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Microsoft Explains Windows Phone 7 'Phantom Data'
Fuzzy Eric writes "Microsoft has confirmed that some handsets running its Windows Phone 7 software are sending and receiving 'phantom data.' The problem surfaced in early January with some owners of phones running Windows Phone 7, claiming that their phone was sending 'between 30 and 50MB of data' every day; an amount that would eat into a 1GB allowance in 20 days. Microsoft said its investigation found that most problems were caused by a unnamed 'third party' service. It said that the problem seemed to only affect 'a small (low single-digit) percentage of Windows Phone customers.'"
No wonder that this third-party service remains unnamed. After all NSA stands for 'no such agency'.
1. No Answer
or
2. We found the problem. It wasn't our fault, and it doesn't matter because it's not happening to anyone. (lie)
.sigs are for post^Hers.
cia or nsa ?
Read radical news here
I'm not saying the phantom data isn't bad, I think every kind of phantom is bad, but who on earth gets a smart-phone and signs up for the 1GB a month plan? Do they even have those?
That can't be true. There are more than two reports.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So is there going to be compensation for users scorched by this bug/feature? Class action suit anyone?
If it was the FBI or CIA or NSA I would still mind, but it wouldn't be THAT huge a deal, mainly because:
A. They will track me anyway if they have any reason to.
B. They aint got shit on me.
C. The chances of them actually bugging me are about .001%
I'm more worried about it being someone who is going to try to sell me shit. Because the likelihood of them actually bugging me is almost 100%.
(who we swear is not the FBI)
I suspect that acronym is too long by one letter.
It doesn't matter. Someone at Microsoft ok'd that third party software without due diligence. It's their baby. Denying it just makes them look unprofessional. But we already knew that.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
So, Microsoft saying "it wasn't us, it was them" counts as an explanation?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Can it still be considered 3rd party if the company that generated the "phantom data" was contracted by either the carrier or Microsoft to develop the app to intentionally run up the quota, hopefully going unnoticed and generating overage charges? My ex-bank, 5th3rd has a class-action lawsuit against them for doing something similar.
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Apparently* it's an external problem and there will be "no need for a system software update.".
Makes you wonder about who can do what with your Windows Phone 7...
*As I noted in my submission. Which was earlier. WTF editors!?
My UID is prime. Hah!
They need a utility built-in to the phone that logs which processes/programs are sending how much data over which connection. None of this "unnamed third-party program" bullshit.
Are we sure it's not just the phone calling home (Microsoft) to confirm it's a "Genuine Copy"?
So it was a 3rd party application which they do not name. Perhaps they could at least explain what kind of data were being sent... oh wait..
So no one here has a Windows phone 7?
Probably pretty easy to monitor what's flowing through your home router if you're on wi-fi.
Is this a problem with all phone's or just if people installed some nefarious app?
Yahoo mail app being reported other places. Figures
I don't understand how that is being decent? An application is causing excess data to be used without the customer's permission and it's good of Microsoft not to name names?
http://transformativeworks.org/
According to ars, Yahoo mail might be the one to blame.
"All very peculiar. The main culprit fingered by the Windows Phone 7 community over this issue (though not named in the statement) is Yahoo! Mail."
I'm glad y'all RTFA and saw where it said
"We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes," a spokesperson said. The firm also said that it was looking into "potential workarounds" until the issue was solved.
fwiw, there's evidence that one potential culprit was a yahoo mail client
Right - the risk of getting bugged by FBI is usually lower than the risk of getting your identity stolen and abused.
At least that applies to most of us.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
An "unnamed third party service" is an explanation? As much as "a dog ate my homework".
A and B may be true, but C is quite the opposite. You can be 99,999% sure your mobile Internet traffic also gets routed goes trough one of the NarusInsight boxes. These things are produced for mass-surveillance with a reported capacity of 10Gbit of traffic per unit... Since mobile networks can potentially be a goldmine for 'anti-terrorist' monitoring you can be sure they hooked a fiber from each large network node to a room filled with these babies. The problem is that the chance of C is much higher than most people think, the chances of B and A happening are fairly large once you communicate anything remotely interesting to one of the agencies.
