Reading disturbing stories on the internet about Windows 10. Are these true?

[Lumia925]

Searched google for "Windows 10 privacy", and the results are pretty strange, it's as if MS is behaving like Google and tracking everything I do on the computer.
Worse yet, there's no way to turn this off, except staying disconnected from the internet altogether.

Here's a link, it's pretty weird, is this true?

 

[USAFRet]

Here we go....

Yes, Windows 10 has a lot of 'telemetry' built in. Those same functions are being backported into Win 7 & 8.

And yes, you can turn almost ALL of it off. Here is an easy tool to do that: https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/

And most of the stories you read about this are WAY overblown.

 

[Gnuffi]

yes there is telemetry
are they spying on you NSA/CIA style? no
will they one day? who knows where MS's ego take them, but you can bet some1 wont take it lying down and if they "violate" too much a court will demand they turn it down a notch, or gives consumers teh options to protect their rights by selecting to disable more

for now you are stuck with it on win 10, since you cant turn it off completely only to a degree, but if you are using stuff like facebook, or chrome/google,, apple or many types of apps.. then win10 doesnt track you any worse than they do

 

[Colif]

search google for almost anything and the results can be pretty strange.

I am not so sure about the truth, is this click bait or something i need to believe? If it were hosted by a tech site, then i might take it seriously

I don;t know if this is true, but I do know there isn't a lot I can do to stop people finding out anything they want about me if they have the means, I don't fight Google knowing this stuff on my phone, why is Microsoft any different to Google? win 10 is on phones too, so why can't they do it as well? Apple probably do it too.

 

[Eximo]

All large corporate entities are collecting and selling metadata on their user population. If you don't like it, stay off of anything that has an OS and most certainly don't use social media. The majority of the data is used to produce a better user experience for you as an end user as well as targeted advertisements. I know that when I buy something that product starts to show up in add banners everywhere (still the silliest thing to me, I already bought one, why advertise it to me)

As to Microsoft's ego, they are suing the US government right now, so they may actually have some backbone when it comes to releasing private customer information to the authorities. Apple also recently had a showdown. Heck, even everyone's favorite evil corporation of Comcast is refusing to turn over details to other companies.

 

[USAFRet]

The overblown part of that article is...it gives no context.

"After 30 hours, over 112 IP addresses had been contacted."
"Windows 10 had attempted to contact 51 Microsoft IP addresses 5,508 times."
"Windows 10 had contacted 30 IP addresses 2,758 times in the same 30 hour time frame."

OK, and?
Lots of scary numbers, but no indication of what it was actually doing.

 

[Gnuffi]

The overblown part of that article is...it gives no context.

"After 30 hours, over 112 IP addresses had been contacted."
"Windows 10 had attempted to contact 51 Microsoft IP addresses 5,508 times."
"Windows 10 had contacted 30 IP addresses 2,758 times in the same 30 hour time frame."

OK, and?
Lots of scary numbers, but no indication of what it was actually doing.

exactly, its just fear mongering, people forget half of what tehy do these days get tracked/"spied" and resold, win10 no worse, ofc no better either
hell people even use adblockers to be "safe" from adds, when infact most addblockers track their users telemetry and then resells that data to addcompanies and such! haha

its not like win10 is spying on all your data and files and delicate info and "stealing" it crime lord style, but click baiters and doomsday prophets would like to make you believe its so

and its not..
....yet..
one day MS's might get the overblown ego to do so, but for now we are as safe as anywhere else online/digital

 

[problematiq]

If your worried you can run wireshark and start busting open some packets.

 

[Solandri]

I agree that concern about Win 10's telemetry is overblown. However...

Lots of scary numbers, but no indication of what it was actually doing.

Nobody (well, nobody outside Microsoft) knows what it's actually doing because Microsoft encrypts the telemetry. They've refused to even say what data they're transmitting back despite calls from privacy advocates to reveal it.

