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."

Comments

Explanation please

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 Still Phones Home With Data In Spite of Privacy Settings

What the hell, Microsoft?

Re:Explanation please

[JazzLad]

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 ...

Re:Explanation please

[macs4all]

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 ...

There's those"Good Faith" weasle words. That's right up there with "For The Children" and "National Security" for being an abuse-excuse.

Re:Guessing at a partial explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

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*.

Just need hostnames or IP addresses

[Megaweapon]

And block that crap at the router.

Or will Win10 cease to function at that point?

Re:Just need hostnames or IP addresses

[savuporo]

OpenWRT builds should soon come with "none of this telemetry shit" big red switch on the frontpage. And not just Msft, but apple, oracle, etc included. And then, i want OpenWRT built into a usb-ethernet dongle that i can take with me to travel.

Privacy is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

This battle is lost. No amount of litigation or hacking will change that.

We would be wise to keep our efforts focused on freedom on the electronic frontier. Keep it legal to do all the things we want to do, because we will not be able to do them in secret.

It isn't the happiest of realities, but it is still reality.

Re:Privacy is dead.

[fustakrakich]

No biggie. Let's just pry into their books in return. Let's make this a two way street, and see what pops.

Re:Privacy is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

The battle is not lost.

They don't know me. They have no means of verifying what I tell them. And I do know them, and I know that they'll try and try and try to find a way to make my usage profitable. The only question is, "How can I use their greedy nature to benefit me?"

First, I need to know what benefit I want. If it's privacy I want, then nothing works better against a myopic panopticon than a disguise of misinformation. We already know they can "see" my usage and other statistics. But they can't verify. And if they can't verify, they can't trust. And if they can't trust, they can't use that information. But we also know they will use it and trust it, but they still won't verify it. It's a broken link in the chain. A weakness. Exploit it, and suddenly, you're both everyone and no one.

Next, I need to know how they attempt to identify me. What physical methods (servers they upload data to, etc.) and also what psychological methods they use (see also: Target's data mining is faster and more accurate than peeing on a stick).

Next, to re-use a favorite spin-doctor phrase, just "alter the narrative". Block the physical methods outright, but know that there will be new ones to make up for the ones you block. You can't block everything. Poison the data in any others. And by "poison the data", I don't mean to feed them random junk. Oh, no. That will be too easily identified, or too easily filtered out. You will gain privacy, but no other benefits. And you'll train their systems to work around your efforts. This is war. Don't get mowed down by the first volley like that. Feed them "good" data, but data that isn't you, even if it isn't necessarily consistent from moment-to-moment. If they're pushing advertisements at you, find a way to get them to try to push the "right" ads to you. If you want them to die in a fire and go bankrupt, get them to push unprofitable ads. If you want them to think of you as a cash cow (that goes MOO), get them to push profitable ones. Your motivations may change from day to day, and that's your prerogative.

Next, hold the line on anything that intrudes. If they're pushing ads or coupons or services or whatever, cut those things off at the knees (and by "knees", I mean "router"). Don't watch the ads, just farm them. This is trivial. A headless server in a rack in some nameless data center can be your advertisement playback bitch, and can forward the proof-of-impression keys back to your actual user session for reply back to the ad server. This gives the ad network what it wants (proof that you "watched" the ad), while also giving you what you want (not watching the ad for real). Companies paying for advertisements will slowly learn that "proof" isn't good enough, and the ad networks will die slowly.

And then the war is won.

Re: Privacy is dead.

[mark-t]

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.

Re:Privacy is dead.

[Tough Love]

This battle is lost. No amount of litigation or hacking will change that.

Hmm, the battle would appear to be a lot more lost for those joined at the hip and face to the Microsoft ecosystem. From where I sit with my Linux desktop, the battle would appear to be far from lost.

Re:Privacy is dead.

[WaffleMonster]

This battle is lost. No amount of litigation or hacking will change that.

Lost sales will.

Meet the New Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Same as the old Microsoft.

once again demonstrating that...

[Lead Butthead]

there's nothing more expensive in life than free.
never underestimate the creative ability of corporate amerika to extract profit out of free.

Disabling telemetry only works for 10 Enterprise

[The MAZZTer]

Group Policy explains if you try it on other editions it will act as if set to Basic.

