Microsoft Finally Reveals What Data Windows 10 Really Collects (theverge.com) 286
Starting today, Microsoft is updating its privacy statement and publishing information about the data it collects as part of Windows 10. From a report: "For the first time, we have published a complete list of the diagnostic data collected at the Basic level," explains Windows chief Terry Myerson in a company blog post. "We are also providing a detailed summary of the data we collect from users at both Basic and Full levels of diagnostics." Microsoft is introducing better controls around its Windows 10 data collection levels in the latest Creators Update, which will start rolling out broadly next week. The controls allow users to switch between basic and full levels of data collection. "Our teams have also worked diligently since the Anniversary Update to re-assess what data is strictly necessary at the Basic level to keep Windows 10 devices up to date and secure," says Myerson. "As a result, we have reduced the number of events collected and reduced, by about half, the volume of data we collect at the Basic level."
The real problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
... of course, is that we have to wait for Microsoft to "inform" us about that in the first place.
Re:The real problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The real problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a shame it has come to the point where companies need this sort of inducement to come clean.
Companies will run slave plantations unless somebody forces them not to. Capitalism is useful but it'll throw you under the bus if it means higher profit, it's nobody's friend just raw application of economic power. Once you're past the size where anyone feels personally responsible and they only answer to shareholders who want return on interest it has no conscience, ethics or morality. So I'm not sure what you think is new or different here, the only time they don't act like total psychos is exactly when there's consequences. Otherwise they'd make Soylent Green out of you.
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You imply that this behavior only applies to larger companies, but any perusal of popular sites online clearly demonstrates that people are only decent in person because they fear immediate physical retribution.
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Plus the fact that Microsoft did not give a shit about users' privacy and initially rolled Windows 10 out configured to collect all sorts of unnecessary data.
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Its more likely a question of MS underestimating the amount of blowback they would receive given that we're regularly passing as much if not more information to ISPs, Google, Facebook, etc -- the latter even entirely voluntarily.
But we've all still got a collective hate-on for anything MS due to their past transgressions, even though they're pretty much just doing what everyone else does at this point (and aren't even close to the worst for it in many cases.) We're just not willing to let go of that histor
Re:The real problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that they only do it because they got some pretty severe threats from the EU behind the scenes. The first round (Swiss Data Protection Commissioner) they already lost and that guy very likely talked this over with his EU colleagues before and they decided that his situation was best for a test-balloon (as Switzerland is not in the EU, hence not setting legal precedent for the EU).
Without that, my guess would be that MS would never have informed anybody. And they could still be lying. Unless there is an independent verification by somebody competent, I am not going to trust this at all.
Re:Don't forget about open source projects. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some open source supporters will make claims like "But they're being transparent!" or "But you can opt out!" or some other nonsense like that.
But guess what? None of that matters!
It does matter. It's relatively trivial to opt out of Mozilla's data collection and to know what's being collected, whereas that's absolutely not the case with Microsoft. So when you say shit like this:
"we cannot consider them to be any better than Windows, or conversely, we can't consider Windows to be any worse than projects like Firefox"
I know you're either shilling for Microsoft or being idealistically stupid about practical differences.
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That AC's position is much more consistent and sensible than yours is. That AC is saying, ``Data harvesting is wrong.'', while you're saying,``Data harvesting is wrong, except if you can opt out, or except if you know what's being harvested, or except if moz://a is doing it, or except if it's called telemetry, or except if Google Analytics is used to store it, or except if ...''. Face it, data harvesting is wrong. It doesn't matter who is doing it, or how they're doing it, or why they're doing it, or what t
Re:Don't forget about open source projects. (Score:5, Insightful)
All incidents of data harvesting are equally wrong.
No, the world is not black and white. Otherwise Richard Stallman would be a practical person instead of out on an idealistic island. People like Stallman are useful as standard bearers, but in the real world we deal with practical choices that require us to distinguish between varying degrees of "wrong".
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Many issues are pretty binary. Data harvesting is wrong. It provides nothing to the user and there is no reason a user would want to enable it.
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I guess it depends what qualifies as data harvesting. Having crash reports automatically sent off to the developer could help to fix bugs that users just didn't bother to report. The bug can then be fixed, and fixing bugs in software definitely does provide something of value to the users. However, sending out a crash report with pertinent information about what may have caused the crash could very much be described as data harvesting.