So Microsoft won't tell their users who have problems WHICH software is offending here? Seriously? I'm sure their affected WP7 users just love being denied that information while paying AT&T the bills for their nightly "activities" due to a "third party service". At least they'd be able to turn it off while waiting for a fix if they knew which software caused the problems.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Look, I own a Windows phone (not 7 it's 6.1 then flashed it to 6.5) . I hate Windows for many reasons. I think it's slow (granted, the hardware is not top of the line), it's cumbersome, and there are next to no apps for it.
But the claim that a windows phone has to be rebooted every other day or that one gets BSODs on a windows phone -- that's pure crap. The phone is not rock solid, but it easily runs for months on end with no problem. The few times i've actually had to reboot my windows phone was either because i was flashing an updated ROM or because I was trying to see if the signal issues were caused by the OS (they weren't).
So given that winmo 6.5 is decently stable, why would you FUD about phone 7?
For me the biggest issues with windows mobile 6.5 are: slow startup, slow GUI, poor app market. Each of these is a huge minus for winmo compared to the competition. But I would not complain about the phone's stability.
....such as the fact that I don't want a phone that blue screens and/or needs to be rebooted twice a day.....
Sounds like my co-workers Moto Droid 2.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
Yep, 9.999999999% with +/- 500% tolerance.
I may just be too uncool, but I honestly don't do or say anything that would be worth the time of law enforcement.
I'm not saying its ok to just track everything everyone says, that would be a horrible practice, I'm just saying I'm close to the bottom of the list.
Who does Microsoft care more about? Users or Developers and Partners? Their actions speak louder than words. They are reluctant to tell people the truth so that they can protect themselves or conserve their resources in favor of protecting developers and partners. In the world of Microsoft (and indeed Apple and most other commercial software vendors) the users are to be taken for granted and abuse of users, their information, their computers and their resources are all the norm.
I realize this is more preaching to the choir for most people here and/or this is "stating the obvious" but I think it's sometimes useful to remind people and users of where the priorities and motivations of the vendors they use and rely on are. By knowing their priorities and motivations, you can keep yourself appropriately aware and even guarded. For example, we have a LOT og Google fans here. In the eyes of some, Google does no evil and can do no wrong. They are an advertiser and a marketer and maintain all of the priorities and motivations of advertisers and marketers. It is important to keep Google in perspective. Google is just one example. Microsoft's main strategy is to keep their markets saturated with Microsoft products and services. This is accomplished through strategic partnerships and arrangements with OEMs and resellers among others. This means they place their priorities in favor of those channels; partners, OEMs, developers and all. If Microsoft's primary channel was retail and online sales, their priority would then be focused on the people who buy their products and services directly. But this is, for the most part, not the case.
For this reason ("Who does Microsoft care about?") I generally avoid Microsoft. It is not because they are buggy or insecure or "evil." It is the fact that as a user or customer, they are not interested in my needs or interests. That's a simple fact.
Agree, my Droid needs to be rebooted once at a week at least or it starts to slow to a complete crawl.
I think he meant "bugging" in the sense of "annoying," not "wiretapping." His point, I think was that he doesn't really care if the FBI is wiretapping him because they almost certainly will never bother him or waste his time, but advertisers almost certainly will.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I think he meant "bugging" in the sense of "annoying," not "wiretapping." His point, I think was that he doesn't really care if the FBI is wiretapping him because they almost certainly will never bother him or waste his time, but advertisers almost certainly will.
Ahh, I didn't think that wording out. Thank you.
I should add though that I do indeed care, I'm just not panicking about it. If the FBI follows me for a month it will be a unnecessary invasion of my privacy and I will be upset, but I won't be outright panicking is because at the end of that month the FBI will be bored out of their minds and move on to someone worth following.
he meant "bug" as in "bother, annoy, pester" not "bug" as in "to remotely observe".
the FBI et al will only bother you if they think your worth the trouble (remember actually doing something to you requires them to reveal that they were listening). Advertisers on the other hand have every incentive to try and get your attention.
I'm still looking for an explanation because so far they've said, it's not us it's the software we've approved.
I agree here. Early versions of WinCE were awful. Same with trying to actually shove Windows into a phone.
But later revisions of Windows Mobile, along with Windows Phone 7, have no real connection to Windows other than riding the marketing coattails of Windows.
I've been using Windows Mobile since WM5 (original AT&T Tilt) and it is actually a great operating system for power users. It was one of the better choices until Android matured (Android 2.x).