Probably just not optimized yet

[slacklinejoe]

It's good these posts come out, but having worked with it, it's probably just a case of some calls that didn't check for the telemetry lockdown registry key. Say what you will, but it's not likely they have a secret cabal going to collect which live tiles you resized to "large" or unpinned. There's enough of us that either ride with defaults or are actually OK with them learning how to make a better OS based on how we use it. Given how rushed it was on the last few months fixing major issues, it doesn't surprise me that a few things slipped through. If it isn't fixed via update once they can process the feedback, I'll be surprised. For the live tiles, it's probably trying to pre-cache the images for default items. Even if they removed it from their start menu, I think that's still part of the default account profile. Maybe it needs removed from that one as well. That said, maybe it's just poorly coded (feigns shock). It's good to keep them accountable though, I just wouldn't blow this out of proportion. I've got bigger fish to fry.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[Just Some Guy]

It's good these posts come out, but having worked with it, it's probably just a case of some calls that didn't check for the telemetry lockdown registry key.

Oh, so it's just a case of them not having integration tests. That's not exactly comforting in an OS vendor.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[steelfood]

Stupidity is no excuse for doing bad things.

Which is to say, this stuff should be fail closed, not fail open.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[meta-monkey]

No way your workplace already installed 10. Nobody's that stupi...oh fuck I just answered my own question.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[cfalcon]

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.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[Darinbob]

Even if they are not of evil intent here, they still have broken design goals. Pre-caching stuff like this is always wrong if there is no option to disable. Always. There is no excuse for this, not even Microsoft's disingenuous standard response "it's for a better user experience." It slows down the computer slightly so that you can get a ridiculously stupid feature to work slightly faster. They're still stuck on the idea that silly phone apps on a computer are a good idea. I don't turn on my computer just to see the update on an app and then turn it off again; this makes sense for a phone but is stupid on a computer. The users completely rejected the idea of a live background screen and MS is still trying to keep that idea; as well the users rejected gadgets on Windows but those are being resurrected in a different form too. All this stuff is just a different sort of layer on top of the web, the majority of these aren't even real programs but just wrappers and gloss on top of some URLs, whereas the equivalent web sites are far more useful and informative. Their eyes are blinded at the thought of having a store that all users are accustomed too, thinking they can replicate the itunes model (even though on the mac almost no one uses the apple store).

In other words, even thought they apologized and said Windows 8 was a mistake and they are trying to fix it and regain customer trust, they are still firmly behind the misguided goals of Windows 8.

Re:Probably just not optimized yet

[Darinbob]

It sounds crazy. But there are major corporations that routinely plan to upgrade to the latest OS as soon as possible. I kid you not, but this includes major defense contractors. We all laughed at Windows 8, but the people with the missiles went and rolled it out. I have no doubt some of these places are rolling out Windows 10. This is not driven by the corporate leadership though, but by hordes of IT people who double as the vanguard of Microsoft's marketing forces.

Re:Comparable

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, but if you're a hedge fund manager, they both can make you rich!

I've been trying to stop Win 10 telemetry on Win 7

[QuietLagoon]

I've recently been trying to shut down Microsoft's gathering of telemetry from my Windows 7 PC. I am seeing the performance-draining results of this telemetry gathering process.

.
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?

Re:Guessing at a partial explanation

[Coren22]

This depends. Did they set the policies in User or Computer? If it is User, it is not the entire computer but the currently logged in User.

Influence from Skype

[xeno]

It is interesting to see not only the technical influence, but the design philosophy inherited from the Skype acquisition: That is, from the perspective of a running service, it's perfectly ok or even desirable to worm your way out and communicate with the hivemind, no matter what the user says. For example, if the user configures the app not to communicate with a voip service, the app will respect the exact letter of the user's intent -- not to make voip calls or display presence -- but it will still update itself, download patches, and update directory data so that you *could* make voip calls if you changed your mind... which it will assume you did at the next update when the settings are reset to default-open...

Opting out entirely is within reach for most people/orgs, it's the momentum that keeps people choosing this crapware. I keep Windows around because I like Visio, but my company does everything else in Google services, so my main machine for actual work has been Linux Mint for several years. The kids have Windows tablets but never use them; they just use pocketable android for comm and big iron for gaming/steam/AV/dev. It's not even worth much effort to criticize msft, they're not going to stop doing stupid things, they don't offer an advantage at the consumer level anymore, and I just don't have the time for it.

(Now, ask me as a security geek, do I like having windows event data along with netflow? Sure thing, but the infrastructure to get that is insanely costly to license and run. I just wouldn't build a company that way anymore.)

Re:Influence from Skype

[drooling-dog]

...it's the momentum that keeps people choosing this crapware.

Unfortunately true. It causes most people a great deal of anxiety to acknowledge there's a problem and that there are things they can do to mitigate it, because that means they have to learn about those things, which they fear will be outside their experience and abilities. As long as they're in the same boat as their friends and family, they feel the safety of numbers and can ignore the issue. The FUD mantra against Linux has always been that you have to be an elite geek to install and use it; of course that's nonsense but people believe it. It creates a lot of fear and trepidation that they'll be in over their heads if they even try, and so they don't.

