I don't really see any problems with windows 10, it's just an operating system

???

Are you still in the Human Race? Or completely lost to Microsoft Marketing?...

So... Just an OS should just quietly and unobtrusively and reliably facilitate your use of your own computer hardware to do what you want to do.

As opposed to being an advertising system to steer you to distraction to mire you in Marketing and merchandising...


And you sign away full acceptance for the Microsoft EULA to do with you anything and everything as Microsoft wishes and you fully agree as a fully aware human that you give your full permission to be thus abused.


As part of that, there is this curious sequence of Marketing message about how the Win10 user keylogging was only to be in the tech preview... And yet it is still there in the final release. All a shady game of testing the water and then hoping not too many users will notice? All backed up by powerfully persuasive Marketing to convince you not to worry?...


Here we go:

A few links...


Windows 10's 'built-in keylogger'? Ha ha, says Microsoft – no, it just monitors your typing

YOU said it was OK when you installed that Technical Preview



How to turn off Windows 10's keylogger (yes, it still has one)
Microsoft can track your keystrokes, your speech, and more. Here are the settings to turn it all off.




IT is what YOU allow it to be...
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Oh I think XP will be around for a while yet ( no doubts to MS's annoyance)

Yeah, for those of us who ignore the silly little button.....
My XP rigs don't have it.......
Only this, my daily driver on 7.
And the kitties have advised me 'no clicky'....LOL.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

[quote]
P.S. and regarding "not logging everything" - from where you know what exactly they logging? To pass EVERYTHING will be just unnoticed in your bandwidth. And EULA allows them to do that.

Well, I don't. But I highly doubt it. If I had that little trust in MS I wouldn't use any version of windows.


*edit* Maybe the NSA should secretly buy MS. Keyloggers on hundreds of millions of computers and the users even install those themselves. Must be every intelligence agencies wet dream, LOL.

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The big problem I see with Window$ 10 is it won't remain 'free' for long. Watch what occurs in the next two years when M$ decides(or more probably has already decided) to start charging an annual fee to use 10(ala Office 360).

That will obviously 'trickle down' to 8.1 and 7 ostensibly to cover the cost of 'supporting' the older platforms. I truly hope some country does stand up to them and screws them to the wall ala the I.E. case in Europe 10 years ago.

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

I truly hope some country does stand up to them and screws them to the wall ala the I.E. case in Europe 10 years ago.

I do too..........
I stated that sentiment a few posts ago.
As I said, they apparently did not get the message last time.
Or figure that by extorting enough money from users they can just say 'screw them all' and carry on at will.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

I have BOINC 7.6.6 on my 4-core Windows 10 64-bit CPU. ATLAS@home sends me a maximum of 4 tasks, vLHC@home 2 tasks, CMS-dev 1 task. They all use Virtual Box, no GPU. When I allow the downloading of SETI@home tasks, I get about 27 of them, both CPU and GPU, so they overfill my CPU. GPU tasks are run one at the time, CPU tasks occupy one or two cores, leaving the other 2 to the CERN programs. but why does SETI@home sends me all those tasks? On my 32-bit Linux laptop I get a maximum of 2. I am running 4 CPU tasks plus one GPU task.
Tullio

That's a per-project setting. When I first started up CMS@Home-dev. Laurence hadn't set that, so for my 8-(hyper)core machine, the server sent me 18 or 19 tasks, presumably enough for 8 CPUs to process in the 2- or 3-day deadline he set for the tasks. Needless to say, trying to run 8 1-GB VMs on a 4 GB machine wasn't a pretty sight! So he introduced the limit of 1 job/machine. So basically, that's what S@H is doing, sending enough jobs to keep your machine busy for the duration you've set for cache -- up to the maximum of 100 CPU jobs per machine and 100 GPU jobs per GPU. The Linux laptop takes a fair while to process a MB (15 hrs) and even longer for an AP -- what cache duration have you set for it?

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My standard cache duration, for all projects, is 0.5 days. Only on the Windows 10 PC SETI@home sends me too many tasks.
Tullio

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Regarding all the spying things...

Yes, it is terrible that it is all enabled by default rather than being opt-in.
Yes, you can "disable" most of it.
However... even with most of it disabled, it still collects info and sends it back home.
So you figure "I'll just block the connections using the 'hosts' file." Nope, everything is hard-coded in such a way that it bypasses that.
New updates as of late are getting very crafty and are simply ignoring your preferences and settings and doing whatever they want in the background anyway.

I think about upgrading my laptop from 8.1 to 10. I have read the last few pages of this thread and while there is a lot of talking about privacy, security, spying, etc., I didn't see much concrete here.