Re:Don't forget about open source projects. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple and Microsoft have probably been the best major companies for keeping their changes small and manageable. Eventually you had to migrate off VB6. Eventually you had to click the "also compile this for Intel" checkbox in Xcode. But that doesn't change the fact that if you use their platforms, you are subject to their business decisions, even when they conflict with yours.
Perhaps hypocritically, I'm typing this on a Mac. I've decided that given Apple's track record, they're probably not going to yank the rug out from under me overnight. But you can bet that all the code I write is in FOSS languages and deployed to FOSS operating systems. I can change my desktop OS - with some pain and gnashing of teeth to be sure - without compromising the things I design. That's because RMS is correct: he's convinced many of us that it's practical to choose open platforms instead of closed shininess where it really matters.
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I don't think that's a good analogy. Most things in life are fungible: while we might prefer Safeway's canned corn to Costco's, for all intents and purposes one can substitute for the other. Marketing aside, Shell and ExxonMobil gasoline are mostly identical. I like Levis jeans, but there are other brands on the market and my Kohl's shirt and Target socks are 100% compatible (well, my wife might make fun of my pairings, but I don't go into anaphylaxis if the brands don't match).
The same is true for Debian a
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Maybe your kid(who didn't starve) grows up to be the drug addict who steals my car again.
you BOTH suck and I want my cars back!
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It does matter. It's relatively trivial to opt out of Mozilla's data collection and to know what's being collected, whereas that's absolutely not the case with Microsoft.
It looks like they're making it trivial. Am I wrong?
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From what I've seen, yes you are. They're making it fairly trivial to reduce the data collection (from Full to Basic) but I don't see anything about disabling it all together.
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Some open source supporters will make claims like "But they're being transparent!" or "But you can opt out!" or some other nonsense like that.
But guess what? None of that matters!
It does matter. It's relatively trivial to opt out of Mozilla's data collection and to know what's being collected, whereas that's absolutely not the case with Microsoft. So when you say shit like this:
"we cannot consider them to be any better than Windows, or conversely, we can't consider Windows to be any worse than projects like Firefox"
I know you're either shilling for Microsoft or being idealistically stupid about practical differences.
Yet you still have to take Mozilla for their word just like Microsoft. Both companies could be lying about what they collect. You trust one but not the other when the data could be identical.
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Perhaps the EU restrictions on unfettered data collection will trickle down if the big players are made to comply. We can hope.
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Actually, opt-out is all that is required, and both Firefox and Homebrew have it and since they're both open source, if you don't like having to opt out, you can edit the code and remove the data gathering completely. You know who doesn't allow you to opt out? You who what doesn't allow you to edit the code? Microsoft.
The issue I have with Windows 10 is that it no longer treats you like you are the OWNER. It treats you like a library card holder, lucky to be able to use their 10 year old machine.
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For firefox, you can check, they describe very well what is sent and almost all the data is technical related, no identifiable info, no browsing history... and they inform you of that and you can opt-out
Now compare that with MS, where it is full of identifiable info, browsing history and even command line (great to catch passwords, "interesting" paths and programs)
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Ummmm and Pale Moon.
Re:The real problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basic and full are dandy for those that want to "opt in" for such data collection, but how about those of us who liked the old fashioned OS days when NO data was sent or required to be sent?
Re:The real problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly this.
This announcement is akin to:
We've listened to our customers who are upset about the ass rape, so to address your concerns, we've added an exciting new option!
-Lubed ass rape
-Unlubed ass rape (for our TRUE believers)
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Don't know that I agree with that sentiment given how aggressively they were pushing the updates over 7/8 there. Over a year of having to disable GWX on any machines that we didn't want to be magically upgraded.
I mean from a personal perspective I liked getting the free upgrade but it wasn't really great for my job where we're still wanting to stick with 7 for a while due to some old software that's potentially incompatible with 10 (I'm fairly sure it'd be fine but 7 works for us for now and no push to spe
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Then don't use your work devices for personal business. Your employer selected Microsoft for their business so they must be okay with this collection - it's your employer's data, not yours.
Personally, I will probably never again install Windows 10 (or successors) on any personal iron for a variety of reasons -- Linux works fine for my personal use for almost everything. If my employer chooses to use Windows 10, it doesn't bother me because it's not my machine/data.
January (Score:5, Informative)
Real link (Score:5, Informative)
Link to the actual list, not an article about the list: https://technet.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]
Re:Real link (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, let's have a quick look at some interesting items from the list:
- userId The userID as known by the application.
