
Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking - roughcoder
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251484
======
dantillberg
I spent my holiday break shifting my alignment 2 or 3 points towards
Stallmanism. The existence/collection of statistics like this increase my
confidence in that choice.

Between Windows privacy craziness and Apple's continuing lockdown of OSX (I
think that System Integrity Protection augurs an iOS-like walled-garden future
for OSX), I recently switched all of my OSX/Windows/Ubuntu systems to Arch
Linux; it takes some tweaking and setup and a bit of command line hacking, but
it's really awesome to have all my machines doing my bidding -- I tell them
what to run, when/what to update, and I'm in control of synchronizing
settings/files between them.

With Windows/OSX (and Ubuntu to a lesser degree, which I'd used previously),
you can only kind of hope that it does what you want, and when it doesn't
work, you kind of bang on it a bit to try and get it to change its behavior.
All the while, the computer is doing a large number of things you don't really
want it to do (what are all these processes? why is it connecting to
x.y.domain.net? what data is it sending? why does it insist on trying to get
me to log in to XXCloudY? I don't want to use that), but which you're kind of
powerless to stop (aside from e.g. blocking connections with another physical
network device), even if you knew what was happening. But you don't.

~~~
agentultra
I went the other way around. I started with your conclusions and have been
migrating to the Apple ecosystem and am tempted to move to Windows. I had
become tired of the dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop
distribution.

While the privacy collection issues should be addressed and be transparent to
end-users I think open source is not the way to go for these devices. I'm
tired of each device being an island. I like handing off calls from my phone
to my laptop when I'm at work. It began frustrating me years ago when I
couldn't just flick a few files off of my e-reader to a friend's phone despite
the prevalence of available networks.

Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment
to rival the best from five years ago. It's simply too much work without a
paid, focused, and highly-skilled product team consisting of more than just
developers. And they're still fighting the chicken-and-egg problem of user-
adoption.

I don't like the spyware "features," but I don't think I'll be going back to
Linux any time soon and giving up all the great software I've come to depend
on.

I'm hopeful that people will find ways to invest in its development and find a
way to introduce a competing product that is both secure, in the control of
the user, and a delight to use -- able to integrate with a plethora of devices
and, for the most part, _just work_.

~~~
rms_returns
> Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment
> to rival the best from five years ago.

Open-source is pretty young on the desktop arena. Consider that Microsoft
ruled the entire nineties and tried all tricks in the book to sabotage linux.
Despite this, the fact that linux desktops are even available today is nothing
short of a miracle! IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to
handle 90% of users' needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also
rapidly getting filled.

> It's simply too much work without a paid, focused, and highly-skilled
> product team consisting of more than just developers.

Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to
embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn't a top-
priority for developers, but merit is!

> And they're still fighting the chicken-and-egg problem of user-adoption.

All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user
participation, better the product focus and development.

> I don't like the spyware "features," but I don't think I'll be going back to
> Linux any time soon and giving up all the great software I've come to depend
> on.

Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS
alternative which works on Linux. Unless you are heavily dependent of
Microsoft Excel worksheets and their arcane proprietary macros, I don't see a
reason not to switch (besides just being lethargic to learn something new).

~~~
krick
> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS
> alternative which works on Linux.

Woah, really? There are plenty.

Photoshop & Lightroom debatable, but I can agree — nothing FOSS really
_substitutes_ them, unfortunately.

AutoCAD & ArchiCAD. Solidworks. Pretty much all specific 3D modelling tools
like Poser (though I don't really need that last one).

Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstruments, including sample libraries
which sometimes are _the_ reason why you need KONTAKT, and not some other
sampler. U-he Zebra. Hundreds of various VST plugins from different
developers: reverbs, phasers, limiters, etc. Often this stuff is quite
trivial, but there just is some amount of domain knowledge which random
opensource developer just doesn't possess. That's why free stuff available
sucks or even doesn't exist.

Decent speech recognition and text to speech. Nonexistent.

OCR is quite better, but still loses to commercial alternatives like ABBYY.
Understandably so.

To put it shorter: pretty much any software which isn't trivial to write or
requires domain knowledge. The only decent examples of these in the FOSS world
I can remember are Blender and Krita.

