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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."
They said they'd used group policies to enact this change. If group security policies don't encompass the entirety of the OS, how could you ever be secure in the first place?
Additionally, "Response Times" are not the king for people who *do not want this*.
Same as the old Microsoft.
Wasn't auto update, upgrade the give away clue?
Watch as time goes by how much worse it gets, from broken apps (due to auto upgrades) to massive security fails.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Windows 8 was a fuck up because of the UI.
It looks like Microsoft said, with 10, let's just go deeper and fuck up the user's privacy instead.
The more I hear about 10, the less it looks like a saviour to Windows woes and the more it looks like an even bigger disaster.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
It's not FUD... Whatever the year of the Linux desktop people want you to believe, it's just not that easy for most people to switch. The skepticism you have "Windows 10 is free, what's the catch?", is the same thing I hear when I tell people about Ubuntu. "It's free, how could it possible be good if it's free?" Then you tell them that it will change the look and feel of a computer they've used for years. Then you have to admit that their Windows apps won't work. Then confess that they will have a much smaller selection of software available to them. yeah, sign me up right away, is not the response you should expect.
Despite huge improvements, Linux desktop is still NOT for the average user. It's for the average user that has a knowledgeable friend to help them setup things, to install Windows apps under WINE when possible, to help them find replacement apps for all the things they use, and to help them get used to the quirks of Linux. I've got my mother in law's laptop running perfectly under Ubuntu and she loves it, but there's no way on earth she'd ever have done it herself, even if her future self could send a note back in time and tell her how much better it was.
WE don't think it's that hard or intimidating because we play with this stuff all the time and tend to forget we've grown along with the Linux desktop and take a lot of acquired knowledge for granted.
No. It's not PEBKAC. Go fucking research. To stop Windows from talking, you need several privacy toggles, some of which won't toggle all the way. Then you need a registry workaround, because Windows is so about user friendliness that you need to modify DWORDS in their shitted up binary fuckfest. Then you need to disable like three services, and remove two binaries. Then you need a big hosts file, and that's becoming an issue because Windows will actually work around a hosts file in some cases, using a list of known IPs specifically to circumvent that. So for now, you can block them on your external firewall.
Eventually, you'll need a dedicated Application Firewall to block all that plus the mandatory Windows Update- you obviously don't want to allow Windows Update unless and until the Application Firewall has updated rules, because we can assume Microsoft will sidestep them weekly if allowed to. The advantage of that approach is that Microsoft can't beat it- it's not on their computer- and further, that you can eventually deep packet inspect and sanitize, allowing the use of Cortana with just the information YOU want to share with her.
Again, really, we need to get off Microcock. This level of drama- needing a second computer to use your first computer- is absolutely insane. But for those that want all those lesser applications that only have Windows support, this will be the option.