My next phone will be Android based, since Microsoft saw fit to utterly cripple WP7. It has a shiny UI but it is missing nearly all of the features, power, and flexibility that made me like WM5/6.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If they refuse to tell anyone what this "Unnamed 3rd party service" is... then I think it's well within our rights to assume the worst. The FBI/CIA really aren't all that creative.
My suggestion? British Petroleum. They are tracking out movements to determine the best place to have the next oil slick. If no ones around, no one will notice.
any other suggestions? Once we decide on a winner we can go update Wikipedia with our "Facts" and start spreading it around the internet via forums and blog posts. Remember, if it's too ridiculous, no one will believe it... so try and keep your suggestions within reason.
Why don't Microsoft tell users what 3rd party app is costing them money ?
Users should have a possibility of deleting or disabling the offending app. As it is now, Microsoft should get the bill for this data forwarded. They know about it and do not act. here in Denmark that is reason for court action, it is actively taking responsibility if you do not act in a timely manner.
Or maybe Microsoft is getting their percentage of the money for data transfer ? So it is money straight in their pocket.
Drop MS, go for the walled garden.
Microsoft is just not a tattletale
I like how you said "they ain't got shit on me" rather than "I haven't done anything". ;-)
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
So, you can have a phone you have to figure out how to hold before you make a call, a phone you have to make all your calls at the start of the month quickly before it drains all your allowance or the other one which does neither. Hmm...
Yeah ok, I think we're on the same page then... :)
I have a Windows phone too and it's very stabl
Oh, well then, two gold stars for them!
http://transformativeworks.org/
I don't like Microsoft, but I'm convinced that had they named the responsible app, they would have been flaimebaited to death here.
They're just leaving the choice to the third party creator, to get out of the woods or not, I think it's decent, yes. Now maybe they're just doing that because they have strong ties, financial or others, with that company, or because it's a lack of documentation that caused this, or just plainly because there is no third party app at all, I don't know. But from what I can see and judge with, I think it's the decent way to act.
NSA? CIA?
It has a shiny UI but it is missing nearly all of the features, power, and flexibility that made me like WM5/6
Which is sad, but most consumer didn't want that in a phone. They wanted an iPhone, so MS attempted to give them what they wanted.
WP7 isn't terrible, still a good OS(love my HTC Surround), it'll be better if it wasn't trying to be like iOS.
If At&T is the primary service then Windows Live is a third party to that service. Since Microsoft did not name themselves as the culprit, they are in fact an Unnamed service. And of course why would Microsoft want to piss off their own their own management, or worse, to let potential buyers know what the real problem is?
Like a good /. reader I did not actually read TFA, but unless they are also disabling this unnamed app and thus keeping it from screwing over more customers, then I don't consider MS' behavior to be decent.
And I'll stop there.
http://transformativeworks.org/
A. They will track me anyway if they have any reason to.
B. They aint got shit on me.
If they keep tracking you, they will have pretty soon.
I'm just saying I'm close to the bottom of the list.
Very subtle.
I may just be too uncool, but I honestly don't do or say anything that would be worth the time of law enforcement.
I'm not saying its ok to just track everything everyone says, that would be a horrible practice, I'm just saying I'm close to the bottom of the list.
What you're not thinking about is what about when your favorite hobby x is deemed "double-plus ungood". This is the beginning of the slippery slope that none of us want to be involved in.
A. They already track you
B. They don't need shit on you
C. Because of A. and B. you are right.
And companies will bugger you no matter what. I have yet hear some marketing person say: Let's not contact these people as they are not in our target group. Instead they say: How can we rephrase it so it looks as if we targeting him personally.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
...an amount that would eat into a 1GB allowance in 20 days
A strange expression - I would have thought even 1 byte would "eat into" any size allowance, technically speaking.
I also have a Windows Phone and it's very stabl
I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't really know a single person who has this phone, but phantom 3rd party data seems like is would be software installed by the carrier. MS just doesn't want to throw whoever the carrier is under the bus. When I got my Droid phone, there was a bunch of bloatware installed by Verizon. That's just my guess... it could be the NSA or the FBI or NASA for all I know.
> Microsoft said its investigation found that most problems were caused by a unnamed "third party" service ..
In other words, we're making this shit up !!!
