France: Windows 10 Collects 'Excessive Personal Data', Issues Microsoft With Formal Warning (betanews.com)

France's National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) has ordered Microsoft to "stop collecting excessive data and tracking browsing by users without consent," adding that Microsoft must comply with the French Data Protection Act within next three months. BetaNews reports: In addition to this, the chair of CNIL has notified Microsoft that it needs to take "satisfactory measures to ensure the security and confidentiality of user data." The notice comes after numerous complaints about Windows 10, and a series of investigations by French authorities which revealed a number of failings on Microsoft's part. Microsoft is accused of not only gathering excessive data about users, but also irrelevant data. The CNIL points to Windows 10's telemetry service which gathers information about the apps users have installed and how long each is used for. The complaint is that "these data are not necessary for the operation of the service."

Comments

Three cheers for France

[LichtSpektren]

Most likely this will result in nothing, but I'm really, really hopeful that more countries will band together with France on this and hit Microsoft with some considerable sanctions, and switch off of Windows.

At the very least, this is something I can show to aggravating Microsoft fans/shills who are still in complete denial about the Orwellian nature of Windows 10.

So many shared (dynamic?) libraries

[fustakrakich]

apps users have installed and how long each is used for... is not irrelevant at all.

This is why, despite the apparent bloat, all applications should be completely self contained (portable, sandboxed, kinda) in their own folders (statically linked). So when you toss the folder, all traces of the app are gone with it. The old Macs were sort of like that. But with Microsoft, and Linux to an extent, they take a shotgun to your drive and then fill in the holes, splattering the application all over the place. It's kind of incestuous the way everything mixes up together. Apps that you don't even know about, running in the background cause many mysterious crashes. Sending the black box info to Microsoft has become necessary.

I just run a personalized live system now. Boots factory fresh every time.