Slashdot Mirror
How To Keep Microsoft's Nose Out of Your Personal Data In Windows 10
MojoKid writes: Amid the privacy concerns and arguably invasive nature of Microsoft's Windows 10 regarding user information, it's no surprise that details on how to minimize leaks as much as possible are often requested by users who have recently made the jump to the new operating system. If you are using Windows 10, or plan to upgrade soon, it's worth bearing in mind a number of privacy-related options that are available, even during the installation/upgrade. If you are already running the OS and forgot to turn them off during installation (or didn't even see them), they can be accessed via the Settings menu on the start menu, and then selecting Privacy from the pop-up menu. Among these menus are a plethora of options regarding what data can be gathered about you. It's worth noting, however, that changing any of these options may disable various OS related services, namely Cortana, as Microsoft's digital assistant has it tendrils buried deep.
"How To Keep Microsoft's Nose Out of Your Personal Data In Windows 10"
How about a new HOSTS file? APK?
don't install the damm thing!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Just install Linux.
You're welcome.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yes, I can see the options during the setup. Years of updating Java have trained me to uncheck everything.
Anyway that is old news.
We want to know more about the things you can not set in the options.
Ways to prevent forced updates?
Remove hidden services?
If the default is "on" , what if a bug in the code resets the setting or ignores the setting. Are there any indicators that this information is going out? Can there be any indicators? What is the amount of encrypted traffic going out from the system to microsoft? Any way to look at what is being sent at any point in time? Does it ever log what was sent? Can it?
It actually is that big a deal. It is just that the MS PR department managed to convince some clueless people that what they do is harmless. It is not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
it's funny that considering how "deep" Cortana is, it gets utterly confused and useless when I say "Cortana start microsoft word".
I'm just waiting for the coffee table book now.
Purportedly M$ is also issuing updates to Win7/8 that would mirror Win10 behavior. You want out? Install Linux (or FreeBSD)
I've been with windows for close to two decades.
But I'm probably going to either use an older windows box or just bite the bullet and go to linux for my "real" machine. I might use windows for a gaming machine.
I've used openoffice then libre office for years now and no longer even occasionally dip back into Word.
I've disliked the tighter microsoft email/social account integration for a while now.
I really dislike what I'm hearing about the new o/s. I stopped using facebook because of similar actions.
it's like being fabulously wealthy isn't enough. If windows 10 goes forward as is, I probably won't go with it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Was when I was looking at the app store, but it said I had to log in to my microsoft account to use any of the apps. OK, logged in with my hotmail account which has a long complex password, which was copy/pasted with my password manager. I turn my PC off for the night, next day it won't take my usual password because it's now not a local machine logon, but is my microsoft logon, which I can't fill in because I can't open my password manager. Luckily I backup the keepass data to a USB flashdrive, so I fire up my other real OS which is linux so I can write down the frigging password to get the windows pile of shit logged back in. Screw MS... wiping the drive and installing linux.
To disable forced updates, go into Services and set Windows Update to Disabled. Then put an icon for Services on the task bar
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
If you don't think having integrated spyware, adverts and forced updates in your OS is "not that big a deal", then you are a fucking moron.
The thing that pisses me off about Windows 10 is the apparent lack of control the user has with their own machine. Exhibit A: http://www.tenforums.com/attac...
Check out the real-time protection option. "You can turn it off temporarily, but if it's off for a while, we'll turn it back on automatically." What bullshit is that? First, it doesn't tell you what it constitutes as "a while". A day? A week? A month? Second, the fact that it believes that power users are extinct and might have an edge-case for permanently disabling it is ridiculous. It's based off of Microsoft Security Essentials, and I disabled the real-time protection when installed on Win 7 on my netbook because it was just too much for the poor little Atom processor to deal with. If I needed to scan something, I'd do it on-demand. Here, I have no permanent solution because Windows 10 thinks it knows better than my situation.
Windows 10 is peppered with many other areas which make me feel less in control than I used to. I know that I can't have full control when running a proprietary system, but it's all about degrees, and Win 10 feels far less catered for power users than Win 7.
From all the articles I've read about Windows 10, it looks like there are quite a number of settings that must be made to stop all that "phone home" behavior.
The number of changes is large enough so that I don't trust myself to do them all by clicking various GUI screens. I'll inevitably miss one or get it wrong -- which is unacceptable when privacy and security are at stake.
Does anyone know of any software yet that fixes Windows 10's abuses using a single-step installer?
Couple of days of reading?, like you could just click the damn "Privacy options" link at install time and uncheck the 4 or 5 options.
Two major problems with that:
1) There aren't options to disable all of the spyware in Windows 10.
2) Even when you "disable" the options that you are graciously allowed to by Microsoft on your own PC, it still sends that data anyway.
