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Microsoft To Enhance User Privacy Controls In Upcoming Windows 10 Update (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: When Microsoft first launched Windows 10, it was generally well-received but also came saddled with a number of privacy concerns. It has taken quite a while for Microsoft to respond to these concerns in a meaningful way, but the company is finally proving that it's taking things seriously by detailing some enhanced privacy features coming to a future Windows 10 build. Microsoft is launching what it calls a (web-based) privacy dashboard, which lets you configure anything and everything about information that might be sent to back to the mothership. You can turn all tracking off, or pick and choose, if certain criteria don't concern you too much, like location or health activity, for example. Also, for fresh installs, you'll be given more specific privacy options so that you can feel confident from the get-go about the information you're sending Redmond's way. If you do decide to send any information Microsoft's way, the company promises that it won't use your information for the sake of targeted advertising.
If I'm using a web based console to change my local OS privacy settings, I'm guessing I'm telling some server that's already collecting the info just not to use the info it's already collecting.
1. Transgress 100 meters
2. Say you're sorry
3. Backtrack 75 meters.
4. Profit from more analytics gold than you know what to do with.
This is the same way horrific laws are passed. First they propose something completely absurd, then "compromise" with something slightly less absurd.
Eat shit Microsoft.
When Microsoft can figure out what the customers want, they jump to give it to them (note: average users are not necessarily customers, businesses are).
Remember when everyone was complaining about Microsoft's security issues? Microsoft actually did an admirable job cleaning up that leaky ship. They still have bugs, but compared to before, when running a Microsoft OS was basically an invitation to come inside.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
but the company is finally proving that it's taking things seriously
Not quite. Proof that they are taking things seriously would be disabling all the telemetry, phoning home, adware, crapware, etc., and making it strictly opt-in.
For example, the first time you hit the start menu, it can show you a balloon: "Would you like to see customized content here? This would require sending blah-blah-blah to Microsoft." Then two clearly labeled buttons. One for "yes, phone home and show me ads" and another for "no, and don't show me this ever again." They could something similar in other places where they think there might be a benefit to the users.
Microsoft is launching what it calls a (web-based) privacy dashboard, which lets you configure anything and everything about information that might be sent to back to the mothership. You can turn all tracking off...
If it is on by default and the user has to log in to a Microsoft website to control/configure it, then Microsoft is demonstrating that they are willing to do only the bare minimum to appease the critics. How much do you want to bet that in order to even access the dashboard the user will have to have a Live account (giving MS even more of their personal information). The screenshot in the article doesn't look web-based to me, so perhaps a Live account won't be required, but either way the big problem is that they opt you in (likely against your will) and only if you are sufficiently determined can you opt out.
Taking things seriously, indeed!
There is no way I'm going to trust an OS that was released with mandatory "telemetry".
"Microsoft is launching what it calls a (web-based) privacy dashboard..."
Why does it have to be web-based? Was it too fucking hard to build it into the Control Panel or Settings app?
This sounds like horseshit to me, and I've heard enough horseshit in my life to be able to reliably identify it when I hear it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This sounds like a good move. While they're giving users some control back, can we get back the ability to control when updates run?
...you made the list!
I hope that I'm not the only one to find the sentence "... or pick and choose, if certain criteria don't concern you too much, like location or health activity, ..." a shocking display of a very sad state of affairs.
Sharing location I can understand (even though I never do it myself and I hate websites that try to guess based on info from/about my ISP,. At least some websites indeed are more useful and easier to use if they know your location and I can even see a case for Microsoft services being tuned based on it. Bur why in the universe would anyone want MS to know about "health activity"? How can anyone even remotely consider that that might be a "less important issue" that may "not concern us too much"???
Microsoft calls it "Telemetry". Everyone else calls it spyware. It's unacceptable.
Also OP sounds a lot like a public relations weasel. Take this language: "Also, for fresh installs, you'll be given more specific privacy options so that you can feel confident from the get-go about the information you're sending Redmond's way. If you do decide to send any information Microsoft's way, the company promises that it won't use your information for the sake of targeted advertising."
Microsoft's T&Cs are riddled with exclusions. No mention of that.
Has Slashdot cut an advertising deal with Microsoft? It's coverage seems very soft these days.
From TFS: "When Microsoft first launched Windows 10, it was generally well-received"
By whom? I don't recall much in the way of rave reviews except from paid promotors. I do recall quite a few people saying they'll stay on Windows 7, thank you.