~~~
josh-wrale
> Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstruments, including sample
> libraries which sometimes are the reason why you need KONTAKT, and not some
> other sampler. U-he Zebra. Hundreds of various VST plugins from different
> developers: reverbs, phasers, limiters, etc. Often this stuff is quite
> trivial, but there just is some amount of domain knowledge which random
> opensource developer just doesn't possess. That's why free stuff available
> sucks or even doesn't exist.

Ardour is the basis for Harrison consoles which are fairly well respected. I
would also comment that open source audio plugins tend to look much worse than
they actually sound. Totally vanilla UI for an audio plugin doesn't inspire
much confidence in the audio quality (watch Century of the Self for more on
that). I'd personally like to see a real contender for open source clone of
Propellerhead Reason. Cubase is far less programming work than Reason IMHO.

Sample libraries aren't "source code" and in that sense they cannot be truly
"open sourced". Creative content such as this is more on the Creative Commons
side of matters -- for better or worse.

~~~
krick
> much worse than they actually sound

UI is usually bad indeed, but I wouldn't really care that much if the actual
effects would be done alright. They are not.

> I'd personally like to see a real contender for open source clone of
> Propellerhead Reason

Well, doesn't really matter: the point still is there's no decent FOSS DAW.
Ardour is not terrible, but… just no. And there still is no real use for DAW
without any instruments or effects anyway.

But, as a side note, I've never heard of a musician writing some more or less
sophisticated music (that is not Prodigy) with Reason. I've used it for a
while, and it's pretty nice, all this "hardware interface" concept is really
cool, but it's very limited and very limiting. It's like, well, using Mac or
Windows vs using Linux — what I can do is strictly defined by the developer,
no much freedom out there. Cubase is complicated and glitchy as hell, but with
it I really can do pretty much whatever I want. Simpler (and much cheaper)
alternative to Cubase I would say might be Reaper, but not Reason.

> Sample libraries aren't "source code"

No, that's not the problem. Sample libraries for KONTAKT are sample libraries
for KONTAKT. It is not a bunch of .wav files, it's a proprietary format, which
wouldn't work with some other sampler out of the box — unless you specifically
make it to, which (I guess) might be not trivial, as it's made specifically to
avoid competition. So even if you buy sample libraries for that, or download
it from torrents or whatever — it's not about library licensing, it's about
being unable to use it with anything but KONTAKT.

------
lewisl9029
I still can't imagine why Microsoft would think it's worth the bad publicity
to _not_ offer the option to disable telemetry, considering how few people
tend to deviate from defaults in general, and how tiny a percentage of their
users even care about privacy to begin with (evident from the commercial
success of Windows 10).

They've been getting so much goodwill for all the other great things they've
been doing lately. It just seems downright foolish to squander all of that for
a few extra basis points in their telemetry data from those rare few users who
care about privacy but are forced to use Windows 10 anyways for whatever
reason.

Those who care about privacy but do have a choice in OS will simply avoid
Windows 10 altogether because of the mandatory telemetry, which is telemetry
data that they wouldn't be getting anyways. A certain percentage of these
people could be Windows 10 users if it weren't for the mandatory telemetry.
Would they really rather have people using other OSes, than having them use
Windows 10 without giving them telemetry data?

So many aspects of their position on this issue seems completely irrational to
me.

~~~
caskance
They do offer those options. People would just rather complain that the free
upgrade they got doesn't have features they want - but apparently not enough
to actually pay for them.

~~~
lewisl9029
I assume you mean the Enterprise version? Last time I checked that wasn't
something individual consumers can just go out and buy.

But regardless of that, from Microsoft's perspective, does it make any sense
to _not_ offer the option to disable telemetry on all versions? From what I
see, all it's doing is giving them bad publicity while driving potential users
away to other platforms. And for what? Probably a few basis points in
telemetry data that won't even make a dent to the overall trends in their
telemetry data.

~~~
caskance
Both the enterprise and educational versions offer you full control. Consumer
versions offer what I consider to be enough control, but obviously that's
subjective.

If you offer the option to disable telemetry, some people will disable it. If
there is any pattern to which people do this, and we all know there is, it
introduces sampling bias and casts aspersions on any conclusions you draw from
that data.

~~~
khedoros
It seems like they're trading one bias for another. I suspect that the
population of users likely to disable telemetry have a lot in common with the
population of users likely to just stick with Windows 7 and remove the updates
that added telemetry collection.

Personally, I'd probably be satisfied if Microsoft gave me the tools to
examine the telemetry that my computer wants to send. Not making that
available to users makes me feel like they have something to hide.