So pls, short & precisly, what exactly does concern you with W10? Give me a few concrete examples pls.

Simply.. I wrote a lengthy explanation about this once in this thread already. Here it is. The spy settings can't truly be turned off. You have no control over your own machine. MS doesn't tell you what it is doing to YOUR computer. Those are the problems with 10.

As far as the spying crap sneaking its way into 7/8.1... those are easy enough to avoid if you just don't install the known-bad updates mentioned here, plus one more. Avoiding those updates keeps your 7/8.1's privacy as it has always been. Though I fear before terribly much longer.. MS will find a way to make the spying regimes mandatory or otherwise unavoidable for those of us who don't want to be all... wide-open.

It's been said a few times so far, but.. any time something gets installed on my machine without my knowledge nor my permission, and then gathers information about me and everything I do and sends it back to some server somewhere to be distributed for profit or some otherwise gain and holds MY machine and data hostage... that's always been called a virus or spyware as far as I've ever known. But somehow when MS does it, there's nothing wrong with it and people call it 'innovative'? I'm confused here.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Regarding all the spying things...

-[ snip ]-
So you figure "I'll just block the connections using the 'hosts' file." Nope, everything is hard-coded in such a way that it bypasses that.
-[ snip ]-

Greetings Cosmic,

I added the following to my router to block them so that hard coded URLs won't help:

vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
settings-win.data.microsoft.com

I dare Micro$oft to try hacking my router to bypass it. lol :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Although I've continued to follow this thread, I haven't posted here in over a month, mainly because, after trying Win 10 briefly on my xw9400, reverting to Win 7, and then scrubbing and blocking every trace of Win 10 I could find, I haven't really experienced any of the recurring Win 10 sneak attacks that others have reported. Other than a few minor annoyances after reverting, such as a few lost and altered Scheduled Tasks and an irritating Windows Update caption line (see my 3rd image), M$ hasn't tried to pull any fast ones, such as those hidden downloads to $Windows.~BT and $Windows.~WS folders.

Until today, that is. I did a normal manual "Check for Updates" this morning to pick up last Tuesday's security patches and got the following result:


After swearing at the screen for a few moments, my vision cleared and I finally noticed the tiny "Show all available updates" link. That brought up...

...with only the "Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro" selection (tucked away near the bottom of the list) checked among the 13 Important updates shown. I don't think I've ever before done a "Check for Updates" that did not result in all of the Important updates checked by default. I suppose if I had been running with "Automatic Updates" turned on, the only Important update I would have gotten would have been Win 10.

This strikes me as just one more sneaky, underhanded, devious, deceitful tactic that M$ is trying to use to trick users into inadvertently installing Win 10 if they're not taking the time to pay very, very close attention to things like this. If any company that didn't have a near monopolistic stranglehold on its market tried to pull this crap on me, I'd be long gone, but with M$, continued vigilance is the only viable option for the time being.

After dodging this sneak attack and proceeding to download all the "real" Important updates (except for KB3083324, thanks to the previously posted warning), I then got what has become my "normal" download screen since reverting to Win 7:


No, it's not actually Downloading Windows 10, despite the caption, but apparently one of the things that didn't get restored in the reversion to Win 7 was the old "Downloading updates" caption. Even if I'm just updating MSE definition files, I get the same "Downloading Windows 10" caption. It's really just a minor irritation, but if anybody runs across a method to change that back I'd love to know about it. (I think it's probably coming from some Registry setting interacting with wucltux.dll, but I gave up trying to figure it all out.)

we discus win 10 / microsoft and the personal data accumulation, tracking, spying, it's possible keylogging abilities .. where does this info go and how secure is it really and how long will it be before microsoft becomes the target of the ultimate HACK and all this acquired information compromised .. just a thought and another concern

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I don't think I've ever before done a "Check for Updates" that did not result in all of the Important updates checked by default.

I think I've seen that for service packs in the past, but usually with an extra line like "this update can only be installed on its own". So, in some part of Microsoft's mind-set, Windows 10 is simply a service pack? Discuss...

I don't think I've ever before done a "Check for Updates" that did not result in all of the Important updates checked by default.

I think I've seen that for service packs in the past, but usually with an extra line like "this update can only be installed on its own". So, in some part of Microsoft's mind-set, Windows 10 is simply a service pack? Discuss...

Yeah, you might be right about those service packs, but I really can't remember the last time I installed one. As far as delving into Microsoft's mindset, well, that seems like a dark and scary place that I think I'd just as soon steer clear of. ;^)

Regarding all the spying things...

