I just upgraded to Win10. I turned everything off.

+2 (that is: 2 of 6 systems here upgraded  ) yes, nearly all 'phone home' features turned off

I haven't checked into it extensively yet, but I imagine our smart phones are passing along more information to The Man than any desktop OS ever will. Unless you're walking around with the battery pulled and only put it back in for as long as you need to use the phone & not a second longer, your phone is capable of telling somebody where you are every second of every day its with you. Where you drive, where you shop, where you spend most of your time....and The Man can monitor this (and more) even if the phone is turned off.

Most of this privacy stuff is all over MS needing collect information to customize the OS to you (and the ads, too). I half-suspect that all the legal jargon in the EULA that has people up in the arms is just CYA boilerplate in case a government agency drops a subpeona on a Microsoft executive's desk.

Just my theory...could totally be wrong, though, as I haven't had time to dig deep into it yet.

They are, and that's a little bit of all this, we're all uneasy with what mobile phones do, but we're kinda stuck. Desktop OS's were supposed to be "ours".

Sounds almost like, next thing you know, like WalMart, Microsoft will be bogusly referring to us as 'Associates'.

... With whatever privacy concerns (or others!) comes with Software-as-a-service.

I loathe SaaS. Most often it's just implemented to milk customers. However, I'm still beholden to clients, and Windows is the only option. And my development work now requires Win10.

"From Mirror UK ...Microsoft has admitted it collects key information on Windows users, recording the searches they make with Bing

Just one more reason for people to stop letting Bing be a thing.

I find it weird how people just learned to accept "we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders)". It feels like vaccination to me. Yes, with Windows 10 you can turn it off (at least that's what we think). But once this becomes the norm, it maybe won't feel so wrong when you can't turn it off any more.

I don't think we're stuck. There are plenty of options, at least for us tech-savvy folks. Often, they are a lot of work to implement though and by far not as well integrated. I understand how convenient it is if you just enter a single user name and password on your new phone or machine and you have all you addresses, calendar, emails, photos, files, etc. back. But the price we pay is enormous imho.

I'm sure most DCers have read 1984. The direction we're heading seems so obvious. Nevertheless, we just don't want to see it, don't want to accept it. After all, you can just turn it off.

I find it weird how people just learned to accept "we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders)". It feels like vaccination to me. Yes, with Windows 10 you can turn it off (at least that's what we think). But once this becomes the norm, it maybe won't feel so wrong when you can't turn it off any more.

I don't think we're stuck. There are plenty of options, at least for us tech-savvy folks. Often, they are a lot of work to implement though and by far not as well integrated. I understand how convenient it is if you just enter a single user name and password on your new phone or machine and you have all you addresses, calendar, emails, photos, files, etc. back. But the price we pay is enormous imho.

I'm sure most DCers have read 1984. The direction we're heading seems so obvious. Nevertheless, we just don't want to see it, don't want to accept it. After all, you can just turn it off.

I think we're almost stuck, by their design!


I'm well aware of the web mail and phone side slurps, but the price to pay of not integrating all your stuff in one place is *also* enormous!

But Desktop PC OS'es used to be "our own little land". "Make it local" and all that. But now that's starting to slip because MS has recovered (?) some momentum somewhere and now they have their new stomping ground called Win10 and I still think a "new cultural shift" that somehow "this is now" that we were able to put off while we all ignored Windows 8. (Not the least that by making this the "second OS", they took the first step to making Win7 semi obsolete.)

This whole culture though still feels like they're successfully doing that Halogen-Light-on-SUV on us. We're all wrapped up still in "silly" little install glitches. Yay Vista 2.0 style griping.

But Sauron over there has (with more time on their hands aka 3 further years) has built untold number of surprises into this one, and it's gonna take us damn near all of our "free year" to ferret out 60% of them.

I don't KNOW when I have been this bothered by an OS!


PS. Ads in Solitaire.

I find it weird how people just learned to accept "we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders)". It feels like vaccination to me. Yes, with Windows 10 you can turn it off (at least that's what we think). But once this becomes the norm, it maybe won't feel so wrong when you can't turn it off any more.

I don't think we're stuck. There are plenty of options, at least for us tech-savvy folks. Often, they are a lot of work to implement though and by far not as well integrated. I understand how convenient it is if you just enter a single user name and password on your new phone or machine and you have all you addresses, calendar, emails, photos, files, etc. back. But the price we pay is enormous imho.