Somebody without a stake in the answer needs to do the analysis.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Right - the risk of getting bugged by FBI is usually lower than the risk of getting your identity stolen and abused.
At least that applies to most of us.
Unless, of course. your identity is being stolen by an "alphabet agency", such as the FBI or Ghsdkgj......(carrier lost)
I have an iPhone on AT&T. Currently I subscribe to the 2GB plan but the reality is that I use just over 200kb a month (just enough I can't get the cheapest plan).
I use the phone all the time for data, so how can I use so little? It's because most of the time I'm at home or work, both places with WiFi. In-between the largest data use is either browsing or network map loading from Waze, a free driving/gps applciation I leave on whenever I drive.
There are LOTS of people that would have plenty of room in a 500k plan.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FYI the phantom service name is DHS_fltr.sys
It would be classic if it was downloading the same unchanged image. I have seen that type of error 100's of times throughout my career. In fact, when something had a memory leak, unnecessary image repainting is one of the first things look for.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You don't know that. If they where listening in*, you wouldn't know what they where hunting for.
You might say something perfectly innocent, but in the context of an investigation sound bad. Maybe you give to a charity that has ties to a terrorist organization so everyone who donated is under preliminary investigation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have a Windows phone too and it's very stabl
The first time through I read that last bit as "stab!".
They've inflated sales of Zune, Xbox 360, and other products via channel stuffing. Why not Windows 7 phones too?
Facebook was my first thought when reading the article. I made the mistake of installing facebook sync on my blackberry and it was totally crushing the phone. Available memory was at zero, any action resulted in at least 30 seconds of the "hour glass" icon, battery was only lasting about 12 hours, etc. I haven't checked my data usage lately since it is unlimited anyway but it won't surprise me if it is way up. Deleted the app and was still having problems because it wouldn't finish removing itself until I did a full reset by removing the battery.
I think someone needs a nap.
Given that Windows XP is decently stable, why would you FUD about Vista?
I think the chances of being bugged by our gov are around 100%....with a little help from our mobile providers, ISPs, etc. The risk of those taps ever being examined (by a human - I imagine all are examined by machine) and used are near 0%.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Windows Phone 7 : Windows Mobile 6.5 :: iPhone : Apple Newton.
In terms of similarity, not necessarily quality.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that was the case.
I know the Facebook app on Blackberry (not Windows Live) keeps the phone very busy. Both my girlfriend and I had Blackberry 8330's. She installed the Facebook app, and found the phone to be unresponsive at times (like about 3 times a week). I installed it on mine, and the same happened. Uninstalling it fixed the problem. Otherwise, we'd find the phones not working, and have to remove the battery to reboot it (the buttons were unresponsive).
Besides being unresponsive, it was horribly slow trying to do anything on the Internet (over the 3G network). Uninstalling the app fixed it. I know they synchronize profile pictures, so I'd suspect repeatedly downloading the profile pictures. If it worked properly, I wouldn't mind. I have no download quota through my provider. It doesn't do me a lot of good for my phone to lock up though.
I wouldn't think that the Win7 phone is much different than the Blackberry app, at least in general behavior.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
You're supposed to be on medical leave!
microsoft explaining the meaning of explaining something....
But I would not complain about the phone's stability.
I would. It wasn't crashing every other day, but it did happen often enough. I used to joke that Windows is like an old man; once it goes to sleep, you never know if it will wake up. The WinMo phone had just a bit of that. Around once per month, I would look at the display and notice that it locked up about an hour ago.
Steve, get back to work!!!!
- Bill
-- Bob Smith, Techint Section
Check with Stephen Friedman over at In-Q-Tel, or Steve Carbone over at QintQ, they're probably in on it....
Then there was that Phantom of the Jungle.
And now there's the Phantom of Data.
This is becoming way too complex.
For a short time yes, quite possible they have identified one culprit or causing circumstance but may be still be investing others as well as how to provide a solution for the problem(s) past and maybe in the future, not to mention give their 3rd party partner an window of opportunity to fix the problem prior to outing them. Give it a couple of weeks I'll bet we'll have all the details, if not then at that point I'd agree MS will be in the wrong for not releasing details.
I mean, yeah, it's decent to the other unnamed conglomerate. It's the really nice thing to do for them. Not for the customers, but nice for the other corporation, who shall remain nameless.