1) The assumption is thus that it's private info that people wouldn't want Microsoft knowing, like what programs you run, how often you run them, what you do with them, etc. If it were stuff like what's causing Windows crashes, people would understand that it's feedback to improve the product. And Microsoft could just state that that's the data they're collecting and this issue would blow over. The fact that they refuse to say makes people assume the worst.

2) Making Win 10 a free upgrade (you had to pay for all past upgrades) raises suspicion that Microsoft is making money off Win 10 by selling your personal usage data to advertisers. The alternative is to believe that Microsoft made it a free upgrade as a goodwill gesture. Something most people find difficult to believe.

3) A lot of this telemetry is missing from the Enterprise version of Windows 10. Obviously they're collecting some data that would upset their corporate clients if they ever found out. So it would probably upset their individual users too, except the individual users don't have enough negotiating clout to get the telemetry removed.

I've been telling people to run the Spybot tool you linked earlier. And for good measure I've blocked the Microsoft telemetry IPs on my router. A lot of the data they're collecting is probably innocent product-improvement data. But I'm not taking any chances.

 

[geofelt]

"telemetry"
What a nice way to spin the activity.

My main problem with it is two fold.

1. It takes up resources, particularly adding internet activity to ordinary tasks.
2. The result of that activity is going to result in more intrusive ads , offers and spam.

Past that, with the home version, you will get pushed updates whenever Microsoft wants. I like to schedule updates when I have time to recover if anything goes wrong.

Of course, nothing can go wrong. Go wrong. Go wrong............

Ultimately, windows 10 will prevail.
I only hope that the major issues will have been addressed by then.

 

[wpgwpg]

There are a lot of controls you can use in the Privacy section of the Windows 10 Settings that nobody's mentioned in this thread. Seems conspicuous by its absence in this thread.
If you want to control when updates are applied, you can upgrade from the Home version to the Pro version. If you want to be prepared for things that "go wrong", back your system up to an external hard drive. You can buy a 1 TB hard drive these days for $40, that's pretty cheap insurance.

 

[Lumia925]

Here we go....

Those same functions are being backported into Win 7 & 8...

Not on my 8.1 laptop I'd guess, as I've disabled auto-updates, and manually "look up" every KB before allowing it to install. I blacklist everything that says iit will "Update the windows update client", "It will install the GWX tool", "It will perform compatibly checks and report it to MS so you don't have trouble when upgrading to a newer version of Windows", and of course the update which installes the "diagnostics tracking service".

I've done my best using the limited technical knowledge I possess, and if MS has intentionally mislabeled an update saying "This update resolves a BSOD issue" while in reality it tracks me, then, well, then this 8.1 computer is being tracked as well. I don't have the patience to constantly monitor network packets using wireshark, and m not in any real danger even if they track me- there's nothing illegal on the computer anyway.

Websites tracking me is a bit different than the OS tracking me, isn't it?
FB tracks things I do on FB.
It tracks things I do on other websites too, but Ghostery blocks this behavior.
Ghostery might track me too, but at least they reveal what they're tracking, plus this tracking can be disabled in Ghostery settings..
And the moment I close the browser, all this stops.

Windows 10 tracks me all the time, and I have no idea what information it's reporting home.
While it's unlikely that MS is stealing my credit card number and recording my voice NSA style, it's still pretty scary knowing that they might do so if they wish to..

Disabled ALL the tracking options on Windows 10, but if it's still tracking me with everything disabled, well....

I have Windows 10 Pro on my desktop, wondering if I should re-install 7 Pro on it...