~~~
caskance
They already made that trade by allowing enterprise customers to turn it off.

They also tell you exactly what types of data they collect, along with where
and how. That's not consistent with wanting to hide the extent of their
telemetry.

~~~
magicalist
> _They also tell you exactly what types of data they collect, along with
> where and how_

where?

~~~
caskance
In the official documentation for the feature that critics never want to read.

~~~
khedoros
In the interests of providing a better answer than "In the official
documentation":

This is the Windows 10 retail EULA: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/U...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/UseTerms_Retail_Windows_10_English.htm)

It links to "aka.ms/privacy", which takes you to:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/privacystatement/default.asp...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/privacystatement/default.aspx)

There are some good examples of the categories of data that they collect and
some information about which features, programs, and apps might collect that
data. There are examples within the categories, but not an exhaustive list.
Maybe there are more complete lists available for each separate feature. I'd
be interested in seeing an explanation, collected into one place, of which
pieces of data are influenced by which settings, which ones can't be
controlled, etc.

~~~
caskance
But apparently not interested enough to actually search for it or realize that
I've already posted the link multiple times in this thread?

[https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/mt577208\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

------
mikegerwitz
Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their
refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.

What's more concerning about these data aren't these specific numbers, but
what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and
what they can infer about you from it. Privacy and anonymity aren't
(reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system.

Any entity knowing that I have even turned on my PC---without explicit action
to notify someone of such, such as posting this message or sending e-mail---is
a privacy violation.

~~~
jinst8gmi
> Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their
> refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.

Just think of the targeted advertising opportunities based on toilet usage
statistics!

~~~
sageikosa
That can be garnered from purchase data, at least on a household level.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
How is that data currently collected? Are you referring to store loyalty
cards?

~~~
sageikosa
Just saying that it can be garnered, I have no idea on whether it is used,
although store loyalty cards obviously play into targeted coupons you receive
at the checkout.

------
skrebbel
I fully agree with the complaints, but I never understood why this outrage
doesn't happen about e.g. Gmail (or all of ChromeOS for that matter). Lots of
people virtually live in Google Apps, which certainly does a lot more tracking
than Windows 10 does.

The argument that "it's OK because it's on the web" just doesn't cut it
anymore guys. An application is an application.

We should just be as angry about browsers that do tracking and web apps that
do tracking as we are about OS'es that do tracking.

~~~
AlexandrB
I'm not happy about Gmail tracking, but the information Gmail has access to is
limited to what ends up in that email account. An OS's access is potentially
everything on the computer.

To me, privacy is about control (deciding who gets to see what) and having an
OS that phones home with who knows what information means I have no control
once information touches my PC.

~~~
caskance
Anyone who cares to look it up knows.

Of course, there's always the chance that Microsoft is lying in their
documentation, but if you mistrust them that much, you probably shouldn't use
their software even if they claim to not collect any information.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Anyone who cares to look it up knows.

Last I looked Microsoft's privacy policy was vague enough that it could
include almost anything and everything on a PC as well as whatever Windows can
infer about your local network.

> Of course, there's always the chance that Microsoft is lying in their
> documentation, but if you mistrust them that much, you probably shouldn't
> use their software even if they claim to not collect any information.

You're right, at the end of the day it comes down to trust. Microsoft's
behaviour in this case - making it hard to disable telemetry, being vague
about collection details and unresponsive to questions - means that it's hard
to trust them. In a hypothetical world where they were upfront with what was
collected, responsive to questions, and allowed users to disable all data
gathering easily the same feature set might be easier to swallow.

Edit: I forgot to mention how aggressively Microsoft has been shoving Windows
10 down user's throat. I've had several non-technical friends end up with
Windows 10 by mistake (and against their wishes) - another sign that Microsoft
doesn't give a shit about users' wishes.

~~~
caskance
I'm talking about MSDN, not their privacy policy.

~~~
yuhong
TechNet not MSDN.

~~~
caskance
Thanks, I don't actually know whether that's a subset but it's certainly more
specific.

~~~
yuhong
MSDN and TechNet are different things.

------
jinst8gmi
"44.5 billion minutes spent by users in the Microsoft Edge browser across
Windows 10 devices"

I wonder how much of that was spent downloading Firefox or Chrome?

"30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions
of the OS"

I can't imagine that this is due to anything other than the OS and browser
defaults?

