Slashdot Mirror
A Naysayer's Take On Windows 10: Potential Privacy Mess, and Worse
Lauren Weinstein writes: I had originally been considering accepting Microsoft's offer of a free upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. After all, reports have suggested that it's a much more usable system than Windows 8/8.1 — but of course in keeping with the 'every other MS release of Windows is a dog' history, that's a pretty low bar. However, it appears that MS has significantly botched their deployment of Windows 10. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, even though hope springs eternal. Since there are so many issues involved, and MS is very aggressively pushing this upgrade, I'm going to run through key points here quickly, and reference other sites' pages that can give you more information right now. But here's my executive summary: You may want to think twice, or three times, or many more times, about whether or not you wish to accept the Windows 10 free upgrade on your existing Windows 7 or 8/8.1 system.
Now that we're into the first week of widespread availability for the new version, if you're a Windows user and upgrader, has your experience been good, horrible, or someplace between?
It's also enabled by default if you don't customize your installation settings and in a nutshell, does the following:
- uploads a supposedly-encrypted form of your wireless AP's password to a Microsoft server for safe-keeping
- when enabled, shares your wireless password with anyone on your Facebook, Outlook or Skype contact lists who also has it enabled
- also automatically joins you onto hotspots that your contacts share, regardless of how they are secured.
I'm beginning to understand how Microsoft can afford to offer the "new and improved" Windows as a free upgrade for a year, I'm guessing the military and surveillance agency contracts have more than paid the bill.
Just a small part of the EULA (there's lots of other juicy parts):
Usage and connectivity data. Microsoft regularly collects basic information about your Windows device including usage data, app compatibility data, and network and connectivity information. This data is transmitted to Microsoft and stored with one or more unique identifiers that can help us recognize an individual user on an individual device and understand the device's service issues and use patterns.
The data we collect includes:
The software (including drivers and firmware supplied by device manufacturers), installed on the device.
App use data for apps that run on Windows (including Microsoft and third party apps), such as how frequently and for how long you use apps, which app features you use most often, how often you use Windows Help and Support, which services you use to sign into apps, and how many folders you typically create on your desktop.
Network and connection data, such as the device's IP address, number of network connections in use, and data about the networks you connect to, such as mobile networks, Bluetooth, and identifiers (BSSID and SSID), connection requirements and speed of Wi-Fi networks you connect to.
Other hardware devices connected to the device.
Some diagnostic data is vital to the operation of Windows and cannot be turned off if you use Windows.
That's at least as bad as Google/Facebook. Thankfully other operating systems respect your privacy at least a little bit...
I RTFA and read the links. They're shocking and I don't use that word casually. I am posting the direct links here with the excerpts from the license agreement.
No human being who had these explained to them in an ordinary setting by someone they knew and trusted would knowingly agree to them.
Here goes:
From:
Sign into Windows with your Microsoft account and the operating system immediately syncs settings and data to the companyâ(TM)s servers. That includes your browser history, favorites and the websites you currently have open as well as saved app, website and mobile hotspot passwords and Wi-Fi network names and passwords.
To enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device. ...
Microsoft can disclose your data when it feels like it
This is the part you should be most concerned about: Microsoftâ(TM)s new privacy policy assigns is very loose when it comes to when it will or wonâ(TM)t access and disclose your personal data:
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 protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services. ....
Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history, and more.â
The author goes on to note:
Lots of things can live in those two words âoeand more.â Also note that because Cortana analyzes speech data, Microsoft collects âoeyour voice input, as well as your name and nickname, your recent calendar events and the names of people in your appointments, and information about your contacts including names and nicknames.â ....
The updated terms also state that Microsoft will collect information âoefrom you and your devices, including for example âapp use data for apps that run on Windowsâ(TM) and âdata about the networks you connect to.'â ...
Windows 10 generates a unique advertising ID for each user on each device. That can be used by developers and ad networks to profile you. ...
They intend to completely remove the notion of privacy from the tools we use to create share and store the most private thoughts we have.
This is Linux's Big Chance. People will reject this massive barefisted amoral invasion of privacy and flee- if they can get a decent computing experience out of some UNIX clone.
Not to turon this into a "What['s wrong with Linux" discussion but I have sincerely tried to move to Linux repeatedly and just found the experience awful. I am nto interested in learning a CLI to get normal stuff done-at all. The performance compared to Windows has always been terrible, my software is slow, the drivers are missing etc etc.
Perosnally I feel like Ubuntu is somehow in the thrall of a culutre of devs who are not interested in accomodating the masses and take it as a point of pride that finding getting installing and using applications still requires exiting to a CLI, which knowledge they love. Yes, many of them do want to share the love with you, but many people wanted me to share their love the Grateful Dead's music with me too and the thing is, I just don't like it.