 

[Gnuffi]

There are a lot of controls you can use in the Privacy section of the Windows 10 Settings that nobody's mentioned in this thread. Seems conspicuous by its absence in this thread.
If you want to control when updates are applied, you can upgrade from the Home version to the Pro version. If you want to be prepared for things that "go wrong", back your system up to an external hard drive. You can buy a 1 TB hard drive these days for $40, that's pretty cheap insurance.

think the point of many peoples issue is, you shouldnt "have" to pay 100bucks extra for a version just to be able to choose your updates to a better degree, you should have that choice exactly so it doesnt mess stuff up, because MS has such a good track record not messign stuff up with updates
nor should you "have" to buy extra drives storage, just take into account because they decided whats best even if it mess stuff up, you now have to increase your workload and expenses by backing up, tbh thats a "big" adn dumb demand of the common consumer imo, in the name of streamlining

nor does it truly matter what you set in privacy setting, if the intention for MS was to get certain telemetry and data, you can rest assure they would get it, without or without ur settings, thats why you can only limit them to a degree and not entirely
even if you block off the IP's you actually block of certain other features, smart move from MS's side since you are then forced to either endure or lose out on the stuff blocked, just because you wanted teh freedom and maneuverability, to set stuff your way..
like people might have been used to from previous OS.. so its not that big a leap to assume a consumer would want/demand the same from a "todays" OS.
afterall the common consumer doesnt think you get "less" from buying "the same", when peopel think "upgrade" they think: "somehow im getting more/better deal",
not entirely the deal with Win10, certain areas yes, others no, but how are teh common consumer supposed to know, because they cba to research before purchase, MS counted on this, and if "their consumer cba, why should they object to the features, like telemetry or updates".
does make sense

 

[Lumia925]

I agree that concern about Win 10's telemetry is overblown. However...

Lots of scary numbers, but no indication of what it was actually doing.

Nobody (well, nobody outside Microsoft) knows what it's actually doing because Microsoft encrypts the telemetry. They've refused to even say what data they're transmitting back despite calls from privacy advocates to reveal it.

1) The assumption is thus that it's private info that people wouldn't want Microsoft knowing, like what programs you run, how often you run them, what you do with them, etc. If it were stuff like what's causing Windows crashes, people would understand that it's feedback to improve the product. And Microsoft could just state that that's the data they're collecting and this issue would blow over. The fact that they refuse to say makes people assume the worst.

2) Making Win 10 a free upgrade (you had to pay for all past upgrades) raises suspicion that Microsoft is making money off Win 10 by selling your personal usage data to advertisers. The alternative is to believe that Microsoft made it a free upgrade as a goodwill gesture. Something most people find difficult to believe.

3) A lot of this telemetry is missing from the Enterprise version of Windows 10. Obviously they're collecting some data that would upset their corporate clients if they ever found out. So it would probably upset their individual users too, except the individual users don't have enough negotiating clout to get the telemetry removed.

I've been telling people to run the Spybot tool you linked earlier. And for good measure I've blocked the Microsoft telemetry IPs on my router. A lot of the data they're collecting is probably innocent product-improvement data. But I'm not taking any chances.

Wow... shall i switch back to 7 on my desktop? I have a 7 Pro disk, will the activation key work? Or has my 7 license been converted to 10 license and cannot be used with 7 any more???

 

[wpgwpg]

You shouldn't have to buy a hard drive for backups? Wow! There are so many things that can and do go wrong on computers over time that anybody who doesn't make full system backups is going to be sorry sooner or later. Of course if you don't mind losing everything on the computer and have plenty of time to reinstall, maybe you could save yourself $40 or so. It's not something I'd choose to do. My backups have saved me more times that I can count. YMMV.
I will add that I've been installing all the recommended Windows Updates since 1998, and never had one to cause problems. Since the boys at Redmond have started trying to push everybody onto Windows 10, I have installed the GWX Control Panel on 32 Windows 7 systems however.

 

[Colif]

Wow... shall i switch back to 7 on my desktop? I have a 7 Pro disk, will the activation key work? Or has my 7 license been converted to 10 license and cannot be used with 7 any more???

That all depends if you been on win 10 more than one month. If you have, its a Win 10 licence now. If you only just swapped, you can go back to win 7 if you do it in time.

 

[Lumia925]

Wow... shall i switch back to 7 on my desktop? I have a 7 Pro disk, will the activation key work? Or has my 7 license been converted to 10 license and cannot be used with 7 any more???

