless game of cat-and-mice... finding the (changing?) telematics FQDNs and updating the hosts file. By design this cannot be a permanent solution.
There's an easy way to do that: when the browser makes a request to some web site, the server serving it will detect the browser's user agent (which the browser sends with the request to the server) and will check the operating system specified. If it's Windows 10 - don't fulfill the request.
It means Microsoft losing market share to Apple when people tell their friends that they can't download the latest episode of the Kardashians if they upgrade to Windows 10.
Has anyone compiled a privacy checklist for Windows 10? What settings people have determined are best to use? I was somewhat forced to do the upgrade and didn't have the time to explore all settings (also they got more confusing since Windows 8).
IMO the thing is You can never be sure what the system is doing underneath. It's like a rooted box, you need to wipe it clean cause you can never be sure if the backdoor is still there
Then, I installed a traffic monitoring tool - and surprise surprise - I still found some stuff trying to randomly connect to Microsoft's servers, similarly to what Peter Bright from Ars discovered (btw, "telemetry" can only be fully disabled on Enterprise version of Windows 10):
I blocked those, too, and for now the Windows 10 spying monster seems to have settled down - BUT - new story points to the fact that you won't even know what Windows 10 updates will do in the future. That means that on machines where they see they can't spy on you anymore, they could push an update to bypass those protections and still spy on you.
Windows 10 really seems to be designed based on an NSA/law enforcement's wishlist. Any security or privacy measures you might take on it can be rendered useless by an update, and some articles even say Microsoft gets all of your typed keys (so all passwords).
There were like 3-4 open source projects posted here (yeah, people don't get that the point of publishing an open source project is to actually collaborate) aiming at making privacy on Windows 10 one click away. As far as I can tell, they all did a miserable job and blocked some legit features (like Windows Update) and domains and never updated their projects once we told them about the legit features they're blocking.
So, there's plenty of checklists out there, but none of them is actually useful at the moment.
> The controversy began because of a line in Microsoft’s service agreement. This allows Microsoft to issue updates that will stop users “playing counterfeit games,” according to TorrentFreak.
Game companies have been issuing updates that stop users "playing counterfeit games" ever since it was possible to do so. Microsoft is a game company, or one of the divisions are. It's interesting that they would stop there, rather than say "use of counterfeit software". That would be much broader.
Microsoft has been doing that for some time so what is the justification for gamers all of a sudden freaking out.
Happily using OSX, Linux, and Chrome (with crouton).
I only need Windows now if I want to play a game, but the consoles at home, and steam under crouton/linux/osx solves that for some of the games I play.
Does anyone know how the trackers themselves can detect Win10 users, is the Win10 TCP/IP stack sufficiently different to previous versions of Windows that you can fingerprint it?
Indeed, I can see this turning into a "if you don't use Windows 10 you must be a pirate/have something to hide" sort of argument. Ten years ago, when filesharing was the awesome new thing, that would've been almost a compliment; but given how the population's view of piracy seems to have changed now, I don't think that will be the case anymore.
Personally, I'll be getting a windows 10 box running soon enough. It's going to be headless and only have steam installed on it, and I'll be using it to play windows only games over steam in-home streaming on my linux desktop and laptop.
[+] [-] Phoenix26|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msravi|10 years ago|reply
That's the way I'll opt out. Not by changing my SSID.
[+] [-] stinos|10 years ago|reply
less, or just none (e.g. the claim about data being sent from local disk)? In any case this is turning to be far from ideal for MS and makes me wonder if they really didn't see this coming when defaulting to not-so-private defaults: I already know people asking 'I heard this new Windows sends all your data to Microsoft, is that true?' because they picked up something vague about privacy in the local newspaper..
[+] [-] joesmo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|10 years ago|reply
Strange how things turn out.
[+] [-] pdkl95|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sz4kerto|10 years ago|reply
It is extremely naive to think that if MS tells you in the EULA that many services in the OS work based on the user behavior suddenly opens up new doors for spying. If MS wanted to spy on you, they could have done that already (they might or might not, I don't know, but it's certainly not the EULA that prevents them from doing that).
/snarky comment:
I guess most people on the torrent sites already give full permissions to the torchlight app on their phone.
