No, Microsoft is not spying on you with Windows 10

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By Ed Bott:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-microsoft-is-not-spying-on-you-with-windows-10/

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From what I remember from my brief experience of Win 10 and the options that I unchecked, I got the impression that MS wanted to know all bar what you had for breakfast.

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From what I remember from my brief experience of Win 10 and the options that I unchecked, I got the impression that MS wanted to know all bar what you had for breakfast.

We should try to have a substantiated discussion. Vague impressions or assertions should be left for other places. Please note that I am not taking positions, just that my goal with the post was to have a discussion on concrete, substantiated issues. I think there are legitimate concerns, but I have read completely absurd assertions, like they would copy and send all your files to Redmond. We are a technical forum, we should conduct technically sound discussions.

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We should try to have a substantiated discussion. Vague impressions or assertions should be left for other places.

This is an extremely difficult discussion to have but a necessary one, and unfortunately perception does play a role in it. What one person may consider intrusive, another may not.

For example, I have spoken with a couple people who are concerned about this but seem oblivious to the amount of information Google and Amazon keep about them. They are bothered by something they have heard or read about Windows 10, but have an Android phone with 25 apps that can and do have access to everything on that phone, plus their history, and can track their every movement.

People are concerned about security but are perfectly willing to put personal documents, passwords, banking data, health information, etc in the “cloud”. Have they really thought this through?

Do I like the default permissions in Windows 10? Not particularly. I’ve looked into them and even got an app that helps gain access to all of them and was staggered to see how many things there were that kept and or transmitted tracking data. In about 15 seconds my eyes glazed over and I decided to come back to this later when I had a few hours to spend figuring out what all these things were.

But let’s be honest here, how many people have any real idea of what’s being tracked on your Win7 or 8 or XP computer right this very second as you read this? How about your iPad/iPhone? Your Android device? Be honest, now. How about your email provider and your ISP, what are they tracking? And your cable company and phone company and the list goes on and on. Be honest, now – you really have no idea, do you?

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Do I like the default permissions in Windows 10? Not particularly. I’ve looked into them and even got an app that helps gain access to all of them and was staggered to see how many things there were that kept and or transmitted tracking data. In about 15 seconds my eyes glazed over and I decided to come back to this later when I had a few hours to spend figuring out what all these things were.

May I inquire the name and source of the app?

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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May I inquire the name and source of the app?

It’s something I saw mentioned here and several other places. O&O Shutup10

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This is an extremely difficult discussion to have but a necessary one, and unfortunately perception does play a role in it. What one person may consider intrusive, another may not.

For example, I have spoken with a couple people who are concerned about this but seem oblivious to the amount of information Google and Amazon keep about them. They are bothered by something they have heard or read about Windows 10, but have an Android phone with 25 apps that can and do have access to everything on that phone, plus their history, and can track their every movement.

People are concerned about security but are perfectly willing to put personal documents, passwords, banking data, health information, etc in the “cloud”. Have they really thought this through?

Do I like the default permissions in Windows 10? Not particularly. I’ve looked into them and even got an app that helps gain access to all of them and was staggered to see how many things there were that kept and or transmitted tracking data. In about 15 seconds my eyes glazed over and I decided to come back to this later when I had a few hours to spend figuring out what all these things were.

But let’s be honest here, how many people have any real idea of what’s being tracked on your Win7 or 8 or XP computer right this very second as you read this? How about your iPad/iPhone? Your Android device? Be honest, now. How about your email provider and your ISP, what are they tracking? And your cable company and phone company and the list goes on and on. Be honest, now – you really have no idea, do you?

Your post is a sensible one, asks relevant questions and makes statements that are correct regarding what happens in other OSes.

My point about perceptions was really to convey the idea that perceptions should be informed and not rumor based. People are free to choose whether Windows suits them or not and I couldn’t care less about what they choose regarding that. What I think we need to do here is to be as objective as possible regarding what data is collected and what are the implications of such collection. The fact is that Windows has been collecting data for a long while, well before 8 or 10.