No Microsoft, this is NOT good enough. We've already TOLD YOU that this is not good enough. We do NOT accept your telemetry data tracking. We do NOT accept your control over updates. We do NOT accept your attempt to turn everything to another FREAKIN' app store WE DON'T WANT TO USE.
STOP trying to BABY STEP us into OS choices that WE DO NOT WANT. Turn it off or be replaced by the next half way decent OS option. Many of us already 'broke' out update ability not mater how many times you try to reinstall it with a forced patch. We just disabled ALL updates and we're not going to STOP until you start listening.
That's the most polite term for what Miscreant-o-soft is trying to be now: Having (in their view, anyway) won the war, and (again, in their view) having subdued and subjugated the conquered, Miscreant-o-soft is now attempting to demonstrate to their new subjects that they are benevolent, that living under their rule won't be so bad, and to accomplish this utter and complete fiction, they're creating a (likely) false sense of 'choice' and 'privacy'.
I call bullshit on the entire fiasco; prove to us that this is anything more than just Windows-dressing to lull people into a false sense of security.
And I missed a 'T' in the title. meh.
This is why you don't Slashdot when you're pissed off. >,,>
Still can't turn off data collection and cyber stalking options now reduced from three levels to two.
Congratulations Microsoft! Way to innovate and respond to the needs of your customers.
I "upgraded" to Win10 because I was about to click on something when the "psst! Hey bud, wanna upgrade?" window appeared. It started upgrading and I was afraid to stop it.
My opinions? The uptime is less than a week. It reboots whenever it wants without asking. Working on something, lunchtime, close the laptop, come back an hour later? Oh hey, fucking machine rebooted. Not to mention some of these updates take a good 20 minutes after the reboot to finally come up.
The spying pisses me off. I disable most of it, but after every "upgrade" they turn it all back on.
And it's flakey. With Win8.1 this laptop worked fine for months on end, only rebooting when I told it to. With Win10 after 4-5 days I'll open my laptop to find it won't wake up and I have to power cycle it.
IMHO, any OS that reboots without asking is a POS nobody should support. Microsoft doesn't know what I'm doing when the laptop is closed, how the hell do they feel entitled to reboot my machine without asking?
Having looked at the small amount of information that we have been given (including the one screenshot), I don't see anything that we could not already change. All the settings listed in the screenshot are currently under the Privacy section of the Windows 10 settings right now.
Location: Privacy->Location
Speech Recognition: Privacy->Speech, inking & typing
Diagnostics: Privacy->Feedback & diagnostics
Tailored experiences with diagnostic data: Personalization->Start (and maybe Privacy->General)
Relevent ads: Privacy->General
In fact, the new dashboard is worse than the current settings in regards to the diagnostics. In the current settings you diagnostic and usage data can be one of three settings: Basic, Enhanced, and Full. The dashboard only allows two settings: Full and ????. It certainly isn't On/Off so this doesn't prevent the telemetry that made us lose trust in Windows 10 in the first place.
MS has crammed telemetry down the throats of earlier Windows version users. Will they also have the option of using this nifty web-based system?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
.
At this point I am skeptical that this system actually prevents the collection of data from Windows 10 systems.
But presuming this nifty new privacy system works, what is to stop Microsoft from suddenly saying that they are now removing privacy controls?
Is this just an empty promise on Microsoft's part to get everyone to move to Windows 10? What sort of assurances are in place that guarantee the privacy controls will continue to work in future upgradtes and releases?
This is about privacy.
Barak Twinkle Toes Obama expanded domestic spying 10 fold over earlier administrations.
Go back to playing with your genitalia.
You're right in that the headline text is filled with lies (typical of the corporate tech press and their corporate repeater friends like /.) and things like this should all be opt-in by default. But without software freedom, even those changes would be necessary but insufficient to ensure user's privacy because there's no way to check to make sure the software actually behaves in accordance with the settings.
Microsoft's record shows this to be the case. The GNU Project's surveillance section of the Microsoft malware page does a good job of collecting stories about how this has already failed Windows users who thought they had tweaked the settings in just the right way to get Windows 10 to not "phone home" or report details of what happened outside the machine. These settings failed to do that job because the software was designed to fail in this way.
