The Windows App Store is Full of Pirate Streaming Apps (torrentfreak.com) 98
Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: When we were browsing through the "top free" apps in the Windows Store, our attention was drawn to several applications that promoted "free movies" including various Hollywood blockbusters such as "Wonder Woman," "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and "The Mummy." Initially, we assumed that a pirate app may have slipped past Microsoft's screening process. However, the 'problem' doesn't appear to be isolated. There are dozens of similar apps in the official store that promise potential users free movies, most with rave reviews. Most of the applications work on multiple platforms including PC, mobile, and the Xbox. They are pretty easy to use and rely on the familiar grid-based streaming interface most sites and services use. Pick a movie or TV-show, click the play button, and off you go. The sheer number of piracy apps in the Windows Store, using names such as "Free Movies HD," "Free Movies Online 2020," and "FreeFlix HQ," came as a surprise to us. In particular, because the developers make no attempt to hide their activities, quite the opposite.
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How did "Torrentfreak get shut down"? TorrentFreak is a news site about file sharing and Internet privacy. It hosts the featured article [torrentfreak.com], and this article is still viewable in the United States.
Might you have confused TorrentFreak with a site that actually hosts, links to, or tracks infringing torrents?
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That the Windows app store still sucks badly.
I can't even find a decent epub reader for Windows. Sadly the Windows version of FBReader seems to be abandonware, and about the best I see is the Kobo app, which naturally wants me to connect to the Kobo bookstore (I have an account but haven't bought anything off of them in about three years). For my 8" Windows tablet I'm relegated to using the Nox Android virtual machine so I can actually have access to some decent apps.
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Just use the Kobo app. You have an account but don't need to buy anything to read other ebooks. Just load the ebooks onto your device and have Kobo search the device for ebooks then import the ones you want into Kobo. This is what I have been doing since I got my tablet (admittedly I have an Android tablet but I can't see the Windows Kobo app being all that different).
If you have bought books from Kobo in the past they will probably want to load onto the device as well but you can just delete them after the
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I can't even find a decent epub reader for Windows.
There's the Nook app in the Windows Store. I think Microsoft maintains it itself.
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That the Windows app store still sucks badly.
That hasn't been news for the last 5 years.
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The what? "Windows Store"? (Score:5, Funny)
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The thing is, Microsoft have a TV and movies section to compete with iTunes/play/amazon.
Pirate apps would thus deprive them of revenue.
Re:The what? "Windows Store"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy has always been microsoft's biggest ally...
They may pay lip service to anti-piracy efforts, but were it not for piracy microsoft wouldn't be in the position they are in today. Microsoft depend on lock-in and inertia, and a huge proportion of those users who are locked in got that way with pirate versions.
If you couldn't pirate windows or its applications, then millions of users would have found something else that they could obtain for free, which would likely have resulted in millions more linux users. Many users can't or won't pay for software, and in eastern europe, asia and africa pretty much all software is pirated.
If there were that many active linux users, there would be very little (if any) windows specific software out there, it would be much easier for users in the west to switch away from windows and many would do so. windows if it still existed at all would end up as an expensive niche brand, rather like osx is, running on expensive niche hardware.
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So you're saying that even with giving Linux away for free, people prefer to pirate Windows.
That's an odd thing for an advocate to be asserting.
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If you couldn't pirate windows or its applications, then millions of users would have found something else that they could obtain for free, which would likely have resulted in millions more linux users. Many users can't or won't pay for software, and in eastern europe, asia and africa pretty much all software is pirated.
Nonsense, at least when it comes to Windows proper. Pirating Windows 7 involved binary hacks and crap like unplugging the internet during activation, and blocking certain patches that would have negated it. MSFT did a pretty thorough job.
Like any anti-piracy scheme, it's a cost benefit tradeoff. How much engineering time do you want to put it, and how much can you inconvenience your users? Whatever you do, if there's a will, there will be a way.
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Whooooosh.
What do you think that loader does? You know, computers are good at automated steps, especially when it only involves writing data to files.
Re: The what? "Windows Store"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The what? "Windows Store"? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Is Microsoft still trying to push some kind of app store on Windows users? Has anyone really been there yet?
I've been there - both on the PC & phone versions of the store, & both are equally worthless. Most of the popular apps that are advertized are not there on either, and the ones that are happen to be pretty worthless!
Not only is Windows 10 Mobile dead, I suspect the same is almost true of Windows 10 on the desktop. My next desktop/laptop will be a Mac.
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I suspect the same is almost true of Windows 10 on the desktop
If you play PC games, you run Windows. There's no change to that on the horizon.
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[citation needed]
Malware Heaven (Score:3)
And how many of these DOESN'T contain malware?
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That's heavily overstating what Google does, but I get it, this is all about whatabouttery.
The fact is that the Apple and Google app stores are pretty goddamned successful, and Microsoft's is simply an abortion that Microsoft itself seems to have no idea what to do with, and most certainly is putting few resources into policing. In other words, the Microsoft store, where it's noted at all, is noted as yet another colossal failure.
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"Don't" is the word you're looking for.
Re:Malware Heaven (Score:4, Interesting)
UWP apps from Windows Store run in a container that restricts how much damage malware can do. For extra protection, spin up a copy of Windows 10 in a virtual machine. But I concede that most users aren't going to be using a VM, and many apps are built with Desktop Bridge instead of UWP.
So to protect users even further, you can set the takedown process in motion. Download each app, search for X-Men films, and report them to Fox. Then search for Star Wars and Avengers films and report them to Disney. Then search for DC films and the other Avengers [wikipedia.org] and report them to Warner Bros.
