News Windows 11 Sends Tremendous Amount of User Data to Third Parties, YouTuber Claims

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punkncat

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I am not sure anyone is gullible enough to assume that W11, which will validate activation on almost any prior OS key and "free" to upgrade from W10 really thought that free was really free. This is completely unsurprising. Anyone using a PC or a modern mobile phone has to be aware that everything they do is being stored and sent all over.

People used to complain about anything that might infringe on their privacy, right up to the point that they made the spy devices something that all had to have...even from your robot vacuum.
 
Color me shocked....SHOCKED!
Well, not that shocked.
Fry-Im-Shocked-Futurama.gif
 

RichardtST

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Is there a service/program/blocker/firewall that will sit there and record the outgoing sites for a while and then let me decide which ones to allow/block? I'd like just a nice list in a GUI with checkboxes to allow/deny anything going to each site. If so, how would I even tell which sites I want to allow other than by name? Maybe there's a "stop your data being stolen and sold all around the web" program? Windows firewall isn't the easiest thing to use. There has got to be better...
 

PlaneInTheSky

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In Windows 10 you can still remove all the spyware.

Windows 11 is a disgusting OS. The amount of spyware bloat is crazy and it is impossible to remove it without breaking the OS.

I am now usually running Mint and Valve is rapidly increasing Steam compatibility with Linux.
 
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salgado18

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You want to do some exercise, so you go to the gym to sign up. The receptionist then asks: "what is your training goal?" To which you say "to lose some weight and do some cardio". He then uses a bit hia computer and says "oh, is it to prepare for your trip to Hawaii next summer? I see you already got the flight tickets, congratulations!" And you look back, smile, and say as friendly as you can "how did you know that?". That's how I feel about all this tracking. Windows 11 already knows you play games right after you install it, and even your purchase preferences (through ScorecardResearch). That's ridiculous, and must stop.
 

PlaneInTheSky

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Also, regarding Microsoft "Bing" being integrated deeper into Edge and Windows 11, and the dumb-as-a-rock ChatGPT thing.

I tried Bing the other day.

Holy ****, I thought Google search was bad. Bing takes it to a whole other level. Bing is full of ads, irrelevant stuff left and right, tik-tok videos, shopping results, etc. How can anyone even use Bing, it's full of irrelevant spam.
 
Maybe there's a "stop your data being stolen and sold all around the web" program? Windows firewall isn't the easiest thing to use.
obviously Windows isn't going to inhibit their money-making data with their own firewall.

possible you could install a 3rd party and just block every connection but many of the built-in data transmission isn't even detected because it is just part of the OS itself.
 

Heat_Fan89

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I am not sure anyone is gullible enough to assume that W11, which will validate activation on almost any prior OS key and "free" to upgrade from W10 really thought that free was really free. This is completely unsurprising. Anyone using a PC or a modern mobile phone has to be aware that everything they do is being stored and sent all over.

People used to complain about anything that might infringe on their privacy, right up to the point that they made the spy devices something that all had to have...even from your robot vacuum.
Absolutely correct. That is what I tell fellow Mac users as well when they say how Apple doesn't do that and yet when I open Safari on my Mac it tells me a different story. There's a check box that says to allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness. Look if you are on the internet, assume everyone is tracking you, wants to send you ads based on your searches and seeing where you go. That applies more so with smartphones.
 

PlaneInTheSky

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Damn that they know how boring my life is. lolz

It's not even about that for me. The crazy amount of spyware bloat in Windows 11 makes it unresponsive.

You don't realize how slow Windows 11 is until you install Windows XP on a new PC, or you install Linux Mint.

The amount of services running in the background and using networks resources in Windows 11 is insane. Windows 11 is not an OS, it's spyware bloat with an OS bolted onto it.

There's a reason Windows are now free upgrades. It makes Microsoft money by gathering personal data. Microsoft is no longer in the business of selling you software, Microsoft is in the business of monetizing your data and using targeted ads.

The way Microsoft gets that data is by constant monitoring. And you might not care about the constant monitoring (I do), but you should care about the performance hit associated with that, otherwise what are you doing on Tomshardware to begin with.
 
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Deleted member 431422

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Some of the claims may be, technically, overblown. Telemetry data is mentioned in Windows' terms of service, which many people skip over to use the operating system. And you can choose not to enable at least some of this by turning off settings the first time to boot into the OS.

"By accepting this agreement and using the software you agree that Microsoft may collect, use, and disclose the information as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement (aka.ms/privacy), and as may be described in the user interface associated with the software features," the terms of service read (opens in new tab). It also points out that some data-sharing settings can be turned off.

This is the most ridiculous thing I read recently. It's okay to spy on people just because it was written in ToS? Why it's even there, I dare to ask. Don't give silly excuses for Microsoft, it's not okay. What other OS do you suggest for games, Linux? Sorry, not there yet. MacOS... limited to Apple devices and it's even wore there than Microsoft. There's no competition. It's a monopoly and Microsoft is blatantly using it's position to farm people for $$.
 
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"PC security channel" ...
Between the weather, news, entertainment, etc. stuff getting pushed to widgets, one would expect lots of extraneous traffic at least until all of those widgets are removed.
Exactly, the "pros" look at that list and talk as if it were your grandma, but the one that doesn't know about computers, oh look at this, ohh what does this do...yeah the live temperature doesn't come from the PC sticking its finger out, they have to get that from the web.
And steam that gets mentioned here isn't steam, its steamcloud.blablabla.googleapis because edge is chrome and chrome is google, what is it supposed to connect to?!

Also news-flash, windows 10 has the same widgets.
Also also news-flash, Mcafee has been bought by MS in 2011. "PC security channel" "pros"
 
Is there a service/program/blocker/firewall that will sit there and record the outgoing sites for a while and then let me decide which ones to allow/block? I'd like just a nice list in a GUI with checkboxes to allow/deny anything going to each site. If so, how would I even tell which sites I want to allow other than by name? Maybe there's a "stop your data being stolen and sold all around the web" program? Windows firewall isn't the easiest thing to use. There has got to be better...
Pihole on rasp pi
 

DavidLejdar

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In the video it says "what is happening when you buy a brand new laptop and open it for the first time". To me that sounds like the talk is about a pre-installed version of Windows, which could imply that OEM installed something else as well.

Then it goes on with having the browser apparently already open. And if they actually used the browser to download i.e. Wireshark, then the browser becomes part of the traffic measured.

Which isn't to say that Win11 doesn't send more data than might be needed in regard to updates. But the test doesn't seem all clean. And to then get pushed a referral link, also not really on an academical level, is it?
 
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