That all depends if you been on win 10 more than one month. If you have, its a Win 10 licence now. If you only just swapped, you can go back to win 7 if you do it in time.

Damn, it's been almost 3 months, looks like m stuck with 10 now. Good that I didn't install 10 on the laptop, the desktop is converted to 10 and there's no going back unless I purchase another 7 key. So much for a free upgrade.

Are 7 keys still available for purchase? I have the disk, just need the key. Can I call up MS and order a key?

 

[Colif]

its a free upgrade, they never said anything about going backwards apart from saying its easy to do before the one month period

How to get new keys: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/get-windows-product-key#get-windows-product-key=windows-7

 

[Gnuffi]

You shouldn't have to buy a hard drive for backups? Wow! There are so many things that can and do go wrong on computers over time that anybody who doesn't make full system backups is going to be sorry sooner or later.

if that was meant at my post im sry, what i meant was
you shouldnt be "forced" more to do backups, from a new OS vs an old OS, ie. updates on win 7 was voluntary so a consumer didnt "need" to backup because windows wouldnt just auto feck stuff up cos of an update,
where as on Win10 it WILL auto update, and can feck stuff up, effectively "forcing" consumers that not only didnt backup previous but never considered it, to now "mandatory" back up only because of OS feature change

ofc its prudent to backup, regularly, and a multi step backup even better, BUT tbh, what average joe/"the common consumer" did/does that? i tihnk i can count the people that did/do on 1 hand while people that dont.. well.. prob as many as in the phonebook
point was, before, while prudent, not the same type of "mandatory" as its definitely sorta mandatory now, because good luck trusting MS to not mess stuff up with auto updates

 

[ZippyPeanut]

Yep. There's lots to be alarmed about. In fact, the Equation Group shared its firmware-spyware code with Microsoft so that Microsoft can read hard drives (and SSDs) and see what kinds of data people use/store the most: granted, this information is used by Microsoft to learn user behavior so that they can improve future products, but who's to say the data they capture won't some day be obtained by the NSA. And what if you got some dick-picks or some homemade porn? Do you want that on some server somewhere? A lot of Linux users know this, and that's why they run Linux as their OS. But Linux is no safer. The 100100100SOS Group developed secret ties with the Equation Group to hack hard drive firmware so that Linux user data could be surreptitiously fed to a secret server database in an underground compound owned by Linus Torvalds, because he wants to know more than Microsoft so that he can destroy them. The scariest thing about all of this is that it's orchestrated by Apple! Apple had ties with some influential members of the Equation Group and convinced them to "partner" with Microsoft and with Torvalds, knowing that the two would war each other out of existence and Apple would be without threatening competition.

 

[Colif]

Microsoft are damned regardless of their actions.

Force updates, people don''t like it, they used to having more control and don't like giving it up.

Not force them and have other people complain that they getting bugs that were already fixed by patches they chose not to install., or because they had turned auto update off.

 

[Gnuffi]

Microsoft are damned regardless of their actions.

Force updates, people don''t like it, they used to having more control and don't like giving it up.

Not force them and have other people complain that they getting bugs that were already fixed by patches they chose not to install., or because they had turned auto update off.

difference was if there was a bug, and an update fixed said bug, you could then just update, your choice
not like now where if an update directly causes bugs, you are then screwed, until they decide to release an update that fixes it
ofc those that "forgot" they had disabled updates, and complained about lack of fixes,, well always fun with a laugh no?

 

[problematiq]

Now days though company's realize that they can force people to eat crap sandwich's and at most all they can do is grumble about it. Microsoft doesn't care if you stop using windows all together, they don't even care if you get a large group to stop using it. They make a large portion of their moolah from office products anyways. In the end though, Microsoft knows you will eat their sandwich, and you will keep buying their sandwich every couple of years.

 

[Lumia925]

Had a ghost image of the desktop on an external drive. I have restored it and Windows 7 is activated. Hope this will not be considered "piracy" and hope my activation wouldn't be revoked by a future Windows Update.. Thanks everyone for your input...