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Windows Telemetry Rolls Out
ihtoit writes: Last week came the warning, now comes the roll out. One of the most most controversial aspects of Windows 10 is coming to Windows 7 and 8. Microsoft has released upgrades which enable the company to track what a user is doing. The updates – KB3075249, KB3080149 and KB3068708 – all add "customer experience and diagnostic telemetry" to the older versions. gHacks points out that the updates will ignore any previous user preferences reporting: "These four updates ignore existing user preferences stored in Windows 7 and Windows 8 (including any edits made to the Hosts file) and immediately starts exchanging user data with vortex-win.data.microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com."
I know, I am crazy, I actually READ the article. And this info is in there:
Now they have been launched the positive news is KB3075249 and KB3080149 have been classed as ‘Optional’ in Windows Update. This means they won’t install without Windows 7 and Windows 8 users giving them express permission to do so (a key difference to Windows 10).
On the flip side KB3068708 is classified as ‘Recommended’ which means Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs with Windows Update set to automatic will install it by default. That said for the update to appear in the first place you will need to be a participant in Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program, an opt-in program which already has you agreeing to send user data to the company.
Yup. Or as hosts entries in your router, assuming it serves DNS up.
The article says they ignore /etc/hosts, but that is on the Windows PC itself. A wifi router running dd-wrt and using dnsmasq reads the hosts file of the router before passing queries on up the chain.
Go to the Administrative tab, then the Commands sub-tab and enter:
echo "127.0.0.2 vortex-win.data.microsoft.com settings-win.data.microsoft.com" >> /etc/hosts
Then run the command. Of course, this is assuming your DNS entries on your PCs are set to your local router and not something else like Google's DNS or your ISP's DNS.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
IMPORTANT ONE IS GROUP POLICY (gpedit.msc):
Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System
Internet Communication Management, Internet Communication Settings
ENABLE (to turn it on, it is a disabler)
"Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program"
---
TO REMOVE THE BOGUS OPTIONAL TELEMETRY HOTFIXES MANUALLY:
Open command prompt
Type powershell
issue these commands
---
TO SEE WHAT ONES ARE INSTALLED:
get-hotfix -id KB3035583, KB2952664,KB2976978,KB3021917,KB3044374,KB2990214
---
TO UNINSTALL THEM (these for sure, per url next below):
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /uninstall /kb:2952664 /uninstall /kb:2976978 /uninstall /kb:3021917 /uninstall /kb:3044374 /uninstall /kb:2990214
wusa
wusa
wusa
wusa
wusa
per http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/...
---
DESCRIPTIONS OF EACH (these uninstalled properly):
KB3068708 (Telemetry)
KB3075249 (Telemetry)
KB3080149 (Telemetry)
KB3022345 (Telemetry)
KB2977759 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparatioon + Telemetry)
KB3035583 (Windows 10 upgrade preparation)
---
I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE INITIALLY SINCE I HAD IE11 installed (PROBABLY ONES FOR IE9/10/11):
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB2505438
* KB2670838 (See IE 9/10/11 notes below)
KB3044374
KB2990214 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
KB2505438 (Although it claims to fix performance issues, it often breaks fonts)
KB2976978 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
---
I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE (*PRIOR* TO PULLING KB2670838 which is IE 11):
* KB2670838 (This update often breaks AERO on Windows 7 and makes some fonts on websites fuzzy. A Windows 7 specific update only
(do not install IE10 or 11 otherwise it will be bundled with them, IE9 is the max version you should install to avoid this).
THESE RE-APPEAR AFTER UNINSTALLING IE11 RIGHT ON RESTARTING & CHECKING WINDOWS UPDATE:
* KB2952664 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3068708 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3092627 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
---
run cmd as administrator
sc stop Diagtrack
sc delete Diagtrack
---
*Task Scheduler Library:
Everything under "Application Experience"
Everything under "Autochk"
Everything under "Customer Experience Improvement Program"
Under "Disk Diagnostic" only the "Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector"
Under "Maintenance" "WinSAT"
"Media Center" and click the "status" column, then select all non-disabled entries and disable them.
*services.msc:
"Remote Registry" to "Disabled" instead of "Manual".
APK
P.S.=> And "There ya go"... apk
Citations or screenshots please. I have Win10 on three PCs I use all the time and have not seen any of the bs you're talking about.
You're lucky. For those not so lucky, they can Google how to disable some of the bad behaviors.
