Windows 10 and Privacy?

[binaryzero]

^ I guess some people just like to click Express settings. Either way, nice article. I may disagree with you sometimes, but you do make some valid points. Kudos.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

There's a follow-up white paper to this I'm working on that is currently about twice as long.  I'm hoping to finish it one of these days.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

^ I guess some people just like to click Express settings. Either way, nice article. I may disagree with you sometimes, but you do make some valid points. Kudos.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I haven't seen this level of hysteria since the XP days, it's impressive.

[Gabe84]

Microsoft offers many new 'services' in Windows 10 with the two biggest ones being Cortana and OneDrive.

If you already use Outlook.com (or Hotmail, Live.com) or Gmail or Yahoo! Mail then you will be used to these privacy policies as they are essentially all the same in that they will analyse your email contents to better target you with ads. This is kind of new to Microsoft as before hand they didn't do the same kind of analysis that Gmail did but now they pretty much do.

Let's break this down a little bit; Cortana needs to listen to you obviously. When you use Cortana Microsoft keeps a record of what you say so that it can develop a better profile of how you use Cortana. If you always ask for the weather in the morning then they can use that knowledge to provide you a better experience. Is it an "invasion" of your privacy? Not really, you opt-in to using Cortana. If you want to use Cortana you need to give her access to things such as your contacts so she can remind you when it is someone's birthday or your calendar and location so she can tell you that you will need to leave 30 minutes earlier today to catch your flight because of traffic, etc. Providing these services without access to your personal data would be impossible. Think of it how you give hospitals access to your medical records regardless of what hospital you are at so they can see your past treatments, etc.

The same is true of OneDrive. Basically Microsoft can analyse your files to see how you use OneDrive, etc. As part of them offering you the service they also do a few extra things such as using meta data and file hashes with their PhotoDNA system to look for child abuse images, etc.

The whole pirate games and hardware thing comes down to their Xbox service. If they detect counterfeit hardware like a fake-official-looking Xbox One controller they will disable it to prevent possible damage to your console. This has actually been true for quite a while from what I understand. The same is true of copied games that are sold as if they were legit games. 

At the end of the day if you are using online services from Google the nyou already agreed to a pretty much identical privacy policy with Google to what Microsoft's is with some Windows 10 services.

Also you should know that you are free to not use these services in which case you don't need to think about it at all.

One thing you cannot opt-out of is providing basic telemetry from your use of Windows 10. This is just standard performance data collected by Microsoft such as did an update install correctly? If not why not? What features do you open once but never use again? What little known and hard to find features do you use every day? All things to help provide a better experience in the future. As I said you can't opt-out of this, at least not without hacking away at services and files and permissions which really isn't worth doing in my opinion.

I hope that helps explain things a bit better for you, sorry it was such a long post!

I second this.

There are technologies like search engines, voice recognition, calligraphy recognition, even auto correct, that need users' input in order to improve, they need to understand how people around the world talk, write and express themselves, and if a user likes such services I think it makes sense for said user to "contribute" by letting the company offering those services analyze what they do.

After all people seem perfectly fine with Facebook and Google tracking your every move on the Internet and outside the Internet, flooding you with ads and use whatever you do to benefit their business, but if Microsoft does that then we're suddenly catapulted into George Orwell's 1984.

I also think that software manufacturers, no matter who they are, should collect performance data, I want my software to improve, after all we pay for Windows, they better make it constantly superior than the previous version, I also think that it's Microsoft's right, as any other vendor's right, to make sure you're not stealing their products, if you install pirated software, or if you illegally download media, then it's you the one who's breaking the law, you should accept the risks and the consequences of your actions.

I always send crash reports, both for OS and software, I don't think the guys at Mozilla really care if Firefox crashed while I was watching porn or while I was watching a lecture or a TED talk, honestly I don't think that in the crash reports they can identify me, they can't identify Gabe and know I was watching porn, same goes for Microsoft, besides that Windows Media Player never once crashed on me, but I don't think they really gave a damn what I was watching and, again, I don't think they could identify me.

We are all so worried, but our ISPs probably already know what we do with our connections and I guess they would have it easier at correctly identifying us.

I'll say this, people who want absolute privacy should turn to Tails, use a very strong VPN, a paid e-mail service located in Switzerland or Sweden, learn cryptography and learn how to use PGP, and even using all that there's no guarantee that someone wouldn't be able to hack into your system, or other systems, if they really put their minds to it.

However I'd be pretty ###### if Microsoft actually kept a log of all the files I have on my hard drives - I already know they know what files I have on OneDrive, it's their service I'm OK with that - and, as much as I have a man crush on Bill Gates, that would be THE deal breaker for me.