~~~
holografix
Have you tried changing the default search engine? It's SIGNIFICANTLY
convoluted. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out and I am 100%
confident my parent would be incapable of changing it. I've watched them try.

~~~
thecatspaw
I had to install a plugin for chrome to redirect bing to chrome. Just in case
I ever happen to click on the search bar in the bottom which searches the
internet.

Can you turn that off? So that it only searches your local pc?

~~~
soylentcola
I personally turn off the actual bar because I have a lot of pinned icons and
I'm already used to hitting the Windows key to type a search query anyway.

But at least as far as regular old Win-key search, you can definitely change a
setting to only include local results. I tend to do it simply because I'm in
the habit of typing to search local files in the Windows/Start menu and doing
web searches via the browser. Web results in my Start/Win searches would just
clutter up results so I've been disabling them since Win8.

Not sure if this extends to the search bar in the taskbar but I'm reasonably
sure they're the same thing with a different location/interface. I'll have to
enable the search bar to check for sure though.

------
EdSharkey
Windows 7 is the last version of Windows I'll run, Microsoft!

The moment Ballmer switched from "Developers, Developers, Developers,
Developers!" to "Advertisers, Advertisers, Advertisers, Advertisers!", I knew
it was time to start migrating myself to Linux and Mac.

~~~
mhuffman
When I saw that Microsoft started putting ads in the start menu, I began to
seriously wonder if there isn't some sort of "Trading Places" type bet going
on over there to see who can run the OS into the ground first!

The messed up thing, is that they are getting such good press on their open-
source initiatives and research projects, but really seem to be screwing
themselves on the OS.

Then again, maybe they know something I don't know, and we will see some
resurgence of Windows somehow.

------
DanBC
When your start menu (or whatever the hell it's called now) serves you ads you
know you can give up on that OS and that the vendor does not care about the
user.

~~~
crummy
Like Ubuntu?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup. What the hell are these people thinking? That an operating system is a
shopping mall?...

... and they're probably right anyway. Computing went mainstream, people who
need tools and not toys are niche now, and mass market doesn't cater to
niches.

~~~
LesZedCB
And worse is that the only reason I have windows in the first place is to play
games. I don't need to do anything else on it, but I have to have it in my
life because big game companies will not make games for linux. Hell, I'm so
excited for Oculus Rift, but at this point they have even dropped Mac support
(understandably, they don't have the graphics power), so if I want to
experience VR currently, I'm completely limited to windows, not even playing
indie and valve games on linux.

~~~
Aleman360
Valve knows how many times you launch a game, how much time you spend in a
game, who your friends are, your spending habits...

~~~
unprepare
How many games are exclusive to Steam and how many games are exclusive to
windows?

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Not many" and "quite a lot", respectively.

------
harigov
I think the newer agile software development process requires companies to
focus more on monitoring rather than testing, in order to understand how
software is being used and also to figure out what needs to be improved/fixed.
Microsoft is just implementing such processes in their products just like
every other company. We would be hypocritical to say that we can make use of
that processes but not Microsoft, just because we say so. It's important to
realize that this monitoring based software development approach is going to
stick around, and we have better chances of coming up with some strict
guarantees around how that data is used, protected and anonymized rather than
not collecting data at all.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I would rather that while we realize we don't want Microsoft to do it to us,
we shouldn't do it to others either. Golden Rule: If you don't want to be
tracked, stop writing software to track others.

------
roughcoder
Link to blog post
[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/04/windo...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/04/windows-10-now-
active-on-over-200-million-devices/)

------
tomswartz07
Here's a 100% serious question:

If you 'absolutely must' use Windows 10, would it be possible to firewall off
every outbound port from this machine to prevent this sort of tracking? Or
does it just use Port 80, piggybacking on the normal http traffic?

Has anyone done a comprehensive analysis of exactly _how_ this info is being
sent?

~~~
delinka
"Piggybacking"? Presumably, they're hitting a REST API served up on an HTTP
server on port 80 or 443 (hopefully 443...)

And sure - stick it behind a NAT, learn the servers that the systems reports
to, block those (or set up your own DNS); nothing that the average mainstream
consumer is capable of doing.

~~~
xgbi
The IPs are hardcoded in windows ethernet driver, no shit.. So yeah, spoffing
it through DNS won't work. You have to have a physicall firewall between your
PC and the internet and target these specific IPs to block efficiently.

------
caskance
This is an insanely stupid title for an article that is essentially blogspam.