Personally I don’t mind if some data is collected. I use the cloud as my last tier backup and any data that I deem confidential is automatically encrypted by the cloud backup app I use. I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t use my 1TB+ of OneDrive storage to backup documents, files and code that I simply cannot lose and then something happened to them. This doesn’t mean I don’t backup locally (I have 4 disks which I rotate, for local backups). So, I am ok with some trade-offs, what I really require is transparency.

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My point about perceptions was really to convey the idea that perceptions should be informed and not rumor based.

Quite correct. There is a lot of Chicken Little to this and knowing what is true vs rumor is quite important.

And so is transparency, and this part of what I was getting at. I doubt people really understand how much their privacy is already “invaded” by smart devices. What Win10 is/maybe doing is little different or worse than what people have been accepting for quite some time now.

So, along with knowing what is being done, there needs to be a reality check about how intrusive it is compared to what we already accept. Given what we already accept, is MS really asking for anything new?

Like you, I’m not taking sides here. But I am saying that this has to be looked at in perspective.

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I also feel Microsoft is being overly intrusive. From the very beginning when they make you think it’s required to sign onto Windows using your Microsoft account. You have to be very diligent to slip past that so you can do local logins only. And yes, I also noticed all the switches I had to turn off that really shouldn’t be on to begin with. If you wish to play with all the shiny toys like Cortana, you HAVE to give Microsoft full access to everything you’re doing.

Plus, what’s with the automatic updates that they admittedly tell you nothing about what they are and what they do? Apple does the same thing and that’s one reason I’ll never do Apple products.

Maybe Microsoft isn’t “SPYING” on us, but they are up to something.

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Is there any way to revert to my old local login, now that I’ve seen what it means to log in with my Microsoft account?

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While I can’t remember all of the options now, I do remember thinking at the time when I was going through them that they seemed very intrusive.

Perhaps someone with a better memory or access to those options could verify the tech bits – after all, that article was Ed Bott’s take on them and we are each entitled to our own in how we view our privacy.

So I think any discussion on them would be coloured by how each perceived them and only MS will know the true motives behind gathering that info.

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While I can’t remember all of the options now, I do remember thinking at the time when I was going through them that they seemed very intrusive.

Perhaps someone with a better memory or access to those options could verify the tech bits – after all, that article was Ed Bott’s take on them and we are each entitled to our own in how we view our privacy.

So I think any discussion on them would be coloured by how each perceived them and only MS will know the true motives behind gathering that info.

I am sorry to disagree, this cannot be about perceptions, but about concrete things, otherwise we better do as Ed Bott recommends and put on our very own tinfoil hats. I have nothing against perceptions, everyone can have their own, but here, we should argue facts. Anything else is not for a technical forum.

The goal here is to inform and be informed. There is too much FUD out there already and anyone wanting that can go to one of the many places where those fanciful conspiracy theories abound.

Personally, I think that, if anything, Microsoft has made bad choices regarding transparency and default settings. This has brought about a big load of nonsense, but probably they have themselves to blame for it. I am not as worried about them taking my data, which no one has really shown them to do, as I am about other issues, like mandatory updates and non disclosure of such updates contents. My computers are a work tool on which I depend and I cannot risk losing work hours on bad updates or updates that are of no interest or that can interfere with products or product configurations that I rely on to do my work. That is a big no for me and that is the single reason for not having migrated to Windows 10 yet and considering not migration at all, unless I have to – like when I’ll buy a new computer, in which case I will be expecting to have to spend some time getting it configured as I need.

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I am sorry to disagree, this cannot be about perceptions, but about concrete things, otherwise we better do as Ed Bott recommends and put on our very own tinfoil hats. I have nothing against perceptions, everyone can have their own, but here, we should argue facts. Anything else is not for a technical forum.

The goal here is to inform and be informed. There is too much FUD out there already and anyone wanting that can go to one of the many places where those fanciful conspiracy theories abound.

Indeed.

