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Microsoft Shares Windows 10 Telemetry Data With Third Parties (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: To help with the smooth running of Windows 10, and to get an idea of how users interact with the operating system, Microsoft collects telemetry data, which includes information on the device Windows 10 is running on, a list of installed apps, crash dumps, and more. Telemetry data recorded by Windows 10 is, in a nutshell, just technical information about the device the OS is on, and how Windows and any installed software is performing, but it can occasionally include personal information. If you're worried about that, the news that Microsoft is sharing telemetry data with third parties might concern you. Microsoft recently struck a deal with security firm FireEye to provide access to Windows 10 telemetry data, in exchange for having FireEye's iSIGHT Threat Intelligence technology included in its Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service. WDATP is an enterprise security product that helps enterprises detect, investigate, and respond to advanced attacks on their networks and is different from the free version of Windows Defender. The upsides of the deal are obvious for both Microsoft and FireEye, and enterprise customers will certainly benefit from the partnership. It's not known exactly what data Microsoft has made available to FireEye, but in a detailed TechNet article on its telemetry gathering the software giant originally said: "Microsoft may share business reports with OEMs and third party partners that include aggregated and anonymized telemetry information. Data-sharing decisions are made by an internal team including privacy, legal, and data management."
I was a software engineer in Windows Client, back in the good old Vista days. Microsoft's telemetry relies on Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), the lowest latency logging mechanism possible in the operating system, and the ETL files produced therein are usually post-processed by a performance analyst or software engineer to review timing, call stack, and memory utilization. Older OS tools like Dr. Watson were components of the Windows Customer Experience Program, and we would get crash dumps and other data from people who opted in.
Once, I wanted to look directly at a willing customer's machine remotely so I could gather some more information and do a debugging session. Remember, this was a willing customer who volunteered for this in his crash report. To do this, I had to go to a special training class on privacy and get permission from my management chain, just to look at the crash dump info.
This except is from Microsoft's current telemetry policy, found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/windows/manage/configure-windows-telemetry-in-your-organization
These are the same policies we had to follow then. We really had to follow them, or be fired. It's real.
However, before more data is gathered, Microsoft’s privacy governance team, including privacy and other subject matter experts, must approve the diagnostics request made by a Microsoft engineer. If the request is approved, Microsoft engineers can use the following capabilities to get the information:
Ability to run a limited, pre-approved list of Microsoft certified diagnostic tools, such as msinfo32.exe, powercfg.exe, and dxdiag.exe.
Ability to get registry keys.
All crash dump types, including heap dumps and full dumps.
I found it funny that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update can't install on any of my systems at home because the updater thinks my SSD's are USB sticks and it won't install on USB sticks.
That's a problem with the firmware on SSD's that were released to work with the Windows 7 broken SSD support. SP1 fixed SSD support unfortunately the workaround used by the SSD manufacturers for pre SP1 made them appear as removable devices. Most SSD manufacturers released firmware updates to address the issue. I would check to see if there are firmware updates for yours even if you don't intend to upgrade to windows 10.
Except that's not true (unless Microsoft has changed their minds again).
The lowest Microsoft will permit you to go is Basic unless you are using Enterprise Edition.