~~~
MikeNomad
Would, "Microsoft Reveals Details Collected Through Windows 10 Tracking" be
more appropriate?

~~~
caskance
It would still be a preposterous mischaracterization of what happened.

------
jlgaddis
Wow, makes me glad that I don't use operating systems that track every little
thing I do!

~~~
chinathrow
Which would be what OS?

~~~
krisdol
Not parent, but W10 convinced to me commit to using only Linux at home. Used
to be Linux-exclusive for years in college, so I figure why not. My work and
portables are all OS X, which is still far more privacy conscious than W10.

~~~
MollyR
I agree. At work I'm forced to use windows and osx (supporting enterprise
users), but I've begun testing various linux os's (mint,arch,elementary) as
preparation to leave windows behind for personal use. I've actually found it
to be liberating in a weird way.

~~~
junto
Have you found a favourite distro? I started using Ubuntu a couple of years
ago on my home laptop, but when that new design came out with that horrible
big side bar, I kind of gave up on it.

I also ended up buying a new laptop that came with Windows 7 so the Ubuntu one
sits in the attic rotting. Still, I'm still tempted to move back to a good GUI
based Linux distro if I can find one. I just haven't got the time these days
to start installing different ones and testing then out.

~~~
noir_lord
I use Xubuntu on Work PC, Home PC, Media PC and Laptop.

I love XFCE, It's fast, stable, easily configured, uses normal GTK stuff so
fits with the Gnome apps, is a regular plain old desktop (main menu, window
buttons/taskbar).

Mostly the thing I like about XFCE is I don't have to think about it, it just
does it's thing, stays out of my way and doesn't break a user interface
covenant I'm used to all the way back to Win95.

Of course you can run XFCE on pretty much any distro but the Xubuntu folks do
an excellent job of packaging it all up and having access to Ubuntu's PPA's is
a big win since pretty much everything is packaged for it.

~~~
jlgaddis
Exactly. I'm not a fan of any of the "popular" desktop environments. I liked
Gnome 2 and didn't mind using it (RHEL desktops) but for several years XFCE
has been my favorite. It has all the features I need but isn't too intrusive
and stays out of my way. I'm not really a big Ubuntu fan either but I can't
complain too much about Xubuntu.

~~~
noir_lord
It's also the only one I've tried that allows me a taskbar per screen with
only window entries from that screen, something I've done since Gnome 2, You
can sorta do it with plugins with Gnome but they break _all_ the time, KDE can
do it in theory but KDE is awful (I'd like to like but never have).

------
dimman
From the MS blog mentioned I find this section, or how it's formulated, rather
interesting and disturbing:

"3\. Advertising Data We Don’t Collect

Unlike some other platforms, no matter what privacy options you choose,
neither Windows 10 nor any other Microsoft software scans the content of your
email or other communications, or your files, in order to deliver targeted
advertising to you."

Most people would read that as "MS doesn't scan your files, communication or
email period" when it in fact just mentions one case in which they dont...

~~~
bitwize
Sometimes "scanning the content of your email or your files" is a desirable
feature, for example in an antivirus program.

~~~
imtringued
And that's okay as long as the data doesn't leave your computer.

------
Spone
They reveal figures from the tracking, but nothing about privacy nor how it
can be disabled...

~~~
caskance
Because the figures are from a PR fluff piece about how much everyone is using
the new features in windows 10.

~~~
akerro
It's awesome that I can share info how many pictures I saw. Totally recommend
it to everyone who has pictures!

------
Aleman360
In this thread: mostly web devs whose sites and apps definitely don't use
analytics.

------
FussyZeus
Open source OSes look more and more attractive every day...

I still haven't upgraded and I'm preventing the updates to 7 that add the
telemetry nonsense, but I can't help feeling like I'm getting more and more
watched every day.

------
yuhong
Off topic, but I like to submit this:
[http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866286/microsoft-
subnet...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866286/microsoft-
subnet/former-microsoft-chief-privacy-officer-on-the-cloud-conspiracy.html)

Of course, Caspar Bowden was fired years ago, but I have a feeling Satya
probably only made this culture worse. I remember this for example too:

[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/12/ballme...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2015/12/ballmer-microsofts-cloud-revenue-numbers-are-bullshit/)

------
codingdave
This is the one that worries me -- "More than four billion hours spent playing
PC games"

Tracking usage in Microsoft's own software is one thing. But for the OS to
understand which 3rd party apps are games, and track hours spent on them has
some deeper implications.

~~~
witty_username
They probably mean Windows Store apps in the game category.