Re:Influence from Skype

[Antique Geekmeister]

> It is interesting to see not only the technical influence, but the design philosophy inherited from the Skype acquisition:

It's consistent with Skype: it was hardly unique to them. It's inherent in Microsoft's registration models, their "Trusted Computing" encryption key architecture, and the very poor security of MS File Sharing itself. You _cannot_ use Powershell to administer your host if you block sharing your entire C: drive as the hidden share \\hostname\c$. A security model that says "to use administrations tools, I must expose my entire filesystem" is not a good approach to security.

Re:Influence from Skype

[meta-monkey]

It's been about 10 months since I moved my wife's grandmother and my grandfather onto Linux Mint. Total tech support calls: 3 very short ones with minor questions related to Skype and Firefox.

Unless you have a specific application need that only runs on Windows, there is zero reason for the average consumer to use it.

Re:Influence from Skype

[yodleboy]

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.

Re:Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[sycodon]

My Huge Aerospace employer is on Windows 7 and only now is dipping heir toes into Win 8.1

I expect it will be 3 years before win 10 touches any of our hard drives and only then after the security people have stripped out all the M.S. Snoops.

SHOCKED

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Obligatory "I'm shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU!"

What were you expecting?

[koan]

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.

Re:I've been trying to stop Win 10 telemetry on Wi

[Anonymous Coward]

save you a few minutes
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /quiet /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214 /quiet /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /quiet /norestart

Re: Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar to IBM, MSFT could easily charge $50 for Windows XP maintenance PER YEAR AND SEAT. Since XP, there has been NO CUSTOMER VALUE ADDED. Actually, they destroyed lots of customer value by permuting things so that they could call it "new".

Many customers know this and it has burned their business.

The next step in their suicidal plan is to continue charging for their Permuted XP versions, but at the same time collect and sell data like Google. Now, that sounds like an excellent plan to destroy the modicum of trust and relationship they have with their long term customers.

So. To Upgrade an Old Joke

[sehlat]

You never have to go looking for Microsoft. Microsoft always knows where to find you.

Re:Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[drinkypoo]

I'm waiting until I stop seeing a deluge of shit like this before I un-hide the update to upgrade to windows 10, from windows 7. Remember how Microsoft went goddamned insane when they released the latest Xbox? Remember how they eventually fixed the incredibly privacy-raping idiocy? Still waiting. Gonna keep waiting. If they never come around, that's OK. Windows 7 should keep working for me for some time.

Re:No Fucking Shit!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Did you go: "Derp derp derp I hate Microsoft so they must be ignoring privacy settings!" ... as opposed to "Here are logs that prove what's happening?"

Just curious because there's a huge difference between the two.

Re:I've been trying to stop Win 10 telemetry on Wi

[ShaunC]

Here are a few others, and some scheduled tasks that I was surprised to find on Windows 7 machines.

Re:Disabling telemetry only works for 10 Enterpris

[Blue Stone]

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.

Re:Reminds me of Apple

[MacTO]

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.

Re:Comparable

[fustakrakich]

little track record for Carson, but then again he's not already a known-corrupt politician

Would you buy your Glyconutrients from this man?

Re:So how many lawsuits have been filed so far?

[CanadianMacFan]

You know that EULA that you didn't read but accepted? I'm pretty sure that there's something in there that says they are allowed to send information back to their computers.

Re:Guessing at a partial explanation

[macs4all]

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.

Re:Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 is looking even better. Staying put.

Diagnostics Tracking Service...

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.)

Re: Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[Dutch Gun]

it was all downhill since XP.

Nice rose-colored glasses you're wearing there. Remember how XP was derided as bloated and memory-heavy when it was first released? Remember how it's interface was ridiculed for looking like a PlaySkool toy? How about it's disastrous security record, especially before Service Pack 2 was released? I especially loved that a faulty driver audio driver could end up causing a blue-screen for the entire system. And don't forget about that 64-bit version of the OS that no one used because it wasn't compatible with anything.

Windows 7 is a far superior OS by any reasonable standard. It's basically all the good parts of Vista (better security model, improved driver model, better 64-bit support) but with significantly improved under-the-hood performance optimizations, and a lot of usability improvements.

Re:Is there still a hosts file?

[frovingslosh]

My thoughts exactly. If there is a hosts file (and they are not bypassing it for themselves) then shame on anyone who lets M$ phone home. If the host file is gone (which kills a lot of my abusive advertisement and malware protection) or bypassed then it is time to get the router to protect you from traffic going to Microsoft.

