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Microsoft Monitoring How Long You Use Windows 10 (betanews.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the keeping-track-of-your-hours dept.

Mark Wilson writes: The various privacy concerns surrounding Windows 10 have received a lot of coverage in the media, but it seems that there are ever more secrets coming to light. The Threshold 2 Update did nothing to curtail privacy invasion, and the latest Windows 10 installation figures show that Microsoft is also monitoring how long people are using the operating system. This might seem like a slightly strange statistic for Microsoft to keep track of, but the company knows how long, collectively, Windows 10 has been running on computers around the world. To have reached this figure (11 billion hours in December, apparently) Microsoft must have been logging individuals' usage times. Intrigued, we contacted Microsoft to find out what on earth is going on.

2 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Or maybe they guessed by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft is also monitoring how long people are using the operating system.

    Wow. That sounds like a pretty certain statement of fact...

    Microsoft must have been logging individuals' usage times

    That sounds less certain.

    Maybe they simply know when people installed Windows 10 and what the average computer use per day is (from their own studies), and, actually, "11 billion hours" is not meant to be taken as particularly accurate.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  2. It takes MEMORY SNAPSHOTS FFS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Monitoring how long people use Windows 10?? Is that the best you could do?

    It takes snapshots of memory, which is a way of getting passwords for third party apps, and will also get bits of documents you're working on.
    It watches the programs you run, and sends those details.
    It sends your browser history to Microsoft.

    It sends you disk encryption keys to Microsoft, this seems to have been an FBI request from 2012.
    https://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/09/13/encryption-backdoor-by-fbi.aspx
    It does this for everyone, not just Americans subject to FBIs new found law making capabilities.

    For pen enabled devices it sends your handwriting.
    It lies to you, you turn "off" these diagnositic surveillance feature and it just SLIGHTLY reduces the data its sending!
    It's turn on full by default and automatically on at upgrades.

    This is *before* we get into Cortana's data grab.