~~~
alkonaut
That has to be a tiny fraction of the total hours, making it a pretty bad
metric...

------
JustSomeNobody
I feel scroogled.

------
akerro
Makes me wonder how much other kind of data they didn't reveal...

~~~
junto
Coming next week...

75% of our users watch pornography at least twice a week. On average it takes
4.73 minutes for males between 28 and 33 years of age, with a household income
of between $65-75k pa, who work in the advertising industry and who are
married with 2 or more children and personal debt over $25k and at least one
car, and a search phase of "mature big tits" to finish watching it.

------
MikeNomad
Not having read the EULA / Terms of Service (I don't run Windows 10), Would
running a script to turn off / block the tracking and data collection violate
the agreements?

~~~
skrowl
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection add a
new 32 dword "AllowTelemetry" and set the value to 0.

Then, open Services and stop & change startup to disabled on "Connected User
Experiences and Telemetry" and "dmwappushservice".

There are bunches of tools and scripts around to do it, but those 2 things are
really all that you need to do. Microsoft doesn't stop you from "opting out"
of Telemetry by making these changes. All windows updates / etc still work.

~~~
ionised
I'm pretty sure some reporting and telemetry is still active even after doing
those things, unless you run Windows 10 Enterprise.

You can get around that by blocking it with a (non-Microsoft) firewall though.

------
ausjke
One reason that I did not use Win10 so far(Windows 7 for Tax and the rest is
Linux), to be fair, Microsoft is not alone doing this in the big-data-mining
era.

~~~
hellomc
I wouldn't use Windows (especially 8+) for anything other than superficial
activities like gaming. It's a shame as Windows is more polished, but I miss
the days when an OS was an inert thing you didn't have to think about (damn
you Internet!).

------
ancymon
There's DisableWinTracking GitHub project [1]. Wouldn't installing this
software solve problem for those who don't want to be tracked?

[1] -
[https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking](https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking)

~~~
voltagex_
Yeah, no thanks:
[https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/issues/137](https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/issues/137)

------
personomas
Personally, I love linux Mint. It beats every other operating system that I've
every tried, but occasionally I've had to know some CS concepts in order to
keep it running/ fix bugs. This is more a linux problem in general, but it's
easily worth it as a CS student.

------
Kenji
I don't understand the hate. Windows 10 is a great operating system and I am
happy to use it. It is much more stable than Ubuntu Linux or any other OS I've
ever used.

"2.4 billion questions asked to virtual assistant Cortana"

Things like that are really completely harmless. Microsoft already owns your
ass by means of auto-updater (so does every vendor from which you download
software updates) It is not time to be paranoid. As long as Microsoft keeps
releasing quality products, they can anonymously track how long Windows users
watch porn for all I care.

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Animats
"Cortana looks out for you." \- the marketing version of "Big Brother is
watching you".

Just think of it as Microsoft Total Information Awareness.

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mc808
I'm as cynical as they come, and that's _still_ more than I thought they were
actually collecting. Counting every picture viewed? Every minute spent in the
browser? I was thinking along the lines of "unexpected shutdown".

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quantumpotato_
Your options for "send details to M$oft" are "Basic, Enhanced or Full
(Recommended)." Enhanced is selected by default. How thoughtful of them.

No explanation. This is hostile computing.

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moonshinefe
Details of usage tracking? What details? All I see are some vague statistics
and some rhetoric about Microsoft "really really caring about your privacy,
guys."

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justncase80
Is it really a privacy concern if its anonymous usage statistics?

The word for it is telemetry and every medium sized app or bigger has been
doing it for a really long time.

What's the big deal?

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solidninja
Well, on one hand it's not a big deal because it's all the EULA and you've
presumably read it and agreed it to it before booting up.

On the other, it's a pretty big deal because I view my computers as extensions
of my brain. And I view the ability to do things privately in my brain of
paramount importance.

Now, I understand why software builders like to build in telemetry (it allows
them to tweak their products to be more popular and sell data to advertisers)
but I cannot accept such a thing for a general-purpose operating system.

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sireat
What is the best that you can do to minimize tracking on Win 10 pro? Just run
that DisableWinTracking from Github?

