Windows 10 - Yea or Nay?

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Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
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Message 1763863 - Posted: 10 Feb 2016, 14:40:23 UTC - in response to Message 1763862.  

I think it's in the 'Community Additions' section - and as so often, for 'community' read 'spammer'.
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Message 1764109 - Posted: 11 Feb 2016, 18:01:21 UTC
Last modified: 11 Feb 2016, 18:01:52 UTC

Microsoft is going to release a patch later this year with which users can disable the tracking and telemetry in Windows 10 completely. For the full article on it, read it at Forbes.

I cannot give quotes from the article because the Forbes site does not allow me to go on there as I have ad-blockers running. It even says I have one running in Internet Explorer, which is as bare-bone as possible, so go figure. Although I would expect Forbes to have enough money, but that aside.

No word apparently on if they now stop throwing all that tracking and telemetry into Windows 7/8.1 as well. Probably not.

Oh, Microsoft does advise against turning off the tracking but cannot say why.
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Message 1764118 - Posted: 11 Feb 2016, 18:22:18 UTC - in response to Message 1764109.  

Strange - I run AdBlockPlus on Chrome and have no problems getting the page....
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Message 1764167 - Posted: 11 Feb 2016, 22:36:00 UTC - in response to Message 1764109.  

Forbes.com wrote:
For now, full control of Telemetry is being brought only to Windows 10 Enterprise

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Profile Siran d'Vel'nahr
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Message 1764172 - Posted: 11 Feb 2016, 23:05:52 UTC - in response to Message 1764167.  

Forbes.com wrote:
For now, full control of Telemetry is being brought only to Windows 10 Enterprise

Greetings,

Yes, Window$ 10 Home and Pro users will be left out in the cold and will have to deal with being tracked and such.

Also:
Earlier this week a Voat thread started something. It detailed extensive Windows 10 background telemetry making thousands of connections every hour to Microsoft [MSFT -8.40%] servers. It did this with every accessible tracking option disabled and even a third party telemetry blocker installed. I took this data to Microsoft and it declined to comment, but now the company has had a change of heart.

What's up with that? No matter what we do to prevent tracking and such, we cannot?

Keep on BOINCing...! :)
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Message 1764182 - Posted: 11 Feb 2016, 23:59:39 UTC - in response to Message 1764167.  

Forbes.com wrote:
For now, full control of Telemetry is being brought only to Windows 10 Enterprise

Well that depends on what addresses and ports they use to call home. One could simple disable that port for outgoing data in their router config.
Back with XP I found some odd ports making outbound connections to IPs that were owned by MS. So I disabled them in my router. It didn't break anything & I never did find out what services was trying to make those connections.
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Message 1764185 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 0:01:51 UTC - in response to Message 1764172.  
Last modified: 12 Feb 2016, 0:05:06 UTC

Hi Rick,
What's up with that? No matter what we do to prevent tracking and such, we cannot?

The person -Crust- doing that test tested it wrong. He closed off all connections in his test, which means that e.g. when Windows can't reach an update server, it will go try to connect to another.

Read http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-it-comes-to-windows-10-privacy-dont-trust-amateur-analysts/:
First of all, 602 connection attempts were to 192.168.1.255, using UDP port 137. That's the broadcast address where Windows computers on a local network announce their presence and look for other network computers using the NetBIOS Name Service. It's perfectly normal traffic.

Another 630 of those connection attempts were Domain Name System lookups to the router itself, 192.168.1.1, using UDP port 53. That address is the router itself.

Why is Windows performing those DNS lookups? One big reason is that's how Windows checks whether you have access to the Internet. If there's a problem with your Internet connection, you get a yellow overlay on the network icon down at the right side of the taskbar.

To do that test, Windows first performs a DNS lookup of www.msftncsi.com. It then makes an HTTP request to retrieve the page ncsi.txt from that site. This file is a plain-text file and contains only the text "Microsoft NCSI." (NCSI stands for Network Connection Status Icon.) Finally, it performs a DNS query for dns.msftncsi.com.

The whole procedure is extensively documented .

DNS queries aren't "spying." Neither are NetBIOS name broadcasts on your local network. So far, that's 22.3 percent of the so-called traffic that's easily accounted for as "not spying," unless you think there's something sinister about a two-word text file that has been downloaded trillions of times from that poor Microsoft server.

