Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Even With Telemetry Disabled, Windows 10 Talks To Dozens of Microsoft Servers (voat.co)

Posted by timothy on from the just-checking-up-on-you dept.

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.

11 of 583 comments (clear)

  1. Surprised? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is anybody surprised by this?

    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.

    That Microsoft is doing this is surprising in no way to me.

    Microsoft simply can't be trusted to not just do what they please here.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Surprised? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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...
    2. Re:Surprised? by sims+2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Performance wise yes with enough resources it was fine. But the oem's never sold stock systems with "enough" for the entire time vista was on the market.
      The low end systems today with windows 10 still don't have the power to make vista work as intended.
      Plus i've never encountered a windows vista system with more than 4GB stock memory most came with just 2GB or less.
      Windows 7 handles it a bit better. However there is currently a bug with the windows update process and any system with less than 4GB of memory will page out to disk while trying to install the second set of 124 updates. Msft hasn't admitted to that yet either though.

      Imho no one anywhere should even have the option to buy a new windows system with less than 4GB.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    3. Re:Surprised? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No I was surprised that they were able to stay in business after the launch of vista and the windows 8 disaster.

      Given the alternatives, I am not surprised people have stayed with them. Not, because the alternatives are bad, but because of the investment in terms of money and human skill sets.

      The real alternatives are MacOS and Linux, but they have their own issues. MacOS limits your hardware choice to one company, even if some may argue it is the 'more user friendly OS' and Linux still doesn't feel like it has the user facing polish it could have, then add to the fact that there doesn't seem to be a desktop UI that seems to have a strong continual investment in improving the experience that the lowest common denominator of uses would appreciate.

      The way I see it:
          - Linux is a great server OS, but weak on the desktop
          - MacOS is strong on the desktop, but weak on the server
          - Windows is average everywhere

      The above also indicates why I believe many companies choose Windows: it may not be the best at anything, but works well enough for must general use cases and allow companies to deal with one vendor and not need a high level of expertise.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    4. Re:Surprised? by Archtech · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a strange type of inertia that applies to large companies. Even when they completely screw the pooch, they tend to hang on for years and years after the fact.

      The bigger and more hierarchical the company, the greater the power of groupthink. It gets so that nobody who tells the truth and talks about the real facts and figures can survive within about five levels of management of the executive suite. Anyone who does immediately gets the bum's rush: incompetence, insubordination, bad judgement, blamed for someone else's incompetence or malfeasance, face doesn't fit, socially inept, politically incorrect... the list goes one for ever.

      Hence the top management never gets to hear the truth; everything they do is praised to the skies. And they start to think they are wonderful, too, until they hit the wall at 90 mph. Sorry to Godwin, but Hitler was one of the all-time classic examples. For years he kept firing the best generals until he was surrounded by mediocre yes-men; then he probably wondered why nobody could get anything done.

      If the truth were known, our corporations are infested by thousands of would-be Hitlers who lack what it takes even to be a petty tyrant.

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    5. Re:Surprised? by sims+2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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!
    6. Re:Surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Mac OS limits your hardware choice to one company, even if some may argue it is the 'more user friendly OS'

      I believe we can say Apple is not user's money friendly.

      Perhaps they don't want to risk their end-user business model; if they could create a separate company for the enterprise market, maybe that could work.

      > and Linux still doesn't feel like it has the user facing polish it could have

      Well, things can be improved, for sure, but I feel it's already on par with Mac OS. And it has been ahead of Windows for some time already...

      > then add to the fact that there doesn't seem to be a desktop UI that seems to have a strong continual investment in improving the experience that the lowest common denominator of uses would appreciate

      Unity is the classical counter-example here, but I must recognize Gnome serves LCD uses very well, though I'm really more a KDE|Xfce user.

      KDE has been shown to unsuspecting users as the new Windows interface and has been praised to no end. As I work with Windows 7, I must cringe everyday about how less friendly it is -- even if compared to Xfce.

      Recently, I've been testing KDE Plasma and found it _very_ good looking and polished; for comparison with Windows 10, I didn't try it yet, but from Youtube videos, Deepin looks on par if not better than W10 experience.