Much to the apparent chagrin of moderators in the recent Microsoft thread about letting Windows 10 users opt-out of automatic updates who marked down posts about software freedom, the real answer remains the same here—no software freedom means no real control over one's computer and that includes no privacy for the user. Network dumps reveal some of what the software does but not all; it's very easy for programmers to encrypt data they want to send somewhere and/or delay sending data in an attempt to not show up when the system's network output is being watched.
Microsoft's promises (which boil down to "Trust us this time! Really!") must be interpreted in the context of taking the word of a liar whose secret software should now be trusted. That makes no sense to do, and the same logic applies to all non-free/user-subjugating software. No matter how much technical skill you have you have to assume proprietary software is doing what you don't want it to do because you don't have the permission to check out what it's actually doing, change it to make it obey you, or help your community by sharing copies of improved software.
Digital Citizen
For many years Mac users have purchased the affordable utility program 'Little Snitch' to control spyware.
Nearly every program you install wants to 'phone home' and report to the source. Dozens of System processes also report to Apple and others. In an eight hour workday you can expect 212 attempts by your system and software to connect to outside servers. (If you have better stats, please reply.) Little Snitch can stop all that by reporting every single attempt, and offering to allow it or prevent it; once or forever. It keeps a database of your responses so that you can change any choice at any time. It can sometimes offer helpful hints about a particular connection request. Some connections are necessary for certain basic System functions and they are protected by default but can be overridden if you insist.
'Hands Off!' is a similar program. I believe both can also stop incoming requests from various sources- I have other software for that.
The trick is to know what is being sent and where it's going (you don't always have a human readable URL). I doubt most Mac users understand the finer points. If it was available for Windows, it would be even more confusing.
Even if you aren't normally concerned about privacy you may be concerned about software that you haven't properly licensed. Theoretically, the developers could discover your oversight when the software reports back to them. Little Snitch is presumably used by pirates for this reason. Interestingly, it's very difficult to get a pirate copy of Little Snitch to work. So the pirates have to pay for it!
The first month with Little Snitch can be annoying. Dealing with scores of decisions about whether xyz process should be allowed to connect to nnn.nn.nn.nnn server. You'll never see many of these again after you decide to Always or Never allow some of those connections.
This would be an ideal utility for Microsoft to offer if it cared about users. It would have to be offered in tiers for beginners, intermediate and advanced users. Some of the decisions required are very difficult. No, you can't just decide to stop all of these connections- your computer would be far less functional.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This looks like a local setting, not a "web-based" setting at all.
Nowadays those are the same things.
lucm, indeed.
Why, I did a Micro$oft upgrade and I'm very pleased with the results and speed of my system, and the ease of updates.
sudo apt-get update
does it all!
Seriously, the times I've had to reboot a Micro$oft server and wait for updates to load before I could start fixing infrastructure issues is enough to make my eyeballs bleed. I had a 7 hour outage because the bastion was a misconfigured Windows server that "had to load updates" before it would present the bastion services. Once it was up, it took 2 minutes to fix things. Honestly, a OS that requires action to keep from updating is something you do not want in your infrastructure at all, for any reason.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
From TFA:
If you do decide to send any and all information Microsoft's way, the company promises that it won't use any of your information for the sake of targeted advertising.
Meanwhile, on the screenshot right above this line is the option "Relevant Ads".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Your point is entirely fair, but it's also reassuring that we've now seen a couple of announcements in as many days, one on automatic updates and the second on privacy, where Microsoft seem to be backtracking at all. It might not be enough to fix the problems or satisfy the critics, but it does suggest that they aren't confident they can just continue with their previous aggressive Windows 10 strategy and be successful.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
MS can say they're turning a lot of that spyware crap off, but since Windows is closed source, you're kinda stuck with trusting them to be telling the truth.. I used/supported Windows as a sysadmin for close to 20 years, and when I retired in 2010, I decided I was *done* with using MS products. Frankly, I trust them as far as I can throw them... hint: not far..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Routers can block addresses (either IP or DNS).
Is there a list of addresses that MS uses for telemetry that could be blocked without breaking security updates?
If an enterprising person manages to find it out, we won't need any favours from MS.
See the comment subject for more information.
Speak for yourself.
And all your anger will do nothing.
The big wheel keep on turning, and Microsoft will still have the revenue and Linux will never have its year on the Desktop.
Really, been more than 2 decades, I've tried to use Linux, but I can't find a compelling reason at all. It's just not good enough.