Next up is a staggering 1,619 connection attempts using UDP port 3544 to the address 94.245.121.253, which Mr. Crust was unable to identify, along with another five attempts using the same port to other servers.

That address does indeed belong to Microsoft. It's a Teredo server, teredo.ipv6.microsoft.com. Teredo is an Internet standard that is used to supply an IPv6 address to a PC that speaks only IPv4, making it easier to perform secure and reliable communication between two endpoints without having to worry about network translation. It's also well documented and doesn't involve any exchange of information other than IP addresses.

In short, Windows keeps trying to make a simple connection using its IPv6 capabilities, but the router keeps dropping those connection attempts. So it keeps trying again and again.

That's another 1,624 entries we can add to the "not spying" list. So far, by my tally, more than 52 percent of the connection attempts are completely harmless and involve no data collection at all.

Another three connection attempts are using port 123. That's the Network Time Protocol, which devices use to retrieve the current time from authoritative servers on the Internet. Setting the clock on your computer is not "spying."

Mr. Crust's list has another 549 connection attempts on port 80, which is plain old HTTP. Windows doesn't have a web server installed by default, so those are all incoming connections, with Windows trying to retrieve data from Microsoft's servers. They're not sending it the other direction.

Many of the addresses on the list belong to content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai Technologies and CloudFlare. Some of those downloads are possibly trying to refresh live tiles in the provisioned MSN apps (News, Sports, Weather, Money, and so on). There are perhaps some updates to the Windows Store in there too.

We might know more if Mr. Crust had allowed his machine to complete some of those connections so he could perform some actual traffic analysis. But he didn't, so we can't.

We can, however, safely conclude that none of those connections would involve any "spying."

Which leaves us with 2,100 connection attempts in eight hours over port 443. Those are secure (HTTPS) connections designed to exchange data so that it can't be intercepted in transit.

We have no idea how many secure connections that machine would have made in eight hours had Mr. Crust actually allowed them to complete. The number would almost certainly have been smaller, perhaps by an order of magnitude or even two.

And of course, those connections are not all about telemetry.

The most important one is the Software Licensing Service, which checks the state of Windows activation periodically. By dropping those connections, Mr. Crust is not allowing those activation and validation checks to complete. Windows gets very cranky when that happens, which could explain why there were more than 1,700 connection attempts to a handful of addresses in a single range of IP addresses managed by Microsoft.

Other content that gets delivered securely over port 443 includes Windows updates, Windows Defender updates, and updates from the Windows Store for apps that are provisioned on every Windows 10 machine. Windows 10 attempts to contact OneDrive, also securely, to see if there are any saved settings for the current user. There are lists of known malicious websites that get delivered to the SmartScreen service in a hashed and encrypted format.

And yes, there is certainly some telemetry data in there. We have no idea whether Mr. Crust changed the default Diagnostic and Usage settings to Basic. If he had, there would probably be a single ping to Microsoft's servers when the machine starts up, which would disclose what that setting was, whether Windows Defender was up to date, and whether his installation had experienced any failures in software or driver installation.

Do know that the person who wrote the post at Voat has since deleted his test and his whole account.
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Profile Louis Loria II
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Message 1764190 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 0:25:34 UTC

I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TINFOIL TO MAKE A HAT! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!?!?
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Message 1764202 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 1:50:14 UTC - in response to Message 1764190.  

I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TINFOIL TO MAKE A HAT! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!?!?

Varying thicknesses of tinfoil may be required, depending on how well-suited said thicknesses are for the particular occasion in question.
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Profile Jeff Buck Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
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Message 1764207 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 2:03:36 UTC - in response to Message 1764202.  

I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TINFOIL TO MAKE A HAT! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!?!?

Varying thicknesses of tinfoil may be required, depending on how well-suited said thicknesses are for the particular occasion in question.

Also depends on how thick the underlying skull is to begin with. ;^)
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Message 1764218 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 2:29:20 UTC

I'm gonna make mine outta Lead!!! :p

I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott (Mod-Ret.)
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Message 1764222 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 2:52:23 UTC - in response to Message 1764218.  

Should work; "depending on the writer" not even Superman could look through lead. And Gates is no Superman.
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Message 1764243 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 6:10:37 UTC

Just live under a galvanized garbage can and call yourself Oscar.......";D>

"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>
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Message 1764368 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 16:11:56 UTC - in response to Message 1764109.  