I'm sure most DCers have read 1984. The direction we're heading seems so obvious. Nevertheless, we just don't want to see it, don't want to accept it. After all, you can just turn it off.

...or the original 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

Just thinking out loud, this reminds me of the cellphones that can be switched on remotely and indetectably, but cannot switch carriers, then methods were found to switch carriers anyway, then the Powers That Be left-brain labeled it 'jail breaking' and tried to outlaw it with oppressive legislation...

But these aren't cellphones, they're PCs with huge sprawling Windows or Windows-alternative OSs that are supposed to be open to creative modifications, and the Windows 10 built-in spyware scene is already creating net-spanning social pressure to do something about it.
And there are alternative OSs to Windows such as Unix, Linux, Apple, and so on.
IOW, it is not a static situation like a tightly sealed box; we can always seek to think outside the 'box' and seek to avoid being 'boxed in'.
That's the virtue of virtual reality; no one entity gets to arbitrarily define it in ways that stay fixed & one-sided with all the rules stacked in their favor.
With cellphones, the self-appointed 'rule-makers' tried to exploit a captive market and cry 'foul' with stupid 'jail breaker' labels.
My PC is no cellphone, but what I'm really getting at is that negative public (i.e. user) feedback to Windows 10 abuses, coupled with people voting with their feet to go elsewhere could theoretically cause Microsoft to backtrack, although at this point it only seems like so much wishful thinking.
But I'm so glad I stuck with WIndows 7 Pro and did not just jump into the free upgrade; it just didn't seem all that inviting to me, nor is it now.

Quote from: Renegade on August 06, 2015, 02:20 PM

Quote from: TaoPhoenix on August 06, 2015, 12:58 PM

... With whatever privacy concerns (or others!) comes with Software-as-a-service.

I loathe SaaS. Most often it's just implemented to milk customers. However, I'm still beholden to clients, and Windows is the only option. And my development work now requires Win10.

Renny! I didn't know you were so restrained! Or should I check the basement for the unrestrained version?

I've mellowed. A lot.

Instead of wanting to feed SaaSers through a woodchipper, I only want to feed them through a paper shredder now.

I'm also sure someone will make an app that will reliably suspend the Windows Update service & hopefully, allow us to pick & choose which updates to install & which ones to blacklist. Until MS makes the registry a black box users cannot pick apart and analyze, there will always be intrepid souls who will work to leverage it in the users' favor.

Yes. It has happened before and it will happen now.

Already we have blogs and website giving steps to disable all those nasty privacy options, and program to automate them have started coming up.

I use 3rd party firewall, anti-virus, cleaner, uninstaller, video player etc. to keep my peace of mind in Win8. I will do same in Win10. I like to use an OS as OS only.

I hope, like we used Windows Blind to fully convert in visual and action a Win95 machine like Mac, some program comes like say, 'Better Win10' which runs as layer over Win10 and let us have our peace of mind.

Regards,

Anand

Microsoft has admitted it collects key information on Windows users, recording the searches they make with Bing

Phew, good thing Google would never do that! 

While I understand everyone's privacy concerns, especially people who have never owned a cell phone, the simple truth of the matter is that the general public does not care that their privacy is being violated. Owning something that makes their life easier is all they care about.

Trying to resist going on a full-on rant here, but even when you sit down with them, connect all the dots, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this erosion of privacy is not a good thing for anybody, they just shrug their shoulders and say they don't care.

As for the Chinese, they say there are two types of businesses in the world: the ones that have been hacked by the Chinese and the ones that don't realize they have been hacked by the Chinese.

It's much ado over nothing.

No, it's not.

I haven't had time to look into the detail of most things, but enabling p2p updates as an opt-out is a big no-no. Yes, it's a good thing for the community as a whole, but it really isn't something an OS should impose on you, and it really sucks for people with metered plans. Yes, you can have an ethernet card and still be limited.

And the WiFi sense is just insane. Given how far MS has come the last 10 years in regards to taking security seriously, this is a big shock - there's some marketing and UX drones that have to be roasted slowly for this, and some upper middle management guys who need some proper old-fashioned viking-style torture for accepting the feature request - it's simply unacceptable.