      > - Linux is a great server OS, but weak on the desktop

      Not really. I've been using since many years and it has constantly improved by leaps and bounds. I'm willing to admit it has some distance to cover regarding games, but that doesn't mind at all on the enterprise and I'd say most end-users are not gamers -- they really want to make homework, create pdfs, use spreadsheets, watch Internet videos, watch multimedia created with their smart phones... lots and lots of things which don't really require Windows.

      Linux has some really nice offerings on the desktop besides Ubuntu.

      > - MacOS is strong on the desktop, but weak on the server

      They seem not interested in servers. For the prices they charge, they also seem not interested in desktops; for them, it appears, it's a post-PC world.

      > - Windows is average everywhere
      > The above also indicates why I believe many companies choose Windows: it may not be the best at anything, but works well enough for must general use cases and allow companies to deal with one vendor and not need a high level of expertise.

      A valid point, no doubt. And therein lies the source of our problems: whatever Windows does, someone does that better. It's hard to live with a product perceived as inferior. But most know no other alternative. So Linux and BSD (Mac OS included) are not to blame, in fact...

      Another point is that companies really need someone to talk to. Apple has a lot of ground to cover on that regard (and I believe they probably should start a division if they ever want to be relevant here), Linux has some companies which don't care about the desktop (Red Hat), some that care (Canonical) and are slowly becoming relevant and others IMHO who are too small or somewhat undecided (e.g. SuSE).

      In my country, if I were a company, I bet I could easily hire someone for in-premises Windows desktop support; not so sure with Canonical. For servers, I bet it would be easy to get contacted by Red Hat, SuSE or Oracle.

      For end-users, things are surprisingly easier because: a. nobody gets good Windows support anyway and b. Linux support on the Internet is first-quality.

    7. Re:Surprised? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I read TFA, the guy is an idiot and screwed up the test.

      He configured the router to drop all connections. So Windows tries to access Windows Update, and it fails. So it tries the next server on the list, which fails. Strange, the interface has an IP address, try the next one...

      Windows also has this thing called the Out Of Box Experience. It's been there since at least 98, probably before. The first time you log in, it runs a few things so you can choose your preferences and set important stuff up. If you ignore it, it will carry on looking for updates from the Windows Store, updates for live tiles in the start menu etc.

      Every OS enables a load of crap by default. This is not surprising at all.

      Unlike the guy in TFA, I bothered to do this properly. If you disable everything and don't use Windows Store apps then the only traffic is to Windows Update.

      This is what happens when your source is a Reddit knock-off full of people who found Reddit too civil.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:Surprised? by fnj · · Score: 5, Informative

      For years [Hitler] kept firing the best generals

      I'm afraid you need a citation for this. At least up until the 20 July plot at which point defeat was inevitable anyway, the only significant case that comes to mind is the dismissal of Gerd von Rundstedt, and that was at least 50% a resignation. And Hitler quickly recognized his mistake and restored von Rundstedt.

      Now, Stalin was the real example. Shortly before WW2 he purged 5 of his 7 Field Marshalls, 13 of his 15 Army Commanders, 50 of 57 Corps Commanders, 154 of 186 Division Commanders, 16 of 16 Army Commissars, 25 oi 28 Corps Commissars and 8 of 9 Admirals. This was part of a great reign of terror that ripped through the USSR, in which 680,000 persons were executed by being shot in the head. Counting deaths in vicious "detention" in the Gulag and other consequential deaths, it is estimated that 1.2 million died.

      There was another purge in 1941, right during the German invasion.

      Many of those purged were "executed" - basically murdered.

      This insanity was one of the chief reasons why in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa the Germans cut through the USSR like a knife through butter, despite USSR superiority in numbers and advantage of defense.

  2. Blocking connections probably increases attempts by enosys · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you block connections, what would have normally been one successful connection can become many connection attempts. It's also possible that retries for the same thing would use different IP addresses. Someone needs to try an experiment like this without the blocking. A log of the data being transmitted would also be interesting. A lot of that is probably encrypted, but https monitoring via wildcard certificate MITM could capture some in decrypted form.

  3. The way to fight this by execthis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.