Microsoft is going to release a patch later this year with which users can disable the tracking and telemetry in Windows 10 completely. For the full article on it, read it at Forbes.

Microsoft has no plans to change Windows 10 consumer privacy settings.

According to ZDNet:
Another report from Forbes turns out to be incorrect. Sources with direct knowledge of Windows product plans confirm that there are no plans to change privacy options for Windows 10.
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Message 1764416 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 18:35:43 UTC - in response to Message 1764243.  

Just live under a galvanized garbage can and call yourself Oscar.......";D>

It's called a 'Faraday cage', my friend.
Tinfoil, as it is sold these days, is often not of a thick enough gauge to provide proper cover...ahem...

Meowingfromundercover.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1764446 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 20:42:22 UTC - in response to Message 1764368.  
Last modified: 12 Feb 2016, 20:46:13 UTC

@Ageless
Microsoft is going to release a patch later this year with which users can disable the tracking and telemetry in Windows 10 completely. For the full article on it, read it at Forbes.



Microsoft has no plans to change Windows 10 consumer privacy settings.

According to ZDNet:
Another report from Forbes turns out to be incorrect. Sources with direct knowledge of Windows product plans confirm that there are no plans to change privacy options for Windows 10.

Best line from the article:
"Executives believe that existing privacy controls are reasonable for consumers and there's no need for a drastic change."

How would this change be "drastic"? Why is it that it's drastic only when viewed from Redmond, WA (specifically, the exec suite)? Whatever happened to taking customers' wishes into account?

One more question:
What's it like to live in a bubble?

@JLDun
Forbes.com wrote:

For now, full control of Telemetry is being brought only to Windows 10 Enterprise

From the ZDNet article:
"This option must be set through Group Policy or via manual registry edits and is only effective on Windows 10 Enterprise edition or the nearly identical Education edition.'

and

"That enterprise feature has some serious side effects that require mitigation work from IT pros. Most significant is the fact that enabling the Enterprise-only telemetry option, called Security, completely cuts off access to Windows Update, Windows Defender, and the Malicious Software Removal Tool. As a result, it is only recommended for organizations that have an alternative update infrastructure in place, such as Windows Server Update Services or System Center Configuration Manager."[/quote]
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Message 1764452 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 20:58:58 UTC - in response to Message 1764416.  

Just live under a galvanized garbage can and call yourself Oscar.......";D>

It's called a 'Faraday cage', my friend.
Tinfoil, as it is sold these days, is often not of a thick enough gauge to provide proper cover...ahem...

Meowingfromundercover.


Yup, it's also called a survivalists answer to what to do with your electronic devices under threat of an EMP event. That's what I bought mine for.....":D>

"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>
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Message 1764453 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 20:59:34 UTC - in response to Message 1764446.  

"That enterprise feature has some serious side effects that require mitigation work from IT pros. Most significant is the fact that enabling the Enterprise-only telemetry option, called Security, completely cuts off access to Windows Update, Windows Defender, and the Malicious Software Removal Tool. As a result, it is only recommended for organizations that have an alternative update infrastructure in place, such as Windows Server Update Services or System Center Configuration Manager."

This practice isn't specific to Windows, but... [Start Rant]
it certainly sounds like Microsoft decided that it wanted to bundle Update, Defender, and the MSRT as, possibly, "different ways of doing the same thing". But by doing that, they ignored the idea that the users of Windows want to pick the features they want... and, surprisingly, not everyone uses- or needs- the exact same setup/features. [End Rant]
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Message 1764462 - Posted: 12 Feb 2016, 21:43:43 UTC

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Message 1764521 - Posted: 13 Feb 2016, 2:01:49 UTC - in response to Message 1764452.  

Just live under a galvanized garbage can and call yourself Oscar.......";D>

It's called a 'Faraday cage', my friend.
Tinfoil, as it is sold these days, is often not of a thick enough gauge to provide proper cover...ahem...

Meowingfromundercover.


Yup, it's also called a survivalists answer to what to do with your electronic devices under threat of an EMP event. That's what I bought mine for.....":D>


Actually, most wonder why I invested in a COPPER roof years ago.
I suppose, there would be nothing left on the outside to connect to.. but just the same..........
10 ground rods driven when the new service was installed about the same time.

The installer said...'Just how f===ing well do you want this grounded...man, you are obsessive." He drove 3, and I had to do the others.
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message boards : Number crunching : Windows 10 - Yea or Nay?


 
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