Imagine if this was something really serious, and not just data usage. Imagine MS made cars, and the cars were crashing for no reason, and MS came forward and said "We looked into it, and we found that we are not legally responsible, and it's a third party car accessory that's causing these crashes. They're working on fixing it, but until then, all you people with our cars can go fuck yourselves, and having fun driving your Microsoft Brand Windows 7 Deathtraps."
Would that be the 'decent' thing to do? To put the security of their customers behind the PR of a third party? Of course not.
The last day I used my winmo it crashed 10 times.
6 times while it booted.
It was in prime condition with standard firmware.
HP Ipaq 550.
your submission didn't blame Microsoft enough to meet Slashdot standards.
My bet is the "Windows Live" service. Why? The one complaint I saw with anything significant to say was a person complaining that they had everything turned off *except* for their Facebook sync through 'Windows live'. My bet, chances are that the Sync is pulling over all the images and bitmaps along with the web updates, and not pulling over just the delta changes to them. Perhaps its a re-download service, not a true sync.
Nah it's not that, i've got a crapload of stuff syncing via windows live and don't have this issue.
If At&T is the primary service then Windows Live is a third party to that service.
I would say it's something to do with AT&T but likely MS don't want to just blame them and affect their relationship, rather fix the issue quietly and move on. But it would be nice to know what it was.
Given that Windows XP is decently stable, why would you FUD about Vista?
Because the Vista issues are Vista-specific, whereas many people are put off WP7 because of WinMo, but they are completely different operating systems.
WP7 has a completely different target audience. If you're nostalgic about WM, get Android - it's where all the hacking is.
I remember reading the inital article saying it was mostly affecting AT&T Customers. I check my data usage fairly frequently (which I can do using the carriers unmetered website) and the heaviest day I've ever used is like 15mb. That includes all the facebook sync, web browsing and downloading a couple apps. I would chock this up to a third party app that's just pulling down a ton of data. None of the others in my office (we're a IT consulting company) that own windows 7 phones are having any issues either.
As for the phone , it's awesome and I love it. (this coming from a former iphone user). The interface is intuitive, fast and very stable. It's missing some key features,which annoyed me to no end, but MS has already announced an update to address them.
Some things need to get better, but all in all, it's a very solid phone and belongs with the android and iphones. Hopefully the app market actually matures though, that's it's major downfall right now.
1.Disable 3G on the phone
2.Put a transparent proxy on the wireless that the phone uses
3.Looking at what sites the phone is trying to access to send data to
Although admittedly most people who know how to do the above probably wouldn't buy a windows phone ;-)
I agree. Personally, while it could just be a "we're too chicken to piss them off" megavendor with a bona fide mistake, the conspiracy theorist in me suggests the possibility that someone at the "third party vendor" multiplied the CPU speed of an always-on WP7 phone by the anticipated number of deployed units and a big, $-shaped lightbulb lit up over their heads. Back in 2000 or so, before "cloud computing" became the buzzword for such things, some p2p clients were being distributed with spyware that would allow your idle CPU cycles, bandwidth and disk space to be rented out to third parties unknown. (The 'b3dprojector' named in the subject was put out by a multimedia company to create an unwitting Bittorrent-like hosting network for swarm downloading.) I bet having something like this slip by all the way to shipping phones would be a huge kick in the nuts to WinFone7 sales if MS let word of it get out...
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I'm glad y'all RTFA and saw where it said
"We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes," a spokesperson said.
The firm also said that it was looking into "potential workarounds" until the issue was solved.
fwiw, there's evidence that one potential culprit was a yahoo mail client
Funniest thing is, even if you pay to Yahoo, you won't get IMAP support including standard IDLE support.
So while you monkey with POP3 and very funny tricks (for 2011) like "leave messages on server", you will also notice the same idiots somehow gives a similar and non standard service FOR FREE to iPhone/iPad owners. What is worse is, it probably uses HTTP protocol which wasn't absolutely designed for such thing.
My bet is, Windows Phone 7 also comes with free IMAP IDLE-like but not IMAP support and somehow, while messing around with re-inventing the wheel, they did something wrong.
It is karma of paying customers who has to monkey with outdated POP3 protocol.
Just asking about MS's statement about small numbers.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada