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by hvidgaard 3914 days ago
I have seen stories, however, I haven't seen my own Win10 machines being chatty with MS outside of what I ask it to. With that in mind, I have no reason not to trust MS when they say they're not collecting data unless it's enabled.
1 comments

Here's one example of a feature I dislike (description from http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/window... )...

"Windows 10, however, shakes this up. Instead of two separate systems—one for error reporting, a second for collecting usage data—both have been rolled into one combined setting. This setting has four positions: off; basic error reporting and simple device capability reporting; enhanced diagnostic tracking that extends the basic information with more detailed error reporting, and usage telemetry; and full data, that adds process memory snapshots to the enhanced data. This means that there's no way to participate in error reporting without also participating in usage tracking, and vice versa.

Further, the "off" option is only available in Windows 10 Enterprise. The common home user versions of Windows, Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro, always collect (and report) at least "Basic" level information and no way to turn off the feature entirely.

The genuine privacy implications of this seem slight, but for those who absolutely do not want to send anything to Microsoft, Windows 10 is certainly a regression. Is Microsoft poring over this data, trying to sniff out the details of Windows users' lives and figure out all their secrets? It's highly unlikely—but the removal of the ability to turn off this reporting is nonetheless strange, and there's no clear reason for it."

I was not aware that the off option was only possible on enterprise. That said I, the developer, can completely understand why. That information is integral to successfully determine future work with the system.

But in any case, if that is the only thing one cannot turn completely off for average user, I'd say it's a pretty good compromise between features and still giving power to the powerusers. Still it's odd the off option isn't possible for everyone.