Yes, there is “information” gathered by Microsoft for a number of reasons. Part of that information is “linked” to your computer hardware hash code (the same one that provides your license to use Windows 10) for technical/performance aggregation and analysis. We have options available within the OS to limit the extent of the information Microsoft can gather.

Part of the information is “linked” to your IP address, in the same way that online purchases are tacked to your IP address, searches via Google are tacked to your IP address, etc. etc. If we go online for any reason, most of our browsing is tracked in numerous ways. Every time you request a web page (click on a bookmark or type it into search box) you are sending your IP address in order for the page to be delivered to you. Every web site you visit gathers as much information related to your IP address as they deem favorable to suit their business model.

Buy something from an online retailer, and your IP address is going to be tracked. Sites you visit are likely to offer ads that are very similar to your recent purchases/searches of merchandise. Ads are being paid for by our clicks, and our clicks are validated by IP address, or else the advertiser won’t be paid (a thousand clicks in a couple of minutes from a single IP address won’t get credited).

Opt out of everything that you can opt out of, but if you don’t want to be tracked at all or have any information on you available to third parties at all, don’t ever go online for any reason, and make all your purchases from brick and mortar stores using cash only; your credit card purchases are also tracked for targeted marketing.

Rest assured that our online habits/purchases are indeed being tracked and collated, but not just by Microsoft; every online presence is doing it, and they are all gathering the same types of information for the same purposes; they want to sell us stuff. It’s really no more nefarious than that.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Buy something from an online retailer, and your IP address is going to be tracked. Sites you visit are likely to offer ads that are very similar to your recent purchases/searches of merchandise.

If you delete your temporary internet files / cookies from time to time, you will find that you don’t see ads for the products you just looked at / purchased on line.

I suspect that the IP isn’t tracked, but rather that the ads are being generated from the cookies which are on your hard drive.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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If you delete your temporary internet files / cookies from time to time, you will find that you don’t see ads for the products you just looked at / purchased on line.

I suspect that the IP isn’t tracked, but rather that the ads are being generated from the cookies which are on your hard drive.

Nope. That gets taken care of every day via Task Scheduler. I have third party cookies blocked, as well, and I often use InPrivate Browsing. My IP address comes through my ISP hub which is almost 70 miles from where I actually live. I get ads targeted at my IP address from retail interests with addresses around the area of my ISP hub; car dealerships, restaurant chains, furniture stores, clothing outlets, electronics outlets, etc.

For example, Google doesn’t charge you or me for searches. They do charge advertisers for ad placement, and they can charge more for targeted ads than for generic ads. How does a car dealership, or a furniture outlet, or a restaurant chain know where I am in order to send me an address (which they assume is very near me) along with an ad for today’s special? A cookie doesn’t give them a general location, but an IP address does.

I stopped using Google a number of years ago, and the ads drifted away from the area around my physical location and gravitated to the area around my ISP hub. I use Startpage and DuckDuckGo for searches. All the targeted ads that I see now in sidebars at various web sites reference the area of my ISP hub. Startpage uses Google, but it goes through a proxy server for anonymity. They even offer proxy links to many (not all) search results, as well, so that one can visit a link directly from the search page via a proxy server.

So I’m not speculating that IP addresses are tracked, I know that they are. Databases of this type of aggregated and collated information are bought/sold/updated daily. Targeted ads need to know where you are (not necessarily who you are) and your recent interests. My web site is not connected with Google except for a small snippet of code placed on each html page. I subscribe to a free version of Google Analytics. I can log in to my Google Analytics account (which uses a throwaway email address and not my real name) and find out how many visitors I’ve had, what language they use, what OS they use, what browser they use, which pages they visited, and the general location from which they visited my site. The snippet of code is only an identifier (GUID of sorts) that links the information Google is gathering to my web site pages.

And that’s just the free version. I could upgrade my Google Analytics account and pay for targeted ads placed in my pages by Google, but I don’t want any ads on my site.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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– like when I’ll buy a new computer, in which case I will be expecting to have to spend some time getting it configured as I need.

