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Windows 10 Will Soon Let Users Track the Data Microsoft Collects (thurrott.com)
Windows 10 will soon get a new application that will allow users to keep track of the data that Microsoft collects from their device. From a report: Ahead of the Data Privacy Day, Microsoft today introduced a new Diagnostic Data Viewer app for Windows 10 -- first coming to Windows Insiders -- that enables users to view all the diagnostic data that's being collected by Windows 10. The new Diagnostic Data Viewer will display different types of diagnostic data collected by the OS. This includes Common Data (your OS version, device ID/type, etc.), Device Connectivity and Configuration data (device capabilities, user settings, peripherals and network info), Product and Service Performance (device health, performance, reliability data), Product and Service Usage (data on usage of device, apps, OS), and Software Setup and Inventory (update information). The app includes a search feature that lets you search for specific items.
They specifically say we can view the diagnostic data, but they do not mention the user profiling data that is used for advertising or the data that is provided to the NSA. I applaud this first step but it's really just a feel-good type of thing. The community needs to keep on Microsoft for full transparency.
It's time this unbridled data collecting by companies becomes outlawed.Of course this isn't as simple as it looks but please make a serious start.
-- Cheers!
How useful is seeing the data if I can't stop them? At best it may be an eye opener. But that is far from the ideal situation.
It will show the data that Microsoft wants you to know that it is taking. Unless this tool is open source you would be unwise to assume that it was showing you everything; even then: does the operating system keep (or make visible) all the files that it sends ?
Don't collect data from my devices. No ifs and buts. Don't.
Who says that's ALL they really collect?
Sounds like it'll shut a few people up but overall nothing changes.
Nobody's forcing anyone to use products that collect information on you. Why is everyone so uptight about having their dick pics scanned by "Company X" anyways? If you want to get something somewhere in a safe and secure manner, there are ways to do it; or just don't put extremely sensitive stuff on your daily device of choice.
Sure this post can be read as flame bait but let's be honest here, unless they start using said data to put people in jail over some very questionable Google searches, who fucking cares what they know about you? If *they* REALLY want to know who you are, they'll find out. Otherwise it's just a way for them to cater to their audiences/market their products better. A *competent* criminal in today's world wouldn't dump everything about them in digital format anyways.
I'll worry when they feed it all to an A.I. that spits out something along the lines of "I've concluded person X is a danger to society and should be incarcerated." and we actually treat that as absolute truth by going ahead and doing it. THEN people should flip their shit.
I tend to rant.
What they are doing is trying to mislead you into thinking that diagnostic data is the only thing they are collecting. The truth is they are collecting a whole lot more and selling it to advertisers but they aren't giving you a tool to see that data.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Of course not. They'll show you the innocuous data to put you at ease after it's already been sent.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
.. a very small step. Almost an invisible step. I don't want to just see my data that are collected, I want to be able to control whether or not my data are collected in the first place. And along those lines, I'd want to see and control all the data that Microsoft is harvesting from my computer (it is my computer, isn't it, Microsoft?). Not just the diagnostic data, but the user tracking data as well.
I only boot my Windows gaming pc once a week, and I noticed just how much that windows telemetry accessed my NVME drive, it took minutes for it to finish whatever it were doing at boot up, reading hundreds of megabytes pr second. until I finally had enough and disabled it in registry.
Although you never really know what they are doing, I just don't trust that machine.
L'Idiot
Who watches the watchmen?
Seriously, we can track the data that Microsoft collects, using Microsoft's own software, and maybe there are some things we don't get to track? Who knows!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire