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Underground Piracy Sites Want To Block Windows 10 Users
An anonymous reader writes: Some smaller pirate sites have become concerned about Windows 10 system phoning home too many hints regarding that the users are accessing their site. Therefore, the pirate administrators have started blocking Windows 10 users from accessing the BitTorrent trackers that the sites host. The first ones to hit the alarm button were iTS, which have posted a statement and started redirecting Windows 10 users to a YouTube video called Windows 10 is a Tool to Spy on Everything You Do. Additionally, according to TorrentFreak, two other similar dark web torrent trackers are also considering following suit. "As we all know, Microsoft recently released Windows 10. You as a member should know, that we as a site are thinking about banning the OS from FSC," said one of the FSC staff. Likewise, in a message to their users, a BB admin said something similar: "We have also found [Windows 10] will be gathering information on users' P2P use to be shared with anti piracy group."
Not in the summary:
"The anti-piracy group the pirate site admins are referring to is MarkMonitor, a US company that specializes in online corporate identity protection, one that is known to have work with the MPAA in protecting its copyrighted materials, but one that has also worked with Microsoft in the past, to protect Windows users from online identity theft and scam campaigns."
You may wanna check your list of updates. Microsoft has already added a bunch of telemetry tools in the guise of "important updates".
The telemetry in Windows 10 bypasses the hosts file. You'd need an external firewall. The problem with that is that Windows (reportedly) throws a fit and stops working if you block off certain addresses.
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
The thing is, it's not just Windows 10. If you regularly update your machines, Microsoft has already added additional telemetry tools to Windows 7 and 8.
http://www.infoworld.com/artic...
What really sucks for me is that I *like* Windows 10. I run it in a VM on my Mac, and I've noticed an immediate performance improvement, especially with boot ups.
But from all the media reports, it looks like Windows 10 is turning into a conspiracy theorists bukake dream. And unless there is very little backlash to this, I can see Microsoft easily porting the rest of their privacy invading tools to their previous OSes.
In certain industries, you use what the vendors are willing to provide, or you don't stay in business. If the vendor only supports Windows, you use Windows. Period.
As an example, the plant where I work relies heavily on Allen-Bradley Rockwell Software for automation and control. There is no viable alternative on a non-Windows platform, from either a practical or a regulatory perspective. Rockwell Software barely supports 64-bit Windows. They are not likely to make any effort to run on Linux, and sure as heck won't license there software for use under Wine.
It appears these updates are usage trackers:
KB 2952664
KB 3022345
This is the core Windows 10 update nagware:
KB 3035583
These updates should be permanently removed and ignored on well-run systems.
What other updates should be removed and banned from Windows 7/8 in the interest of privacy?
Win10 enterprise has the no telemetry option for a reason.