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Microsoft Removes Wi-Fi Sense Feature From Windows 10 Which Shared Your Wi-Fi Password

Microsoft says it has removed the controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature that shared a user's password with their friends and people in the contact list. "We have removed the Wi-Fi Sense feature that allows you to share Wi-Fi networks with your contacts and to be automatically connected to networks shared by your contacts," says Microsoft's Gabe Aul. "The cost of updating the code to keep this feature working combined with low usage and low demand made this not worth further investment." Ben Woods, writing for The Next Web: The feature allows you to share Wi-Fi login information with friends automatically via your contacts, however it got a controversial reception due to privacy implications. Do you really want to share your Wi-Fi codes with everyone in your contacts? No, of course not. It seems that was the general response from users too, so that option will be removed in the upcoming Windows 10 Insider Preview update, Microsoft says. Public Wi-Fi login info will remain in the app though.

9 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about adding back ip over firewire? by wicka_wicka · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is why I love Slashdot. People (like you) are obsessed with comically niche features like IP over Firewire, which is utterly irrelevant, and yet you're too blind to reality to realize it. The last time I saw a thread complaining about Windows there was a similar post saying Windows absolutely MUST include built-in ssh. It's like you people are being willfully ignorant of how the end-user market actually works.

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  2. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > How about you just don't fucking buy it and stop whining.

    Well, Windows 10 has been pretty clever about sneaking into machines and installing itself, in the process downgrading your "pro" 7 install to a "home" one. So some victims of Windows 10 didn't consent, they were tricked.

    If you used Windows 7 (a pretty good OS!), you might expect that, at some point, Microsoft would make another good OS. It's reasonable to be disappointed or even angry that they have not.

    And you said it yourself- Microsoft is obsessed with capturing what you do and sending it to their servers. This means that someone must obviously care what people are doing on computers, because there is such a huge pressure to make that happen.

    I can't disagree with your overall point though: the solution is to stop using Windows. If Windows users continue to put up with anything, then "anything" is exactly what they will get.

  3. Windows 10 can just hack out features? by LichtSpektren · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sorry, but what if (that's a big "IF" there but bear with me) I bought Windows 10 because I *wanted* this particular feature? Microsoft is just going to "update" it out anyway?

    I understand Windows 10 is more of a rolling release than previous versions were, but this is insane. Are they going to "update" out things that I bought from the Windows Store because they weren't terribly popular as well? Imagine if you took your car in for maintenance and they took out your parking camera because nobody used it....

  4. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "but the fact of that matter is that this level of data reporting has been included in the three prior versions of Windows"

    You had the option to turn it off, dipshit. That's the whole fucking point.

  5. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... the fact of that matter is that this level of data reporting has been included in the three prior versions of Windows.

    [citation_needed]

    The telemetry nonsense was included in Windows 10 and then backported to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 not all that long ago. That was also a scuzzy move, and implying that the tracking's been there all along and nobody cared is flat out wrong.

  6. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by cfalcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > Did you complain about the so-called telemetry in Vista, 7, or 8?

    Windows 7 and 8 didn't have it 10-style until 10 launched. It is possible to run 7 without telemetry, and out of the box, 7 doesn't have it. So if people aren't complaining about it, it is ultimately because it doesn't exist. Certainly not the way it does in 10.

    > Do you complain about it Android?

    I'm pretty sure you can turn it off in Android. I know you can in ios. More importantly, phones are generally poor at privacy, because they must, by nature, broadcast your location constantly. To make this worse, there's no truly open phone.

    But just because phones suck doesn't mean desktops should. This does not excuse Microsoft's behavior in Windows 10. Windows 10 runs on a real machine, it is far more capable than a phone, and you could easily have most or all of your electronic life in there, and many do. It is disgusting to switch that to some kind of system that rings the mothership everytime you launch notepad, such that some profile about you exists for how you edit your damned files.

  7. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Informative? Really mods? you DO know they didn't start shoving that telemetry shit until AFTER Windows 10 flatlined, yes? And that its dead simple to remove the telemetry from Win 7/8/8.1 and can be done with a simple batch file, yes? And that with Windows 10 its impossible to get it to stop leaking data, that even the pirates have failed to be able to strip enough from that Bonzi Buddy of an OS to get it to STFU, you DO know this...yes?

    As for the other poster who called this koolaid drinker I'm responding to a shill? Look at the posting history before throwing around shill, as this one is obviously just a raging fanboy, no different than that Appletard I ran into here that still swears that "Apples don't get viruses" because his definition of a virus is so fucking narrow that no malware written past 1992 would pass, or the FOSSie that swears Linux is growing on the desktop and then when you provide the latest desktop stats starts talking about routers....he has guzzled the koolaid, can't admit he's been buttfucked by spyware, so will furiously wave his little winflag until his wrists break.

    The difference between a shill and a fanboy is a BIG fucking difference and why shill shouldn't be thrown around lightly, shills are professionals sent to signaljam communication channels with propaganda, fanboys are just flag wavers for certain products. if you have trouble spotting the difference? Go look up the articles from this site that were tearing into the Metro UI when Win 8 was first shat out and you'll find plenty of actual shill posts. For those that are too lazy shills 1.- Either have new accounts or old accounts that are ONLY used when a company they are shilling for has an article and the rest of the time are dormant, 2.- They stay on message in every post, no talk of anything other than the positives of brand X or the negatives of brand Y, 3.- They almost always tend to slip into "buzzword bingo" because middle management likes them to push the latest company horseshit so you see words and phrases nobody uses outside the boardroom like "vertical integration", "product synergy", and "positive user experience" so it ends up reading like a PPT.

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  8. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by pezpunk · · Score: 4, Informative

    The messages use a variety of misleading text. For example, my wife was tricked into upgrading to Windows10 because after clicking "no thanks" a certain number of times, it eventually asked her "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later?" and she clicked "later", meaning "never", but it installed it later that day, assuming it had permission.

    if you want to argue that TECHNICALLY she agreed to install it, fine, but in my opinion when a major avenue of adoption is tricking its users into installing it, that is pretty much the definition of evil.

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  9. Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? by pezpunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    haha, why are you bothering to defend this horrible practice?

    she did not want the upgrade. somehow it wound up on there. there are THOUSANDS of people with the same story. you want to write a book on why she TECHNICALLY must have agreed to install it at some point, fine, but the bottom line is she was tricked into installing it, and her story is an extremely common one. It's a shitty tactic and it's creating millions of brand new microsoft haters who previously didn't really have an opinion on the company.

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    i could live a little longer in this prison