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Even With Telemetry Disabled, Windows 10 Talks To Dozens of Microsoft Servers (voat.co)
An esteemed reader writes: Curious about the various telemetry and personal information being collected by Windows 10, one user installed Windows 10 Enterprise and disabled all of the telemetry and reporting options. Then he configured his router to log all the connections that happened anyway. Even after opting out wherever possible, his firewall captured Windows making around 4,000 connection attempts to 93 different IP addresses during an 8 hour period, with most of those IPs controlled by Microsoft. Even the enterprise version of Windows 10 is checking in with Redmond when you tell it not to — and it's doing so frequently.
I'm not sure how any company or business that deals with information that requires security by law could be using Windows 10. It would seem that defense contractors, law enforcement, financial and tax services as well as anyone subject to hippa laws would be in default automatically because what is sent is not documented.
Maybe it is time for a class action or something to get it turned off for real.
In fairness, with enough resources, Vista didn't suck nearly as bad as people said it did .. I ran it on a quad core machine with 8GB of RAM until a year ago, and it was just fine.
But Microsoft has gone from "Vista sucks and Windows 8 was kind of annoying" to "actively not trustworthy" in this -- this is saying "we don't give a crap about what you are willing to let us do, we're going to do it anyway".
Sorry, but, no way this is anything but Microsoft deciding they'll get your data no matter your opinion.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Microsoft has pretty clearly telegraphed they don't give a shit about what the people who own the machines want, and they're going to do whatever the fuck they want.
And this is it in a nutshell. Microsoft is going to do whatever they want with your PC, and that's that.
I just installed Linux Mint as a test to see how it works, and so far I'm liking it a lot. I was driven to do this by the near-certainty that MS will force Win 10 on home users like me no matter what they do or don't want, and no matter what we "opt-out" of.
It's only a matter of time, and short of completely disconnecting my PC from the net, I don't see how I can prevent them from doing a stealth or forced upgrade. If I manage to completely block all their servers (unlikely) my guess is that my 100% legal copy of Win 7 will just stop working one day and won't function again until I "upgrade".
So I may be switching to Linux Mint sooner that I thought, but so far Mint seems to be great, super simple to install and it runs like a champ. And with Wine I can use some of the little Windows apps that I've grown dependent on until I find replacements for them.
So keep pushing Microsoft, you'll push me right over to Linux.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So I can log into a terminal session on my home router. The router also supports blocking hosts by either IP address or by hostname. Somewhere on it those hosts must be in a config file, and I can probably just edit that file via a console. This means I can run a script. A script that can periodically check for an updated list of hosts to block. Either I or someone else can maintain such a list.
This list puts all their shit out of business. This is the way of the future then. I look forward to the new generation of broadband modems coming out to support blocklist technology exactly for this purpose: To block evil companies from spying on and tracking us.
My guess is, if the author were to carefully track this, that eventually it will be noticed that, following upcoming system updates to Windows, that the hosts he has listed will magically change and there will be new ones. Microsoft and its evil cohorts can easily shuffle around IP addresses in response to this. So running a blocklist filter on home broadband modems/routers is the way to go now for the future of privacy.
> Will Win10 stop working?
Not yet it won't. That's the game the Windows users are playing right now- a bunch of firewall settings. Some data is passed ignoring hosts files, so there's talk about an application firewall so you can keep using Windows.
Of course, all Microsoft has to do is a throw Switch-A and everything changes and all those guys have to change their block settings, or throw Switch-B and your system stops working if it hasn't spied on you in a while.
But in the meantime, Windows users are so desperate that they are basically considering building and using a guard.
I want a UI that looks like it was ripped out of windows nt.
and is light weight enough to handle 10 file windows in under 100MB of ram.
I want my os to run my programs and work with my existing equipment.
I don't however have any need for the os to have pretty graphics and flashy transitions.
At work our machines run one program only the mouse is only used twice a day once to start the program and once to shut the computer down at the end of the day.
The program runs full screen so all of the terminals look identical regardless of the underlying os.
If we actually closed at the same time each day with minimal scripting we could eliminate the mouse entirely.
If your at home and you play a game most of those run full screen too so all the ui needs to be is easy to use, stable and lightweight.
Last I looked at ubuntu they had switched to this flashy graphic designed for touch screen gnome ui.
I don't feel that's better than win 7. Gnome didn't used to look flashy that was KDE's thing but now they both look flashy what happened?
Keep in mind walmart largest retailer in the country is still today using IBM checkout systems. Why? because K.I.S.S
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
While I'm right there with you in the frustration, and I fully despise the spying shit, I do understand why MS wouldnt want many flavors of their OS out in the wild. It's more things to patch, update, and support.
Yes, I get that, and I totally understand the reasons why they want to kill off all the older versions. That said, however, I like Win 7 and I'd like to keep using it. It works very well for me and I see no reason to change or upgrade at this time, especially if it's going to be forced on me. I'd bet that it will break some of my devices (scanners and other peripherals) and getting drivers for older gear for Win 10 is probably going to be impossible.
Is HP or Canon or Samsung going to take the time to write drivers for gear that's 5 years old but still works perfectly? Probably not, which means I'll have to buy new stuff just to stay at the same level of capability.
That's not even factoring in the telemetry, which by all reports seems to be incredibly invasive. I don't want my PC to be a data point for Microsoft's global analytics program.
Sorry, Microsoft, you're one "upgrade" away from losing me as a user forever. The day I wake up and find that they've turned my PC into a Win 10 box or borked it until I upgrade, it's over. Like I said, so far Linux Mint has been an ideal solution for me- it works. It does what I need. It was easy to install. It runs all of the applications I typically need. And it doesn't report every *&$%#! keystroke and web page back to Microsoft.
Seriously, I'm liking Mint so much that I may switch regardless of whether they force an upgrade on me or not. Yes, I'm sure there will be some pain as I scrounge about for stuff like a decent graphics program and a few other tools, but for me personally there's nothing I'm using that can't be replaced with a Linux alternative. Hell, half the stuff I use is web-based so most of it won't even be an issue.
I need a good text and programming editor. I need a decent FTP/SFTP program. I need a replacement for a regex tool called "Regex Coach", a replacement for a text search & replace tool called BKReplacem, a good DVD/CD burner, a modest audio editor, and that's about it. Everything else is already there as far as I can see. I'm looking for their replacements right now (and I'd welcome any suggestions you all may have).
So go ahead, Microsoft, pull that trigger. See what happens next. My PC will drop off of your radar, never to be seen again.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Alright let's stop and just look what you wrote?
Now imagine what Joe Six pack owned in 2006? Probably a 1 core Pentium 4 with 512 megs of ram. Maybe a geek would own 1 gig and an athlonxp for a high end system middle 2000s as that is what I owned. I was helping an exgf reimage her laptop yesterday which was an AMD a4 1250 APU ssslllloooowww 1 gig netbook 1/3 the speed of an atom.
No kidding. But here is the kicker I sent to cpuboss.com to see how slow that thing was if 3 of them are as fast as a cell phone. The Pentium IV was slower. Literally opening a webpage took 100 cpu and 20 seconds to load if it had ajax. Outlook com is what slowed it.
That my friend was what people experienced Vista on??! Also the kernels got smaller and lighter since. 7 to 8 ran better.
Needless to say I put gwx control panel to block 10 and put 8.1 with classic start. I told her not to upgrade as her identity was stolen once and 10 was more bloated for such limited hardware.
Windows 7 was a much better OS and could sleep properly with only using 2 gigs instead of 4.
http://saveie6.com/