This is what you type when Windows asks "what is your name?" during account creation, so it's quite likely to be the user's real name.
- did XBOX device ID
- xid A list of base10-encoded XBOX User IDs.
- localId Represents a locally defined unique ID for the device
- friendlyName Represents the name of the file requesting elevation from low IL.
- cmdLine Represents the full command line arguments being used to elevate.
Don't enter passwords on the command line!
- PCFP An ID for the system that is calculated by hashing hardware identifiers.
- BiosDate The release date of the BIOS in UTC format.
- BiosName The name field from Win32_BIOS.
- Manufacturer The manufacturer field from Win32_ComputerSystem.
- Model The model field from Win32_ComputerSystem.
The list is very long, I'm about 1/3rd the way in...
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Indeed. I think they are wayyyy over what is legally acceptable without a written (on paper) waiver in a commercial setting. In a private setting not even that may be enough and many/most of these things will need to default to "off".
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None of this is defaulted to off, in fact, this is the Basic level, which cannot be turned off. The default is Full, which is, I'm sure, a list that dwarfs this one by orders of magnitude.
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I think they are wayyyy over what is legally acceptable without a written (on paper)
You can obtain a paper version by just printing your EULA. Not that paper or no paper is any more or less legally binding.
Oh commercial setting? Well I'm sure you'll find a line in your contract saying that you agreed to abide by the EULA. So the paper thing actually is covered even though it's not needed.
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Okay, let's have a quick look at some interesting items from the list:
- userId The userID as known by the application. This is what you type when Windows asks "what is your name?" during account creation, so it's quite likely to be the user's real name.
- did XBOX device ID - xid A list of base10-encoded XBOX User IDs.
- localId Represents a locally defined unique ID for the device
- friendlyName Represents the name of the file requesting elevation from low IL. - cmdLine Represents the full command line arguments being used to elevate. Don't enter passwords on the command line!
- PCFP An ID for the system that is calculated by hashing hardware identifiers.
- BiosDate The release date of the BIOS in UTC format. - BiosName The name field from Win32_BIOS. - Manufacturer The manufacturer field from Win32_ComputerSystem. - Model The model field from Win32_ComputerSystem.
The list is very long, I'm about 1/3rd the way in...
You can pull that information from nearly any computer when they connect to your webpage. That's really nothing new.
Re:Real link (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Real link (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Basic level gathers a limited set of information that is critical for understanding the device and its configuration"
LOL, that's the bare minimum critical info is it? A metric fuckton of data.
How about, oh i dunno, NOTHING?
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Awesome! How can we turn off ALL data collection? Show us THAT link and we are golden...
Here [winaero.com] is how you actually turn off Windows 10 Telemetry
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Cuts out all the stuff no-one wants, and lets you turn off the data collection.
Even without the Group Policy editor you can still manually edit the registry to do disable it. I posted a link above with instructions.
Any evidence... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Any evidence... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter if this is the complete list. This list by itself is already bonkers.
At the very least, they admit that they:
- Uniquely identify you, your device, and your location/network.
- Record what you navigate and search on the internet.
- Record what you watch, listen to, and read.
- Record your purchase history.
Not that it matters though. I believe almost everyone does this nowadays.
At least they are being transparent.
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Not that it matters though. I believe almost everyone does this nowadays.
Then use an operating system that respects your privacy and TOR. While that probably won't stop the CIA or the NSA, it should opt you out of the vast majority of data collection.
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- Record what you navigate and search on the internet.
It sounds like very clear language describing what search providers do with cookies. The Microsoft privacy statement [microsoft.com] uses the following language:
"We collect data about the features you use, the items you purchase, and the web pages you visit. This data includes your voice and text search queries or commands to Bing, Cortana, and our chat bots."
Google's cookies info [google.com]:
"For example, we use such cookies to remember your most recent searches, your previous interactions with an advertiser’s ads or search re
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Through Edge, Internet Explorer, or Cortana, of course, but what about a 3rd party browser?
Maybe from Windows Media Player, but what about VLC or KODI?
From the Microsoft Windows Store, but how about a 3rd party web browser?
This list just raises more questions than it answers.
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For third party tools that they do not track... they will probably add then in the future :)
Just use linux and do not care about what MS do :D
Citations? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the very least, they admit that they:
- Uniquely identify you, your device, and your location/network.
