Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by randomString1 3060 days ago
With all that's going on with the world (especially the last decade) a lot of people, like me, feels that having telemetry at the OS level is going too far. And think again about data being anonymized when they have so much of it (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10456855). Even if I trust MS (or Google, or Apple, anybody) 100% it's still too much responsibility.

Even worse for people that are forever locked to Windows because of their line of work, clients or something else. They have no option, they can't even pay more to stop the data collection. Not to mention HIPAA and other problems that may affect small business owners.
1 comments
cube2222 3060 days ago
Thanks for the link, I'll make sure to read it.

In regards to trust, you can actually view the diagnostic data since the insider build half a month ago using windows diagnostic data viewer.

Regarding businesses: I do think you can disable all of that using group policy in Windows Enterprise

link
randomString1 3060 days ago
> In regards to trust, you can actually view the diagnostic data since the insider build half a month ago using windows diagnostic data viewer.

Once again a matter of trust (or not wanting ANY data to be sent, a radio silent OS aside from updates and features that actually require internet access and you opt-in on using them). Would be trivial to lie about the data in the UI. I don't know if it's possible to intercept the data for analysis, so people can verify that it matches the UI.

> Regarding businesses: I do think you can disable all of that using group policy in Windows Enterprise

Nope, even the Security setting still collects data.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con...

link
cube2222 3060 days ago
Just to the first one. I do think that people would already notice improper data being sent to MS after Windows 10 is out for 2 years (or maybe 3 already?). It would be waaaay to risky for them to lie about something like that and actually put personally identifiable info there.
link
randomString1 3060 days ago
Like I said you can de-anonymize data. I wouldn't know since I'm not a security researcher and haven't tried to analyze Windows traffic with external hardware. It's like asking if nobody would have find out about Spectre in a decade since it's so obvious.

Since everybody else does it now MS, from a competitive standpoint, also has to be a creep with your data. But they own the OS and I don't want that bullshit there.

You can go with the "it was a bug" narrative about all the privacy settings getting reset, saying that the tool showing what they collect is enough, that not being able to pay to stop the data collection is ok (if they "really" have to collect data to be competitive), well for me it's shady business and I don't want my OS doing that. Just tired of this subject to be honest, here's more info if you want to dig deeper https://google.com/#q=Windows+Restricted+Traffic+Limited+Fun...

link
cube2222 3060 days ago
All that other creeps are stating that in their privacy agreement openly though.
link