But macOS is. And it doesn't spy on you. And, unlike with MS, if they do want to collect data to help Spotlight searches and the like, there are clear GUI controls to LOCALLY disable it. In other words, "No" means "No".
Doesn't everyone get their Win10 cousins to use 'Spybot Anti-Beacon'? Do we think the authors of that won't keep up with any new challenges?
In the screenshot from TFA, the setting for diagnostic data collection says "Full". I assume that means the alternate setting is "Basic", the same as they used to be in the old privacy control panel.
So, this is just a web-based re-skin of the old interface, not an update to their policy which gives you more control. That's not my idea of enhancement.
We
I don't think that means what you think it means. I don't think you know just how little of the customer base you speak for.
The majority of the customer base when met with the revelation of Windows 10 having privacy implications would respond with a resounding "Huh? What do you want? I don't have any money, leave me alone!"
This seems to be another article trying to put Microsoft in a better light on privacy than reality.
1) What is the option for Diagnostics other than "Full"? If it is "Basic" or "Enhanced" that is still quite a lot of data sent to Microsoft (configuration data including the network which includes WiFi and network connections and IP addresses, software and hardware installed, and performance and reliability data including usage information). Even the "security" level that is available in Enterprise and Education includes data from the Malicious Software Removal Tool which can include confidential data.
I won't be happy with Windows 10 privacy until there is an "Off" option or "Ask before sending data" option and no data is sent without consent. If the Malicious Software Removal Tool asks before sending data and shows me what it is going to send so I can verify that it isn't confidential data before sending, that is fine. As long as I can just say "No" if I don't have time to verify it at the time also.
It looks like one can disable sample submission for Windows Defender (Settings > Update & security > Windows Defender > Sample submission), but not for the Malicious Software Removal Tool.
2) As stated above, why is it Web-based? Does it require a live account?
3) Is there a simple way to disable all of Cortana's data gathering? Cortana is a privacy disaster:
https://privacy.microsoft.com/...
4) Are they updating the Windows 10 terms of service/privacy policy to specify that data is only sent with consent? They probably can't even do that with the current Diagnostic options. The terms of service for Windows 10 are a privacy nightmare compared to Windows 7.
Is it to much to ask for a simple option in privacy that limits information sent to Microsoft to license key verification? Microsoft would also get my public IP from Windows Update in their server logs. Anything more than that I want to have control over.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Ok, now change that from "webbased" to something where I don't first of all have to hand over any and all info about me and we can actually start talking about what information about me I am willing to send to you (read: nothing).
Until then, my question remains: Why the fuck do you wake me with news that aren't newsworthy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey, we did a survey among the MS VPs and there was great agreement!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do we get to vote on that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When Microsoft first launched Windows 10, it was generally well-received
This must be some new definition of "Well-received" I wasn't previously aware of
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Hey, its not the targeted ads i am afraid of. I have adblock. Its the mass surveilance, they implement to track me to target their ads. So the promise not to target ads with the data is just a straw man. The problem are not the ads, the problem is the data.
Arrange all the privacy settings in a single, coherent arrangement, not scattered through different panels and advanced dialogs. Summarize what the data is being collected and what it may be used for. Perhaps even have a single button that says "I want to remain private" and clicking it sets everything to secure. Don't try and bury the settings. Don't throw the switches wide open by default. Inform the user, ask the user and do what the user says. And for new installations, explicitly ask the user what settings they want.
According to the Ghacks article, for "diagnostics" the choice is between "full data" and "less data" with no explanation of what it means.
Microsoft furthermore announced that it will reduce the data collection of the basic level. Myerson did not reveal what Microsoft intents to change though in this regard.
Also, the "web-like" interface is for controlling the Microsoft account settings which are, unsurprisingly, on the web.
All in all, a much more informative reporting.
If you care about privacy then you do not run Windows.
That being said I'll believe it when M$ restores the ability for Edge to clear sessions on close ala Firefox
"Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it's digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules - not just for governments but for private companies." - Bill Gates
You don't know shit about Win10, do you?
It's *hard coded* to bypass anything in the Hosts file.
https://www.petri.com/windows-...
So your "ad blocker" ain't gonna work.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Reading comprehension is not yours.
I'm not in IT.
And a single post saying I'm wrong, without citing why, makes *me* look dumb?
Nice try. Thank you for playing.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.