- Record what you navigate and search on the internet.
- Record what you watch, listen to, and read.
- Record your purchase history.
Any citations for these (like field names in that huge list) that you could provide? I searched for some keywords to find anything related what you mentioned (ex: web, browse, history, internet, purchase, etc) and could not find anything as nefarious sounding as your summary. Perhaps I'm not looking closely enough and it's a huge list, so citations would be appreciated. I really would like to know if they are collecting the info you listed. Thanks.
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It's much easier to avoid Google than it is to avoid Windows, especially at work.
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Thanks, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't we turn it off entirely? I can troubleshoot my own PC and don't need it "phoning home" - EVER.
Re:Thanks, but (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need it. I don't need it. We're also the extreme minority who don't need it. We're getting this because everyone else can't troubleshoot their own PC/device.
Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even that. We're getting it because Microsoft believes that they can get away with it. If it was just for troubleshooting, they wouldn't need half the information they're collecting.
Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe, instead of a constant firehose of crap going to Windows servers, we can have a dialog and elect to send stuff to MS when a problem happens. You know, how things used to be. They can create as detailed a dump file as they need, but I should have control over if/when it gets sent somewhere.
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You don't need it. I don't need it. We're also the extreme minority who don't need it. We're getting this because everyone else can't troubleshoot their own PC/device.
If Microsoft's marketing would do their job adequately, they would realize that there is a market for Windows 10 Power User Edition that doesn't need any technical support. The problem is the same idiot users that Microsoft needs Windows Telemetry to support are the same idiots that work in sales and marketing. You can't win.
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And what price point would they have to put that at to cover the value of the data they're no longer collecting on you? $500? $1000? More?
That said, no this kind of telemetry doesn't help much when someone calls into Microsoft support asking why their coffee holder no longer retracts or why their ATI drivers don't work with their new nVidia card or stupid shit like that.
In terms of troubleshooting, its helpful in aggregate to know things like "58% of users spend more-than-desired time on the installation
Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Insightful)
What in the world makes you think that this has anything to do with troubleshooting your PC/device? It may sound like a nice excuse for them to say that it allows your computer to be kept up to do date easier but a good package manager does that. This is all about them using your data to make money and they can't make that money if people turn off the flow of data.
Re:Thanks, but (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been tried.
They try to upload to 100s of different DNS names and IPs...just like spyware.
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I think I will have to whitelist all Win10 network traffic (when I finally need to move in 2020), and just forbid anything else in th firewall. That will take a lot of work. I will probably move everything except gaming to Linux, and Office to an isolated VM with no network at all. Talk about having to make things much worse from an usability point of view.
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Option missing (Score:2)
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Some sort of wireshark like tool over time?
Add a lot of very different file types and alter the way MS works with the files.
Video files, images, documents, music, text.
Will creating data or just having a file on a usb device do anything? Opening a file, saving a file, exporting?
Do file extensions matter?
Calling Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
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I doubt we could verify their claims even with the source. The source most likely a kludge of past malware masquerading as an OS.
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That's relatively irrelevant. Just because its ugly doesn't mean you can't read it if you spend enough time.
The bigger question is verifying that the source they released is the same as the source they compiled.
Removed half of stats before disclosing (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our teams have also worked diligently since the Anniversary Update to re-assess what data is strictly necessary at the Basic level to keep Windows 10 devices up to date and secure," says Myerson. "As a result, we have reduced the number of events collected and reduced, by about half, the volume of data we collect at the Basic level."
I wonder what they felt they needed to remove before they were willing to publish the disclosure.
How about 'NO' data collection? (Score:3)
What non-diagnostic data is collected? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Any data is diagnostic if you say it will help you fix issues.
But yes, full commands of apps that request elevation, personally identifiable IDs like username, xbox IDs, etc. The list is bloody massive.
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Username logged into the machine, XBox IDs (that Microsoft already has), and command lines (of applications usually run through GUIs that are trying to elevate privileges).
People are going to continue screaming about Microsoft constantly recording your microphone, cameras, keystrokes, mouse movements, screen captures, and uploading all of your files and gmail to their analytics server, because of course. For now, they'll try to squeeze something out about usernames and XBox IDs being extra-secret.
Wait
A Missing Detail (Score:5, Insightful)
They are transparent about the Creator's Update. But they have reduced the telemetry by about half, saying that they realized they didn't find all telemetry useful. So you don't really know what they *have been* collecting prior to the Creator's Update. For all we know they've removed a bunch of more onerous details that could have *upset* us.
