Windows Telemetry - Concerns...


The most disturbing thing for me is the often used argument "but people are showing every shit of their lives on Facebook anyway".


It's no spying when the information is given freely. There is no way to be an open person if every bit of information has already been stolen from you anyway.

I put them in the same category as paparazzi. Yes, you are "out in the open", so they can take a picture of you. Then use that picture (information) to spin it (profile you).


Try this experiment out to see how much websites are following you *(including this one):


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lightbeam/


Don't use it on the Pandora, it really requires oomph.... (or if you do, tell me how long you had to wait until it draws).


edit: once inside the plug-in click on the "show last 10 sites" (like I said, do not try this graph on the Pandora, use list mode instead). Facebook _should_ be the largest object, and connected to the most sites...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Does anyone know if the findings in this guys report are true or not?

Forgive me for not reading the whole thread. Just wanted to mention, that the last LinuxUser Magazine gave it some thoughts in the editorial.


Normally the ydo an article each time a new windows shows up, in how to set up dualboot.


After reading the w10 EULA, they decided to never ever do that again.


Reason was the mentined keystroke storage and trasnmitting to windows. The EULA states as purpose "improvements in software for typing and correcting". So no windows ever again for me (since XP btw)
 
ok thanks @mclien for the info there.


As much as I am against this W10 level of monitoring without an easy and obvious opt-out feature, I'm really tempted to go and treat myself to that Linxvision gaming tablet, which comes with W10 installed, just so that I can play my Steam games collection on it.


Think I probably will, but still this is bad of MS to not make an easy opt-out setting for users ... without having to change values in registries and such. Should clearly be an option that even the non tech savvy can set
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ok thanks @mclien for the info there.


As much as I am against this W10 level of monitoring without an easy and obvious opt-out feature, I'm really tempted to go and treat myself to that Linxvision gaming tablet, which comes with W10 installed, just so that I can play my Steam games collection on it.


Think I probably will, but still this is bad of MS to not make an easy opt-out setting for users ... without having to change values in registries and such. Should clearly be an option that even the non tech savvy can set

Why ?


Leaving out some smaller groups that are vocal about their resent, most people have already updated to Windows 10, nodding the EULA away and if confronted with the privacy concerns, they just wave it of (everyone does that nowadays and its only telemetry). And why shouldn't they just shrug everything off ? Its Newer and most of all FREE ! There can't anything be wrong with it, if its FREE.


And they will do that again, when Microsoft will take the next step in tightening their control on what can be installed on a Windows system. And it probably will be a lot harder for them to circumvent it as it surely will be forced on them with a "important security update".


I even got some unbelieving looks already  the other day in the company I work in, when we sat down with our IT service provider, and I started to argue against upgrading to Windows 10.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Some people are claiming that Windows has updated itself from a previous version (without their knowledge/consent) and that some/most/all of the telemetry stuff has already made its way into Windows 7 and 8.XX, so it's not just Windows 10 users that are affected by this.
 
^This. I used it for 13 years and it was serviceable enough. When they say you don't know what you're missing, they really mean it. I couldn't use any modern web stuff, but since I never had before, I didn't miss it.
 
Some people are claiming that Windows has updated itself from a previous version (without their knowledge/consent) and that some/most/all of the telemetry stuff has already made its way into Windows 7 and 8.XX, so it's not just Windows 10 users that are affected by this.

I posted a link a couple of posts above that says otherwise. They show that the updates MS has pushed, at least for win7, are revisions of crap that already came with the OS in the first place. Not saying they aren't already transmitting and recording everything they can though... just that they've done it for quite some while and it seems to just be the "report why everything just crashed once again" feature. which as Klumpen quite eloquently said, is enough intrusion as it is. 


I can't believe people are so gullible and are shrugging things off like this, too. I am confronted by it daily. The same idiots talking about privacy issues, surveillance and how cool cyberwarfare and whistleblowers are in the theatre scene in Germany, are advertising themselves and their crap on facebook and use every aspect of this system. They all buy apple products (almost all actors and directors I've met had nothing but apple products), they all use google features like crazy while trying to seem super involved and skeptical. But they all agree that "shit is reaaaallly baaad. someone should seriously do something about these abusers... well, we'll make a performance about it and then advertise it on facebook to invite all of our cool friends..."


for the same reason I believe, that it's going to take a while before serious media productions software will become open source or at least available for linux. Yes, there is a few exceptions like Ardour, Rezound and some broadcasting stuff. But video editing is apple territory. Same with most music production tools. I don't know of any studio, that doesn't use apple exclusive software and hardware. well except from reading about them on the internet...


There is probably a thousand punk bands singing about this shit constantly. I bet they all record their stuff with garage band or in a studio using apple products. As long as artists keep on not caring about what software/hardware is involved, the industry will never ever make the switch. Just because a f***ing apple computer is so "convenient to use".


Consumers need to take responsibility and make the switch and stop using compromised software and buy from exploiters. I wish that would happen, then software developers would surely follow.


Same goes for offices using windows computers and servers. I have been working for the theatre in Dortmund for 4 1/2 years and am now freelance. During my time there, me and the other techy guys, especially computer engineers and video crew were laughing about the office network and computers. It's ridiculous. They spend thousands of euros on rent for each of these computer systems (which are horribly outdated and are only replaced very sporadically with already outdated systems) and for windows licenses. Why don't they just refurbish some good quality desktops and run a decent linux version? Because someone scored an incredibly good contract some years ago apparently. Meanwhile noone can use these systems for anything but office work and some web browsing anyway, because youtube is blocked (which is a vital source of information for a theatre, you need to watch trailers, download material, preview other plays from directors you would want to invite etc) and we were not allowed to use usb sticks because it would be a security risk (for what??? use decent malware detection and groupware). We laughed our asses of when they updated some desktops to windows 8 desktops recently, I'd call that a security risk. Needless to say, we used usb sticks anyway all the time, all brought our own laptops because it was impossible to work otherwise and went about our business. Also after a lot of paperwork, youtube was finally unblocked. I remember when I had to go to the official IT tech for the whole operation, who is working for the city. I had to get him to provide internet access on stage for some live feeds during a performance and he also wanted to give me some network cable he had left over for us. I was horrified when he did not know the difference between a cat5 and cat5e class cable. Why the hell does this guy get to watch over hundreds of computer workstations?


I can only shudder if I imagine how much money could be saved if government funded organizations and institutions would start using FOSS to write their emails, documents and databases.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I tried... the anwser was: to be able to blame somebody when things go wrong. That is why RedHat EL is ok, but a freeware is not. Then there is vendor lock in, where you still need to support .doc's. Even worse: one of our excel macro's only works on a certain version of excel... so you got to copy it from Linux to windows, process it, then copy files back.

For the ones, like me, wondering about cat cables, here is a refresh (real cables have some text on the side written what it actually is. I use one cat 5 and two cat 5e)
http://www.cableorganizer.com/articles/cat5-cat5e-cat6.htm


btw, back to topic: in firefox: about:config and type in "telemetry" or "experimental". Note that the option to turn it off has disapeared from the menus (at least, some builds of it, like iceweasel). Some don't need it, it seems removed in palemoon (the only key "allow experiments" is false)

Of course, the FF telemetry seems harmless compared to the EULA of WIN10.
 
Last edited:
So, now that Microsoft is turning the W10 update as "recommended", to make it autoinstall without confirmation with windows-update, I wanted to disable the "recommended updates", but a scary YES/NO popup comes out telling that if I disable that feature I will never receive again updates from windows-update...

I can't understand if bugfixes are included too...
 
Back
Top