[+] [-] belorn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
Microsoft has already admitted in its "privacy" policy that it can and will do such thing:
> “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 ---.” [1]
I mean - are you kidding me? Like "whenever we'll feel like it"? That's so reassuring that you respect your customers's privacy, Microsoft...Really solid privacy policy right there.
[1] - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-privac...
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
And just to nitpick, we had to change our patching policy at work considering how badly QA has fallen under Nadella's watch. Pretty much every patch Tuesday is a problem for us. There's always a rotten patch that breaks something. I also am unimpressed by all the marketing surrounding the start menu coming back. Its barely a start menu, its just a panel to stick Metro-style widgets onto. The default widgets are a lot junk. The Win7 defaults of Documents, Computer, Control Panel, Printers, etc was near perfect from a productivity perspective.
[+] [-] homakov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exar0815|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|10 years ago|reply
Unless TPP passes[1]. One of it's provisions may result in a weakening of privacy laws. Unfortunately it's hard to tell since the whole thing is secret.
[1] http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/07/16/TPP-and-Personal-Data/
[+] [-] diego_moita|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohitsdom|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimmaDaRustla|10 years ago|reply
What kind of response do you expect from them?
[+] [-] sillygeese|10 years ago|reply
If there's enough pressure for MS to respond, they'll spew some bullshit to placate the masses. What they won't do is change their spying ways.
Besides, it's probably not even all Microsoft's fault. I bet governments are pressuring them to spy on us on their behalf.
[+] [-] macns|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexandrB|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
[+] [-] jand|10 years ago|reply
To my point of view this is a endless game of cat-and-mice... finding the (changing?) telematics FQDNs and updating the hosts file. By design this cannot be a permanent solution.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/blocking-these-domains-stops-...
[+] [-] datalist|10 years ago|reply
How would they ban Windows 10 users from trackers? A bit of more details wouldnt be bad.
[+] [-] moondowner|10 years ago|reply
Here's a random example of user agent detection http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163350/server-side-brows...
[+] [-] saraha|10 years ago|reply
It means Microsoft losing market share to Apple when people tell their friends that they can't download the latest episode of the Kardashians if they upgrade to Windows 10.
[+] [-] Filligree|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsf666|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
1) turned off everything in the Customization section at install
2) Used http://pxc-coding.com/portfolio/donotspy10/
3) Used https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking
Then, I installed a traffic monitoring tool - and surprise surprise - I still found some stuff trying to randomly connect to Microsoft's servers, similarly to what Peter Bright from Ars discovered (btw, "telemetry" can only be fully disabled on Enterprise version of Windows 10):
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
I blocked those, too, and for now the Windows 10 spying monster seems to have settled down - BUT - new story points to the fact that you won't even know what Windows 10 updates will do in the future. That means that on machines where they see they can't spy on you anymore, they could push an update to bypass those protections and still spy on you.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/21/microsoft_will_expla...
Windows 10 really seems to be designed based on an NSA/law enforcement's wishlist. Any security or privacy measures you might take on it can be rendered useless by an update, and some articles even say Microsoft gets all of your typed keys (so all passwords).
http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10
When I find some time these days, I'll wipe Windows 10 and never look back.
[+] [-] r3bl|10 years ago|reply
So, there's plenty of checklists out there, but none of them is actually useful at the moment.
[+] [-] Kequc|10 years ago|reply
Game companies have been issuing updates that stop users "playing counterfeit games" ever since it was possible to do so. Microsoft is a game company, or one of the divisions are. It's interesting that they would stop there, rather than say "use of counterfeit software". That would be much broader.
Microsoft has been doing that for some time so what is the justification for gamers all of a sudden freaking out.
[+] [-] scholia|10 years ago|reply
It's part of what happens when you have an OS that runs on different types of device, which is the aim for Windows 10.
[+] [-] JupiterMoon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EGreg|10 years ago|reply
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
[+] [-] zkhalique|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|10 years ago|reply
I only need Windows now if I want to play a game, but the consoles at home, and steam under crouton/linux/osx solves that for some of the games I play.
Nothing else really!
[+] [-] deutronium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenizerrr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roosterjm2k2|10 years ago|reply
So in response, torrent sources help them by stoping them from downloading...
So torrent sites are giving MS what they want?
[+] [-] userbinator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinosang|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Vendan|10 years ago|reply