Perhaps scale it back a bit. (Score:4, Funny)
"Sperm Count" (listed on page two) seems unnecessary.
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They need this information to see whether to offer you the family plan.
Too little too late... (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the f*cking thing and see how reasonable it is:
https://technet.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]
It's completely ridiculous. Windows 10 is basically spyware disguised as an OS at this point.
Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Any company can publicly change policies overnight and then change them back the next day quietly and worse than ever.
If EULA's are actually legal then we need to regulate them so that it's not a one sided contract with no measurable benefit to the customer.
Reduced by Half (Score:3)
Is "reduced by half" anything like "increased by a factor of 2"?
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No.
"Reduced by half" means you reduce X by one half of X, yielding one half of X.
X - 1/2 X = 1/2 X
"Increased by a factor of 2" means you increase X by two X, yielding three X.
X + 2 X = 3 X
Nearly everyone uses "increased by a factor of 2" incorrectly, however. They typically add one to the "factor of". When they say something has increased by a factor of 2, they mean it has increased by a factor of one and is now double what it used to be. They neglect the word "by", which means the following clause indic
Privacy and UI are both poor in Windows 10 (Score:2)
Unless Microsoft brings back the Windows 7 UI in Windows 11 I think I will either move on to a Mac or Lunix distribution for my next computer. They will also need to scrap the data collection and advertising features in Windows 11.
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Do they plan for this to be the last UI they make as well? It is too bad they settled on an even numbered release for all eternity.
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So if they don't revert the fairly small changes in the Win10 over Win7 UI, you're going to go to something entirely different? That seems kind of counter-productive.
The data collection issue is a solid reason, though I'm not sure I'd bet the horse on Apple being enormously better, especially over the long-term and whatever "features" they decide to you have to use because Apple always knows best right?
I miss the critical information (Score:4, Insightful)
"Why should I believe you?"
Time and again we have been lied and misled by Microsoft. Give me one good reason I should believe this.
And it has to be using (Score:3)
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I block bing at my firewalls
So you cut off about 10% of windows telemetry.
Edited MSDN Article about Full Levels... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should look into the msdn historical edit article where they showed that microsoft removed verbiage on it's MSDN page about collecting even worse information such as your documents and allowing microsoft employees investigating any crash reports sent by your machine to actually remotely access your machine and view your documents and run your programs.
Not trolling either. It was a link passed around here awhile ago and microsoft even sent a takedown to the wayback machine which previously had the edit but now does not. Yet on a different microsoft site that lists wiki-style diff's of it's pages, it's still there.
Someone find it please. They are backpedaling so hard on this it's sad.
ISP (Score:2)
Good thing Microsoft isn't an ISP or Americans would be freaking out.
Solution: Find a way to get an Enterprise build (Score:5, Insightful)
We're rolling out Windows 10 in a very low-bandwidth environment, and in some cases a no-bandwidth environment. (Yes, they still exist today!) Turning off telemetry was one of the reasons we upgraded the OEM licenses from Pro to Enterprise -- there's just no need to use precious connection time sending usage data to Microsoft. And yes, that means "paying twice" for the OS, once to the OEM and once for the Enterprise subscription.
In my opinion, Microsoft did a very poor job of communicating what the difference between Home, Pro and Enterprise was. Basically, anyone with Home and Pro is getting the OS for "free" in exchange for telemetry data and information they can sell to marketers, period. Pro is Home with the ability to join a classic AD domain. This is very different from the days of Windows 7, where Pro had enough features to make it the default OS for business deployment. What Microsoft is doing is pulling more and more features under Enterprise, including the ability to opt out of constant feature changes. The result is that most large companies are buying Enterprise upgrades and getting on the subscription treadmill.
I think the best thing they could do right now is to let anybody buy the Enterprise version as a one-off, or make a complete shut-off of the telemetry available but slightly difficult to find in every edition of the OS. Even if they made the telemetry controllable by a few hard to find registry keys, the vast majority of consumers wouldn't touch any of the default settings and they'd still be getting data from them. Microsoft just got done "giving away" Windows 10 to millions of Windows 7 and 8 users in the form of the free upgrade, and the indication is that they will be on the same major release forever from now on, just releasing big update packages once or twice a year. Enterprise customers are subsidizing this development by still paying license fees in the form of subscriptions -- those millions of PCs that were upgraded for free only have the revenue stream of the marketing data coming in until they're replaced. And if Microsoft sticks to their promises, there will be no more revenue for traditional boxed software upgrades either -- no Windows 11 release they can ship out on DVDs to stores is coming.