If you knew how to use a packet analyser, you could see that for yourself instead of posting comments that reveal what a clueless idiot you are.
It is a big deal. However some people have been brainwashed into not caring about privacy. "Oh, it's just for providing a better customer experience, I'm all for that!", or "I love advertising, especially when it's targeted!", or "I like things in the clouds, especially the bunny shaped ones", or "when has Microsoft ever been evil?"
Can you trust that they are being turned off? Microsoft does not have a good track record when it comes to telling the truth. Even after turning off those options it seems that Windows 10 is still transmitting a lot of data that appears to be telemetry. Even if this is purely benign data, it is not their network and it is not free so they should not transmit anything without the user's explicit permission.
I think the problem is that MS isn't being completely clear as to what it is they're collecting or why they're collecting it. Take those seven or eight updates to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that added forced telemetry collection. No one really knows what it is those things are collecting - MS's own update really doesn't say much other than "It's information needed to ease the transition between Windows 7 or 8.1 and Windows 10" and "It's for customer experience improvements". On top of this, all of the telemetry updates were marked as "Important" in Windows Update, meaning that they'll be automatically installed on most update configurations.
If MS really had some reason to do this, they should have said exactly what it is they were collecting and why from the get-go, and also had a clear opt-out provision. Failing to do this is what's sparking a lot of paranoia - I've heard everything from "MS's telemetry service is logging everything you type and sending it to MS to improve autocorrect functionality" to "MS is actively recording input from attached webcams and microphones and sending it to MS servers".
I think if MS were to put out a well-thought out announcement telling people why it is they're doing this, a lot of the paranoia would go away.
... http://www.linuxmint.com/
Just because you kill a feature in 'settings' doesnt mean that they have to oblige. You can't see the code so you cannot be sure if changing the settings actually changes anything
They're going to market you to advertisers and sell their customer lists, if you ever get an app (don't do this!) they'll let the app makers know what similar apps you have purchased. Their goal is to out-google Google, and out-apple Apple. They know they're behind in the customer monetization game and are trying to leapfrog past the others. Windows is in a decline as the casual users are moving to phones and tablets so Microsoft is desperate here.
Just look at Windows 8, the whole thing from top to bottom that they marketed was purely about getting eyeballs to their useless store and getting users to sign up with Microsoft ID accounts. When beta users figured out how to bypass the Metro stuff and go straight to the usable desktop, the very next patch disabled this ability because their goal was to get everyone to that start screen where the monetization starts. Sure they fired the VP in charge of Windows after this, but are you really sure all the decision makers who pushed for that idea are really reformed?
Thanks Microsoft! Windows 10 gives all the users that were thinking of trying Linux an obvious incentive to make the switch!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
My wife has a small photography business, and Photoshop and Lightroom are huge aspects of her photo editing workflow. She's invested untold hours building up skills in them, and that proficiency really pays off in terms of the quality and speed of her editing work.
Right now she edits on our Windows 7 box. I'm almost dead set against us using Windows 10 because of this privacy crap (and now I apparently have to try undoing the telemetry those assholes snuck into Windows 7.)
I feel caught between a rock and a hard place, because switching to a Mac would be an unwelcome expense for us. Also an business risk, since I can cheaply repair or upgrade a PC, but I have not expectation of being able to do that on a Mac. So if a Mac craps out near one of her deadlines, I'm not confident that I can get it (or a replacement) online as fast as we really want.
I'm just amazed at how hard Microsoft is working to drive us away. They've gone from being a reasonable partner for our kind of business (Windows 7), to being one of our largest sources of medium- and long-term risk. They're now making our decision to use Windows for her business, into a strategic mistake.
I really hope Adobe comes up with some decent solution to people in our shoes. If they have a Linux port of Creative Suite in their back pocket, this would be a dandy time to start selling it.
The problem here is the company behind the OS and their Orwellian privacy ideas.
You can block entire IP ranges, disable services and smoulder half the registry. If they are serious about collecting this information, expect CDN servers to start taking up slack in random cities, small server providers way outside the firing line. They will find a way to get past your firewall restrictions, until you're left with nothing but an isolated machine.
You can disable and remove all you want from the core system, if you're using Windows Updates, they've won. The regular user won't have the know how to reverse engineer every update, or won't keep in the loop on critical security updates to make sure he at least turns Windows Update on once. Not everyone will be running a Enterprise version, apart from actual corporate and pirate users.
They have the ability to modify anything they want via WU. How long will your sanity last battling against the Microsoft gestalt?
This needs to be solved in a court, in a way that can make an impact on a multinational company. If not, then you're just living on a prayer, hoping that you've figured out every packet that's leaving the machine.