As a freebie, here's how you disable the Office 365 advertising in Windows 10:
Start > Settings > System > Notifications & actions > Scroll down to "Show notifications from these apps" > Get Office > Off.
Microsoft knows non-technical people aren't likely to find and disable this kind of obnoxious behavior, so they'll be stuck with obnoxious "Get Office 365!" notifications forever. As well as the other things I mentioned.
I was looking at this recently; this should turn off and block much of it:
Turn off CEIP, Uninstall updates, and then hide telemetry updates to prevent re-install:
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
Note: my "CEIP" setting was opted-out, but I still received two of those updates. So the "you don't get these updates if you're not in CEIP" assertions are incorrect, at least in my case.
Turn off CEIP reporting services:
https://pubs.vmware.com/view-5...
I kept having that "Update Windows 10" (GWXUX) service crash, so I turned it off using the registry update at the end of this article, leaving myself the opportunity to reverse the process and upgrade later if desired:
http://www.howtogeek.com/21885...
If you want to block windows 10 telemetry using a quick and dirty private DNS server, along with ad and malware blocking, install dnsmasq on a computer (maybe a raspberry pi if you're going for cheap, I'm using a VM on a test bed computer in bridged mode for this experiment): ...and block using an amalgamation of HOSTS files from here:
https://www.linux.com/learn/tu...
https://github.com/StevenBlack...
It's a python script that gets a few HOSTS files on the net and de-duplicates them into a mega crap-blocker list. The resulting list includes tens of thousands of DNS lookups that will be blocked at the perimeter of your network, so it could cause some web pages or software to break they depend on sites blocked by these lists. You can prepare you own windows 10 specific HOSTS file using entries from http://someonewhocares.org/hos... and those listed in articles about this issue if you feel paranoid. Windows can side-step your hosts file, but not your DNS server!
Stating the obvious: you'll want to leave the quick and dirty DNS behind your firewall/router, not expose it to the Internet.
Your options are limited if you can't trust the network stack in the OS to do your bidding. One relatively safe way might be to block direct connectivity at the router and set up a secure proxy on the lan for use by non-microsoft browsers and anything else that needs connectivity. Windows won't have direct net access but firefox will work fine. Of course, this would require the rest of your networked software to support the secure proxy as well (most games don't for instance).
Otherwise, the dns and ip blocks could be defeated at any time with new updates regardless if done in etc/hosts or on the router.
Windows has been bypassing hosts since at least 2000 for Windows Update. Makes sense, don't want a DNS hijack to break that. What worries me is that they feel the need to protect telemetry in this way.
What is in this data that needs protecting?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Pretty sure the commentor is talking about the live tiles that are installed and active by default. I didn't take kindly to tiles showing me Justin Beiber tweets and Candy Crush Saga.
Citations or screenshots please. I have Win10 on three PCs I use all the time and have not seen any of the bs you're talking about.
Is three citations enough? Or do you require more?
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
http://www.howtogeek.com/22632...
http://www.addictivetips.com/w...
Microsoft delivered exactly what people wanted. They wanted Windows 10's data collection to match previous versions of Windows, so Microsoft accommodated them.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Nope.
I installed the pro edition via the upgrade offer from Win7. I got the "Get Office" app preinstalled, and it periodically advertises Office 365.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
> Citations or screenshots please.
Fuck off citation-needer AC shill. It is well documented that these things are an absolute shit parade. At this point, the burden of proof is on any apologists.
But, here's some articles, shillfuck!
The lockscreen assault...
http://www.extremetech.com/com...
http://www.theverge.com/2015/4...
OP claimed that he's getting advertised Office. You claim he needs proof. While this debate rages, here's tutorial on how to make Microsoft STOP advertising Office. Which, of fucking COURSE it does.
http://www.howtogeek.com/22632...
Presumably, the "Get Skype" app is the one to disable to stop the Skype stuff he complains about.
Oh, and if you NEED Skype, here's how to disable ads in Skype. Uh, this worked a year ago? I don't know if it is current.
http://community.skype.com/t5/...
Shills shilling, shills shilling, shills shilling.....
Do you already have a version of Office? Maybe it only nags those without a copy installed. I have Win 10 on multiple laptops. It took a month or two, but surely enough -- office 365 pop up in the notifications tray on all of them. I turned off those notifications the second they started. It could have been from an update (wouldn't be the first time they put a nag notification on my tray -- that's how I got Win10 to start with from the Win8 upgrade nag tray icon)