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Windows 10 Still Phones Home With Data In Spite of Privacy Settings
Penguinisto writes: According to Ars Technica, Windows 10 will still send telemetry and other data to Microsoft-owned domains — no matter how tightly you crank down the privacy settings. Even with everything buttoned down, Cortana, OneDrive, and Web Search from the Start Menu disabled, the OS still phones home, using a random system ID that persists across reboots. It apparently also tries to bypass proxies to do it. "Some of the traffic looks harmless but feels like it shouldn't be happening. For example, even with no Live tiles pinned to Start (and hence no obvious need to poll for new tile data), Windows 10 seems to download new tile info from MSN's network from time to time, using unencrypted HTTP to do so. ... Other traffic looks a little more troublesome. Windows 10 will periodically send data to a Microsoft server named ssw.live.com. ... The exact nature of the information being sent isn't clear—it appears to be referencing telemetry settings—and again, it's not clear why any data is being sent at all. We disabled telemetry on our test machine using group policies."
Group Policy explains if you try it on other editions it will act as if set to Basic.
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When I start up my PC in the morning, the hard drive just grinds away for about 5 or 10 minutes, and the CPU is sluggish. At first I thought it was an A/V scan, so I removed my A/V. No effect.
Then I stumbled upon the InfoWorld article, and removed the Windows Updates that were mentioned in the article. The scanning stopped. Until I did a Windows Update earlier this week. And I had to remove once again the offending updates.
What in the world is going on in Redmond?
save you a few minutes /uninstall /kb:2952664 /quiet /norestart /uninstall /kb:2990214 /quiet /norestart /uninstall /kb:3035583 /quiet /norestart
wusa
wusa
wusa
Here are a few others, and some scheduled tasks that I was surprised to find on Windows 7 machines.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Actually, Apple does have the settings. In OS X, since 10.10, it has been due to Spotlight doing online queries. In iTunes, for many years, it has been due to their suggestions system and retrieving additional data about your music.
It is, as the article suggests, the price of convenience. It would be nice though if you had the option to turn off those conveniences if you don't want them.
Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith believe that doing so is necessary ...
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
If you don't want any data going to MS at all, they actually do make a good tool for locking it all down, check out EMET
That isn't what EMET is at all.
Being certain of something doesn't make it true. You are, I am afraid, quite wrong... the very idea of an "unhackable computer" is built on a flawed premise, which is that it is somehow a computable function to determine what an arbitrary computer program is actually supposed to behave like.
Even fixed function devices can be hacked and used for purposes other than what they were intended for, Trying to do that for a general purpose computer is logically equivalent to solving the Halting Problem, which can be logically proven to have no possible solution.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Are Live tiles pinned to your start bar completely independent of user, or do different users have different settings for that? Response times and reactivity are king. Making sure the data is already there when a different user logs on, or when you go to the page to see what's available, is a thing.
Not saying there shouldn't be an easy way to really turn it off, but "no obvious need to poll" is a little disingenuous unless Windows 10 is a truly single-user OS.
Windows 10 (a/k/a NT v?) is actually a server-class multiuser OS, that has been hamstrung by greedy Microsoft Policy into behaving like a one-user-at-a-time OS.
Sad, actually.
Unlike OS X, which, while also acting sort of like a one-user-at-a-time OS, at least lets you spawn additional simultaneous User Sessions via Remote, if you wish. And even when it is acting like a one-user-at-a-time OS, I believe that the other Users' sessions are kept alive and logged-in, which I'm not sure is the case with Windows "Client" OSes. In fact, I used to use that feature to create an ersatz "iTunes Server", by simply having iTunes (with home-sharing turned on) running in another session. A little cheesy, but it worked pretty well.
Which, it should be pointed out, can be disabled on 7 and 8.
Telemetry and error reporting cannot be effectively disabled on 10, because Microsoft refuses to make Enterprise available via retail channels.
This AC is also remaining on 7 here. And has refused to install the offending updates (KB3068708 KB3022345 KB2952664 KB2990214 KB3035583 KB971033 KB3021917 KB3044374) from Windows Update. (Another thing that cannot be disabled in Win10.)
And I'm pretty sure it's been established that a EULA can't be used to do things that go against the law.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Actually, Apple does have the settings. In OS X, since 10.10, it has been due to Spotlight doing online queries. In iTunes, for many years, it has been due to their suggestions system and retrieving additional data about your music.
It is, as the article suggests, the price of convenience. It would be nice though if you had the option to turn off those conveniences if you don't want them.
There is a Vas Deferens between what Spotlight (for "Spotlight Suggestions") and iTunes does and what Windows 10 is doing. For one thing, Apple is straightforward about what is, and what is not, sent to Apple and/or Microsoft from Spotlight. And more importantly, Apple has a nice, simple GUI way to disable "Spotlight Suggestions".
As far as iTunes goes, if you are referring to the "Genius" feature, unless you turn on iTunes Match, you can disable the Genius feature (which I think is now called "Share details about your library with Apple"). If you are referring to retrieving CD Song Names and other info from the internet, you can disable that, too. Both are available as simple GUI checkboxes in iTunes' Preferences, along with the SWITCHABLE "Share details about your library with Apple", "Limit Ad Tracking", "Automatically download album artwork", "Always check for available downloads", "Sync playback information across devices", "Sync podcase subscriptions and settings", and "check for new software updates automatically".
So, compare that with what TFA says about Windows 10 still leaking data no-matter-what, and I think that any sensible person will agree that there is virtually no comparison between the two "mindsets".
Cool, thanks, just did an IP lookup on it and got back 207.46.7.252. I just made a new outband rule in my firewall blocking all outbound traffic from all applications to 207.46.7.252. Hopefully that should solve the problem.
It isn't that hard to do, I would like to see any other servers windows tries to contact that it dose not need to so I can block them too.
Windows 7 is looking even better. Staying put.
In windows 7 I disabled every call home excuse under the sun from UI, group policy, CLI, scheduler... Must have spent hours disabling various bullshit yet despite considerable efforts windows 7 still keeps making connections to settings.data.microsoft.com, telemetry.microsoft.com with nothing running, with updates set to manual while doing absolutely nothing but executing tcpdump. In the end I gave up and blackholed these sites in DNS to get it to stop.
To be clear I am not nor would I ever make the lame argument that windows 7 does it too as an excuse to give win10 a pass or cover to try and justify a fundamentally indefensible activity. Microsoft's squandering of their customers trust will ultimately only end badly for them. Wireshark is your friend... try it and see what all windows 7 is doing don't assume that Windows 7 is trustworthy.
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"Finally, 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."