Another nice advantage of the hosts file or router hack is that the home version will wait until you believe it is safe to download those "security updates" and you actually want them, rather than forcing them on home users first to see how much damage is done before feeding them to business users. And I say that as an experienced computer user who has only had real harm done to his system twice, once by uninstalling something that left behind an updated DLL but uninstalled the other new DLL that the first one now needed (nice design Bill) and once by a "security update) that deliberately changed my NIC EEPROM so that Linux would not run properly on it (Thank you Microsoft for such aggressive security).

Re:So how many lawsuits have been filed so far?

[Calydor]

And I'm pretty sure it's been established that a EULA can't be used to do things that go against the law.

Re:Reminds me of Apple

[macs4all]

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".

FIREWALLED! Blocking 207.46.7.252

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Guessing at a partial explanation

[pkinetics]

Live tiles are different across users, and across computers, so that wouldn't be it. But, Microsoft is placing ads for store apps in the taskbar, if you don't turn it off.

There's a way to turn it off? I'm a little surprised.

That's a bug. They will fix that shortly

My thought after reading most of these posts......

[dbreeze]

Thank you Linus, and all the other developers who gave the world an alternative. Think about what this would be like with no solid, open, computing platforms to stay clear of big money/brother.

Re:So how many lawsuits have been filed so far?

[Calydor]

And then took a series of steps deliberately designed to make users think they were REVOKING that access without actually revoking it.

Let's throw in deceptive business practices.

Re:Is there still a hosts file?

[w_dragon]

Apparently they're hard-coding some of the IPs, so the hosts file won't fix everything.

Re:Comparable

[sphealey]

- - - - - No, that's just you disagreeing with his politics. - - - - -

Walker flat out lied about anti-Walker protesters damaging the state capital building. Not only did the protesters do _less_ damage than any other group that size that had used the capital grounds (as documented by the building & ground dept) but they brought trash bags and cleaned up the area afterwards. Walker repeated released utterly false and fabricated statements to the opposite. That tells you all you need to know about him, although the phone call where he talked to the radio DJ he thought was a Koch brothers operative was pretty telling as well.

Re:This is starting to get annoying

[gstoddart]

Which are you annoyed at?

The fact that it's getting posted, or the fact that Microsoft is acting like such major assholes?

Everything about Windows 10 seems to be saying "we don't give a fuck about you peons, we'll do any damned thing we want".

Re:Reminds me of Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Vas Deferens between what Spotlight (for "Spotlight Suggestions") and iTunes does and what Windows 10 is doing

I either (a) really want to know what text-to-speech and/or autocorrect engine you're using; or (b) am genuinely interested in how penis parts made their way in to OS X.

Re:Windows 8 is suddenly looking good ..

[WaffleMonster]

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.

--
"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."

You are asking the wrong question

[Taco Cowboy]

can M$ selectively kill any windows 10 computer remotely

As Win 10 is an 'in progress' project M$ can acquire that kind of power (if it does not already have it) and toggle the 'kill' switch any time it wants.

Win 10 is becoming the largest security threat there ever is.

Because of that I have decided to not upgrade any of my company's computers (which run Windoze) to Win 10. All the computers that are needed to be retired will be replaced with computers running any OS other than Win 10.

Those who believe enterprise version is safe ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... are idiots

Telemetry and error reporting cannot be effectively disabled on 10, because Microsoft refuses to make Enterprise available via retail channels

There is one thing about the masses - they believe in whatever they were told, such as "Users of Enterprise version of Win 10 can disable spying"

Just because they say the enterprise version can disable spying does not mean:

1. It is true
_and_
2. It will always be true

Remember this thing - Windows 10, unlike prior versions of Windows, is an "in progress" project, which means, Microsoft gets to add it, or take out, any function/feature it wants.

The hundreds of millions of users of Windows worldwide used to be the customers of Microsoft, used to be, because as of now, they have become Microsoft's product, to be packaged and sold to Microsoft's new crop of customers - the ad agencies, spook agencies, data miners, and so on, and so forth ...

Thanks but no thanks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Thanks but no thanks, Microsoft.

I'll stick with Win 7 until my PC dies, and after that I'll probably switch to Linux.

Win 7 works fine for me, and Win 8 and Win 10 do not appear to offer me ANYTHING useful whatsoever.

Bitch, bitch, bitch

[vandamme]

STFU and enjoy the Windows you paid for willingly, or go to distrowatch.com and pick one of the 250 alternatives.

Don't get mad, get Linux.

Re:How to block MS?

[slacklinejoe]

Outbound proxy, or even just a good outbound firewall/content filter would do the job.