Quote:Windows 10‘s privacy settings very much need to be frowned at. Essentially: unless you pay close attention to the fluffy options offered when you first install Microsoft’s new operating system, it’s going to quietly track your behaviour and use it to fire targeted ads at you, as well as keeping tabs on your location history, data from messages, calendars, contacts and God knows what else. It is a bit scary, despite coming off the back of Microsoft’s own pledge to offer ‘real transparency’. You may or may not be OK with this yourself, but in any event at least some of this stuff can be turned off after the fact. I’ll explain how to do that below.

Yesterday we talked about whether or not you should upgrade to Microsoft’s new operating system and before that we looked at the potentially dodgy WiFi Sense feature. Privacy is an even bigger issue.

Conventional wisdom has it that Microsoft’s fight for technological relevance is against Apple. For a time that was true, but as of late they’ve effectively ceded the floor to the Cupertino mob when it comes to hardware (although I hope the Surface Pro line continues – I’m a big fan) and have once again narrowed their computing focus to software. The battle there is against Google, whose search, browser and productivity tools increasingly form a loose, web-based operating system. People aren’t so hot on paying for things these days, which means the money comes from harvesting data and flogging it to advertisers and other organisations who want to know exactly what we’re all up to online. Microsoft want a piece of that, so if you ever wondered why they’ve made the Windows 10 upgrade free to Win 7 & 8 users, here’s one possible answer. Windows 10 has all sorts of user tracking baked right in.

Importantly, you can opt out of what seems to be all this stuff (time will tell) either during installation or afterwards, though Microsoft swaddle it in a combination of dissembling “hey, this stuff’ll really help you get the information you want’ fluff and 45 pages of service agreement documents. I’ll refer you here and here for a detailed breakdown of the really worrying stuff, but the long and short of it is the operating system assigns you a unique advertising ID, which is is tied to the email address you’ve associated with Windows and fed data from a great many facets of your computer usage. Including the contents of messages and calendars, apps and networks, some purchases and whatever you upload to Microsoft’s unreliable OneDrive cloud storage. Using the Cortana search assistant makes the harvest even more aggressive, and of course the OS claims it’s all in the name of a better, more accurate online experience for you.

Look: so much of the business of the internet is currently built around advertising. People are well-accustomed to getting their information for free, and in the absence of a more mutually satisfying system that’s where we are for now (hello, uh, please either whitelist RPS in your adblocker and/or take a look at our Supporter scheme if you feel like this website should stick around for a while). The likes of Google (especially the increasingly ubiquitous Chrome browser, increasingly a hub for their services and data tracking) Facebook and Twitter are already snaffling up untold amounts of information about us, while your smartphone is essentially a pocket-sized vault of saleable information about you, and for better or worse the majority of users appear to be taking that in their stride. But it becomes something else when the very infrastructure of your computer is keeping tabs on most everything you do and then selling it on to unknown third-parties, as well as potentially storing it on someone else’s servers forever.

Quote:It turns out, that the situation has been grossly misread.

Microsoft Services EULA is the one which states that Microsoft may "prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices," however, this is not the license that governs your Windows installation. It only pertains to "Microsoft Services" (Windows Store content, Xbox Live, live tiles, etc.) The license governing Windows is the MSLT (Microsoft Software License Terms), and so there won't be a case of Microsoft reaching out to disable pirated software from running on Windows.

Quote:In the weeks since Windows 10 launched, the OS has been adopted at an unprecedented rate. Over 75 million customers reportedly installed it within 30 days of debut, and that number is sure to have risen in the last few weeks. Microsoft has never rolled out an operating system the way it has pushed 10 to the mass market, so some mistakes were inevitable. The company’s latest blunder? Downloading Windows 10 without asking.

According to the Inquirer, a user who had never “reserved” a copy of Windows 10 in the first place found a large 6GB download sitting in the $Windows.~BT hidden directory, and a series of failed “Upgrade to Windows 10″ tasks in Windows Update’s history. In several cases, the new OS has been downloaded over metered connections, forcing people over their bandwidth caps in the process. When the Inquirer reached out to Microsoft, the company said the following: “For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade.

“When the upgrade is ready, the customer will be prompted to install Windows 10 on the device.”
...
We at ET haven’t seen this behavior directly — I’m still on Windows 7 myself, and my Windows Update history shows no sign of repeated failed Windows 10 installs — but one of our staffers, David Cardinal, has had his own unusual experience with Windows 10. According to David, he left on a two-week trip with an HTPC box running Windows 8.1U and came back to find it running Windows 10. Windows Update was configured to install automatic updates, and Microsoft has flagged Windows 10 as an important update — so it’s at least theoretically possible that the box automatically installed the new operating system.

We’re still checking out whether this update was automatically triggered, but if it wasn’t, it’s another example of how Microsoft built a system that shoves you forward into new operating systems whether you like it not. As I mentioned above, I’m still using Windows 7. Every time I launch Internet Explorer, it defaults to loading MSN as a homepage. Every time it loads MSN, it slaps a giant banner ad for Windows 10 over the content.

(10-16-2015, 05:21 AM)dmcowen674 Wrote: Accident my ass

(10-16-2015, 07:30 AM)dmcowen674 Wrote: I'm running it on all our laptops but turned off all the ET phone home crap.

(07-31-2015, 12:56 AM)SteelCrysis Wrote: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-privacy-settings/

Quote:Conventional wisdom has it that Microsoft’s fight for technological relevance is against Apple. For a time that was true, but as of late they’ve effectively ceded the floor to the Cupertino mob when it comes to hardware (although I hope the Surface Pro line continues – I’m a big fan) and have once again narrowed their computing focus to software.