Make your own movies with blackjack+hookers (Score:2)
Why help the copyright cartel.
To help build outrage in the general public as a means of encouraging them to make their own movies instead of relying on those produced by the cartel.
Britain (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps Britain should declare war on Windows the same way they have on Kodi. It would make at least as much sense.
Re:Britain (Score:5, Interesting)
It would make more sense. Kodi bans illegal plugins while MS is hosting them on it's app store. The insane crusade against Kodi makes zero sense. Android, Windows and other systems host piracy apps and do less to discourage it than Kodi does.
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Well that's the thing, windows is "too big to fail", so it gets a free pass in areas where others are heavily scrutinised.
For instance, PCI DSS requirement 8.2.1 says:
8.2.1 Using strong cryptography, render all authentication credentials (such as passwords/phrases) unreadable during transmission and storage on all system components.
Windows stores user passwords using the NTLM algorithm, which is based on MD4... This is not considered "Strong cryptography", i believe PCI defines acceptable "strong cryptograp
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Well that's the thing, windows is "too big to fail", so it gets a free pass in areas where others are heavily scrutinised.
For instance, PCI DSS requirement 8.2.1 says:
8.2.1 Using strong cryptography, render all authentication credentials (such as passwords/phrases) unreadable during transmission and storage on all system components.
Windows stores user passwords using the NTLM algorithm, which is based on MD4... This is not considered "Strong cryptography", i believe PCI defines acceptable "strong cryptography" elsewhere in the standard and in doing so explicitly rule out a number of older algorithms.
If someone is trying to comply with PCI requirements and is not using Active Directory, that's a problem right from the start. Using Active Directory changes the password storage to AES (kerberos).
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No it doesn't, the passwords are still stored using NTLM, kerberos is only used at the network layer... Don't confuse NTLM authentication with NTLM password hash storage, they are two different (but closely interdependent) things.
Try running any of the many password hash dumping tools on your domain controller and see what you get out, crackmapexec is good for this.
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their modeling seems backwards doing things like Windows 10S before creating a livable store for apps.
How many apps were available when Apple's App Store launched alongside iPhone OS 2.0?
Does anybody really care (Score:5, Funny)
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Come on now, all that means is there's a lot of people with shit taste.
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Does anyone actually use a lot of Apps on the Windows store? No one in my circle use it AT ALL. Not. One. Single. App. In fact most of the people in my personal circle either stuck with 7 or use complete third party shell replacements for 8.1. Several of them completely gutted all app functionality to get ride of unwanted features.
Admit it Microsoft. To a lot of us you really screwed up. And just alienating your user base with forced changes to the US is starting to piss us off. You are not hegemo
Proof! (Score:5, Funny)
Proof that nobody bothers with the Windows app store. If even the RIAA/MPAA don't bother with it, you know it's dead.
This is modded funny, but is actually true. (Score:1)
If the RIAA/MPAA aren't filing takedowns on this software, then the only two reasons that make any sense are:
A. Nobody browses the Windows Store, even the RIAA/MPAA orMicrosoft's 'content monitoring' team.
B. These apps are up there to provide a source of illegal services so that Microsoft's remoting monitoring and anti-piracy services can flag the end users in order to send more of those copyright infringement shakedown letters to people who are both stupid enough to still be using windows, and doubly stupi
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Or:
C. Microsoft know full well they are there, but they realise that piracy is a significant way to grow the user base, so they intentionally let it slide hoping it will get more users locked in.
So? (Score:2)
(An advertisement for Windows?)
Still not going to run Windows on my PC.
Got rid of that chain 10 years ago. Not going to shackle myself again.
Distinguishing torrents from Atari v. Nestle (Score:2)
There are two different practical meanings of "copyright infringement".
The mainstream media often uses the term "piracy" for the former but not the
Say it ain't so (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also apps called 'browsers' who can be used to buy knives, guns, viruses, chemicals, bomb-building materials, cars to run people over..., not only apps violating some imaginary 'intellectual' 'property'.
I/O (Score:2)
Windows 10 S (Score:2)
Windows doesn't require its users to use a centralized repository the way that iOS does.
Windows 8 did not. Windows RT did. Windows 10 does not. Windows 10 S does.
It would not make any sense at all for Microsoft to be "screening" the software on the Windows store. Users don't care about it, and on a platform with such low standards, nobody is asking for it. There simply isn't any incentive at all.
The incentive for "screening" is to avoid liability for contributory and/or vicarious infringement on the part of developers who publish their apps to the Store.
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Nobody really runs Windows 10S. It's the ChromeBook in the Windows universe. Some schools use it to restrict what their pupils can load.
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There's a difference between something like rsync, which *can* be used to download pirated content, and "Free HD Movie Player" which is designed specifically to do so.
You are spot on about the quality aspect, windows is extremely poor quality software and its users have very low expectations as a result. Regular crashing and malware outbreaks are considered normal and unavoidable...
But windows *does* badly need a properly vetted store, because it is *claiming* to be suitable for average users when clearly t
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You are simply an ideologue shilling your propaganda.
It gets tiresome. Just settle down and enjoy using what you prefer and stop proselytizing to the rest of the world.
I find it surprising (Score:5, Funny)
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because the developers make no attempt to hide... (Score:5, Funny)
I beg to differ, they hid them in the best place possible, the MS App store! Guaranteed to not be seen by anyone!
I would have posted this on my Lumia 635, but as the browser keeps crashing, as it's ALWAYS done, had to post my Mint laptop.
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You shouldn't have tried to install Linux on your Lumia 635. Now it's buggy and unstable.