Hopefully by that time, all of the other techs will have worked through all of the issues and published their results, which will make your job easier.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Of course they are not spying on “you” or “me,” that’s patently ridiculous. As a group though, or ability to categorize markets, they want a collection of information to sell to advertisers and base decisions on; just as many other consumer marketers want, like Facebook, and Google, etc. Microsoft just happens to have one of the best tools at their disposal for that purpose and they are clearly struggling with how much of that tool to apply.

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People have to differentiate between the official released version of Windows 10 and any of the preview versions. The preview versions have a different agreement and have a considerable amount of telemetry enabled which a user can not disable. If you join the Insider Program and run a preview version you have to agree to the extensive data collection.

Joe

--Joe

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People have to differentiate between the official released version of Windows 10 and any of the preview versions. The preview versions have a different agreement and have a considerable amount of telemetry enabled which a user can not disable. If you join the Insider Program and run a preview version you have to agree to the extensive data collection.

Joe

Agreed; that’s all part of the beta testing, and being willing is part of being a beta tester.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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If Facebook and Google are doing it it must be OK. I’m sure the call it something else. :coffeetime:

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//170919-Sick-of-Windows-spying-on-you-Go-Linux

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Question is; Is that extensive telemetric data collection done with the W10 previews still going on?
I also suspect that MS has moved forward quite a bit in the “targeted” ad business that many others have been
doing far more extensively than MS had been doing previously.

I just whished they had left WU alone, not only do you not get a choice in the update, you also
have next to zero information about it. Don’t they know we’re a paranoid crowd, unlike the Apple lackeys.

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I think perception of what someone thinks MS are doing plays a big part in accepting the EULA and whether they want to continue with Win 10 – just how much private info are MS entitled to and do we want them to collect it.

Error reporting is one thing – private info is another.

I agree that the biggest concern is about auto updates given MS’s past reliability on that and while they are supposed to have been tested for a month by the Insiders on the Fast Ring before the rest get them, we’ve all seen how some updates have had a catastrophic effect on some machines but not on others – but how much of the MS Big Brother is acceptable.

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No one has Windows 10 installed without agreeing to the Windows 10 EULA. Those of us who have Windows 10 because we started with the Insider Preview route agreed to a much more extensive transfer of information. With the RTM we gained the ability to trim back the amount of information and opting out of some of the telemetry by opting out of the Insider program and getting out of the Fast Ring. But in all cases, we have all agreed to the EULA.

And the EULA is very plain; if you don’t like it, uninstall the OS and you are not bound by it. It’s just that simple. Millions upon millions of Windows users of various flavors have been using auto-update throughout their history with Windows. Those of us who have opted to exercise some control over the process are a very small minority. Enterprise users always have, and they always will, and MS will more than likely always allow them to do so rather than risk losing their business. The rest of us, ‘taint likely; those of us who are being vocal about our distaste for auto-updates are still Windows users, aren’t we? We’re just whining.

But we stay with Windows because the other options are less viable/desirable. Windows 7 users still outnumber Windows 10 users by a wide margin, will continue to do so for quite a long while, and all of us who are now using Windows 10 by upgrading Windows 7 had/have that option as well. I could restore a drive image and step right back into Window 7 just as it was when I upgraded, as could anyone who has a recent drive image of their Windows 7 installation.

Microsoft, however, is not going to step back. The market spoke through Windows 8/8.1, Microsoft heard that voice and we now have Windows 10. They’ve also indicated that they’ve altered their Windows business model in some significant ways, and only market forces will have any effect on those changes. All we can really do is ride the waves or get out of the Microsoft ocean.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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Specifically:

http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

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Settings > Accounts > Your Account > Sign in With a Local Account Instead

Jerry

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I use an MS account for my created account in the Administrators group, but I don’t run routinely from that account. I use a created Standard User account the vast majority of the time, and that is a local account. I can invoke “Run as administrator” as needed from the Standard User account to accomplish most any task.

Only on those occasions when a program/utility requires that one be logged on as a member of the Administrators group do I use my Admin/MS account.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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