-[ snip ]-
So you figure "I'll just block the connections using the 'hosts' file." Nope, everything is hard-coded in such a way that it bypasses that.
-[ snip ]-

Greetings Cosmic,

I added the following to my router to block them so that hard coded URLs won't help:

vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
settings-win.data.microsoft.com

I dare Micro$oft to try hacking my router to bypass it. lol :)

I would like to believe that would work, however, even without any DNS servers declared in your IP settings, and the DNS cache cleared.. much of the Windows internals/gubbins can still phone home. That means some parts of the framework underneath are hard-coded to communicate directly by IP, rather than looking up a domain name and getting the address.

There have been mentions on various tech news articles that phoning-home is deeply-embedded and hard-coded so that communication is basically guaranteed to happen as long as there is an Internet connection. *shrug* Maybe I'm wrong or misinterpreting things, but that's my understanding of that whole thing.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

I dare Micro$oft to try hacking my router to bypass it. lol :)

I would like to believe that would work, however, even without any DNS servers declared in your IP settings, and the DNS cache cleared.. much of the Windows internals/gubbins can still phone home. That means some parts of the framework underneath are hard-coded to communicate directly by IP, rather than looking up a domain name and getting the address.

There have been mentions on various tech news articles that phoning-home is deeply-embedded and hard-coded so that communication is basically guaranteed to happen as long as there is an Internet connection. *shrug* Maybe I'm wrong or misinterpreting things, but that's my understanding of that whole thing.

See:

Microsoft backports data slurp to Windows 7 and 8 via patches

We recently mused, half seriously, whether the entire point of the Windows 10 upgrade was to harvest your personal information...

... Now Microsoft is revamping the user-tracking tools in Windows 7 and 8 to harvest more data, via some new patches.

All the updates can be removed post-installation – but all ensure the OS reports data to Microsoft even when asked not to, bypassing the hosts file and (hence) third-party privacy tools...

... The notes explain that diagnostic telemetry data is sent to settings-win.data.microsoft.com (64.4.54.253) over SSL. Privacy advocates note that the OS is hardwired to use that...


So, to me that reads that you need to have a firewall on your network router that blocks anything and everything to the specific IP address 64.4.54.253... (And any others that might be hard coded into whatever existing or new updates...). No DNS needed.

To me, that all looks to be extremely determined and devious...


IT is what you allow it to be,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I feel it is time for a class action lawsuit.

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So, to me that reads that you need to have a firewall on your network router that blocks anything and everything to the specific IP address 64.4.54.253... (And any others that might be hard coded into whatever existing or new updates...). No DNS needed.

That was pretty much the point I was trying to make. Blocking that domain name on the router just prevents it from being looked-up.. but doesn't necessarily block a direct IP connection to the IP that name translates to if no DNS query was even made.

One could presume that the IP for that particular domain name won't change very often, so if you can block that specific IP, then that takes care of just that one single thing. There's no telling how many others are in the OS that are deeply-embedded and hard-coded, either.

Just seems a bit... covert-ops or corporate espionage-esque to me. If there was no sinister or ulterior motive, there would be a simple off-button somewhere that would turn all of that crap off, but the fact that there are so many very persistent things scattered all over the place with no clear way to truly turn any of them off is incredibly suspicious. And none of those concerns are calmed by the fact that many media outlets have asked MS for more details/information about why there are so many things and they are so persistent/stubborn.. and the same thing appears in every article: "...has yet to respond to our multiple inquiries."

That reminds me of something from an xkcd comic about substituting phrases to make reading the news more fun. Replace "could not be reached for comment" with "is guilty and everyone knows it." Basically.. if MS wanted to put all these fears of spying and data-mining to rest once and for all.. either A) come out and clearly explain the intention behind all of it, or B) release a functional off switch that truly turns all of that off if you want to opt-out of it all (though one could argue it should be opt-in.. but take what you can get).

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Just a note;

You don't own Windows, MS license it to you. This is from the Win 7 pro EULA, which of course you read? I didn't

SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights
to use the features included in the software edition you licensed. Microsoft reserves all other rights.
Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as
expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in
the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

By using it you have agreed, it you didn't agree you send it back.

That has been the case for a long time now, and not just with Windows and other MS software.
If you have many hours to spare and take a close look at the EULAs for most commercial software you'll find that you don't own it, all you've paid for is the right to use it.

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Grant
Darwin NT

if MS wanted to put all these fears of spying and data-mining to rest once and for all.. either A) come out and clearly explain the intention behind all of it

Would make no difference because no one would believe them.

B) release a functional off switch that truly turns all of that off if you want to opt-out of it all (though one could argue it should be opt-in.. but take what you can get).

And there response would be, we have already done that- it's up to the user to de-select the things they don't want.

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Grant
Darwin NT