Do I like being a product for marketing companies to mine data on? Not really -- and I do think Microsoft should be transparent about why they're doing what they're doing. I think all the companies doing this (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) are going to have to find a new way to operate once the social media and advertising bubbles pop too...right now all of them are subsidizing their phone OS development with the fact that they have access to very personal data on a device you carry with you 24 hours a day.
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How do you disable the telemetry in Enterprise? From what I see, it's still limited to "Basic" on both Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows Server 2016.
Is this limited to the "LTSB" versions of Windows 10? What about 2016?
Does Enterprise offer a "fuck you, don't auto update" setting?
Privacy settings (Score:2)
Z0MG they collect UR privacy settings before and after upgrades!! They must want to make sure your privacy settings have been successfully forgotten.
Fields.TelClientSynthetic.PrivacySettingsAfterCreatorsUpdate.PreUpgradeSettings
Fields.TelClientSynthetic.PrivacySettingsAfterCreatorsUpdate.PostUpgradeSettings
HKLM_SensorPermissionState.SensorPermissionState
HKLM_LocationPlatform.Status
HKCU_LocationSyncEnabled.AcceptedPrivacyPolicy
HKLM_AllowTelemetry.AllowTelemetry
HKLM_TailoredExperiences.TailoredExperiencesWit
Too little, too late (Score:2)
Reduced? (Score:2)
As a result, we have reduced the number of events collected and reduced, by about half, the volume of data we collect at the Basic level.
Better compression algorithm combined with consolidating events?
"to help keep Windows up to date" (Score:5, Informative)
The justifications offered by MS are as ridiculous as they are hilarious.
"Activity for run of the Transient Account Manager that determines if any user accounts should be deleted for devices set up for Shared PC mode to help keep Windows up to date. Deleting unused user accounts on shared devices frees up disk space to improve Windows Update success rates"
Seriously so you have to know how many local accounts, when I add, change and remove them. When they first login and their sids I keep on my own machine because there is some insanely comical correlation between local accounts and available disk space?
It's not like you are not already explicitly stealing volume information via Census.Storage and SetupPlatformTel.SetupPlatformTelActivityEvent. And who the fuck installs software without check for available disk space first? Is the success rate of an action really undeterminable prior to taking it because disk space? I don't think even Microsoft is stupid enough to believe their own BS.
Also love the generic key/value data access schemes where the full list of available keys that can be transmitted are not specified anywhere.. Only the top level interface to transfer the data.
FieldName - Retrieves the event name/data point.
Value - Retrieves the value associated with the corresponding event name
If your going to be transparent don't be transparently slimy. You may impress end users with better things to do with reams of context deprived technobabble but there are plenty of people in the world as smart or smarter than the people who compiled this crap.
blackbird (Score:3)
one solution is to use blackbird [getblackbird.net] to turn off all telemetry and uninstall builtin spy/adware. be warned, though, i had some basic things break (like start menu search) after running it.
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one solution is to use blackbird [getblackbird.net] to turn off all telemetry and uninstall builtin spy/adware. be warned, though, i had some basic things break (like start menu search) after running it.
I don't see any info on who actually writes or maintains this blackbird software. They say they're a Non-Profit Org but which? And under whose control? And is there any source code to see what this software does?
Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry (Score:2)
I have:
Set the settings to Basic.
Disabled it in the registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection
added the keyword AllowTelemetry and set it to 0.
Changed the Group Policy level to Disabled:
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Data Collection And Preview Builds\Allow Telemetry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection
Disabled the services, and killed the processes:
- Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service.
It's all in the timing (Score:2)
I'm an Win10 insider receiving Win10 6 months early. Reading it's TOS I never installed or wished to be part of Win10. The way it read, if connected to another's system it was free game for data collection as well.
Gaming won out, just last week I purchased Win10 Pro (for it's grpedit.msc (group editor)).
This change only requires me to disable licensing to install what I want now (a very old and proven version of Comodo firewall).
Re: (Score:3)
Why is this at -1? The data is encrypted, and Windows users presumably don't get to look at the keys.
So literally people have to take MS's word for it. Oh well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)