France Drops Windows 10 Privacy Case After Microsoft Changes Telemetry Settings (betanews.com) 51
Reader Mark Wilson writes: There have been lots of complaints about invasion of privacy since the release of Windows 10. Microsoft's telemetry lead to several lawsuits, including one from France's National Data Protection Commission which said Windows 10 was collecting 'excessive personal data' about users. But now the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libert's has decided to drop its case against Microsoft. The commission is happy that sufficient steps have been taken to reduce the amount of data that is collected and users are now informed about data collection.
What happens when they re-enable it? (Score:3)
Re:What happens when they re-enable it? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. It's still enabled. You can't really turn it off, short of disconnecting the computer from the internet.
2. You still don't know exactly what Microsoft is transmitting to their servers. It's just "less than before".
3. There is no limit as to what is transmitted to their servers, nor will there be any notification or approval required when they decide to increase what is being transmitted to their servers.
Re: (Score:2)
... and those settings are 'off' just long enough for the French to drop the suit.
It'll take the French a few more years just to figure out Microsoft quietly turned it back on,
and another couple more years to get a legal proceeding into the court.
Rinse and repeat.
Re: (Score:3)
How about the far more realistic version. M$ has now given French security forces full access to that data gathered so the French government waffled some shit and pretended everything is fine. The same as in the US, the US government is doing nothing because they have a pipeline into the data being collected by M$ invading the privacy of people's homes and as an extra special add on, provide custom compulsory update packages targeted at individuals across the globe to allow them to hack into Windows 10 mach
QLEB? (Score:2, Interesting)
WTF is a libert? The noise frogs make, perhaps?
Re:QLEB? (Score:4, Informative)
liberté, but you know /. only handle ASCII from 32 to 127 or something like if it was 1970
This post brought to you by ampersand e acute sem (Score:2)
You managed it. Seems this Mark Wilson fucktard doesn't know how to proofread. They'll probably offer him a job.
Re: (Score:2)
we don't want streams of shitposts loaded with megabytes of copypasta emojis.
Then block emojis rather than legitimate letters and symbols. And even for them, I fail to see a difference between a shitpost consisting of megabytes of emojis and one consisting of megabytes of ASCII.
If you can't handle controls such as RTL markers, or excessive amounts of combining characters, filter them out. But I don't really see a reason to ban any conventional printable character.
Re: (Score:3)
Most computers in 1970 only handled 32 to 96 (no lowercase nor the exotic graphics characters {, |, }, ~ ). The IBM EBCDIC punch cards and mainframe machines were also only uppercase back then, although the set of graphics characters was slight different from the ASCII ones. Same with teletype machines, line printers, and video monitors. I would guess it was around mid to late 70s when lowercase became
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for this enormously important contribution to the discussion.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Someone finally surrendered to France. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
Charlemagne and the Franks, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, American independence against the British (the French helped a lot). In modern times, most French military operations are mostly successful. Yes, WWI and WWII France started off losing, but eventually won with the help of allies. They traded wins and losses against the British throughout the period around 1100-1750. Like the British their colonies eventually won independence.
I'm sure you meant it as a joke, but the French have a fairly impressive militar
Re: (Score:2)
Charlemagne and the Franks
The Franks were a germanic tribe that invaded and conquered the Gauls.
Joan of Arc
Not sure how being burned at a stake halfway during a campaign counts as a win.
Napoleon
Utterly crushed.
American independence against the British (the French helped a lot)
If I cheer for and do a favour for someone, may I claim all their victories?
WWI and WWII France started off losing, but eventually won with the help of allies
A battleground/doormat got rescued by allies.
While the meme isn't entirely true, it has quite a bit of validity.
Users have alwaqys been clearly warned (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft does not intend to gather sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, email addresses, or other similarly sensitive information for Linguistic Data Collection. We guard against such events by using technologies to identify and remove sensitive information before linguistic data is sent from the user's device. If we determine that sensitive information has been inadvertently received, we delete the information.
Re: (Score:2)
Convenient explanation, but where is the DOCUMENTATION from Microsoft?
They can SAY all they want, but unless they, essentially, engage in a clear contract with their customers about what they will and will not collect, they are treating us as ignorant customers they can deceive at will.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they gathering more data than needed for their stated intent? Probably. Is that extra data gathered with malicious intent? Probably not. Is there a manager at some level who saw the accidental data gathered and devised multiple malicious uses? Absolutely, probably over three dozen of them in a company that large.
This is, to me, a fair and honest assessment. But it strengthens the argument that users should have the ability to unconditionally turn off all telemetry, with the expectation that it will not be turned back on. Large data sweeps inevitably pick up sensitive information, even if unintentionally. Large companies inevitably have some bad actors. Not a good combination.
Paid (Score:2)
Off.
Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Telling someone your going to do something first before you do it does not legitimize the underlying action.
Amount of data required to be sent to Microsoft to ensure proper operation of Windows is 0 bytes.
Take it or leave it demands are not choices to the extent Windows is not a commodity and leaving it isn't a viable option.
Windows 10 is malware.
All proprietary software could be malware (Score:2)
All variants of Microsoft Windows could be malware because all proprietary software could be malware. There's no reason to point to just Windows 10 as it shares the same problems other non-free OSes and non-free programs do. The only way to get software you can trust is to only run free software on your computer—software that respects one's freedom to run, share, inspect, and modify.
When you prioritize convenience by saying "leaving it [Windows] isn't a viable option" you've narrowed the allowable ter
A new kind of crash dump in Win8 (Score:2)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... [microsoft.com]
It basically scrubs all values that don't meet certain criteria with 0xAAAAAAAA. Also in patent 8,645,763.
Re: (Score:2)
You should be able to completely disable the sending on any data. I was hoping cases like this would force Microsoft to do the right thing but it seems goverments really don't care. This will only be seen by OS makers as a green light to get more bolder with user spying, publicity and other anti user "features".
Right now I'm not happy with any OS of the major manufacturers (Apple, Microsoft and Google). They all try to eit
Sufficient "steps" (Score:2)
Wonder how many 0s those "steps" had.
In other words... (Score:2)
In other words Microsoft finally agreed to share their "telemetry" data with the French government.
Windows reduces the amount of data sent back (Score:1)