Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251484

by roughcoder • 11 years ago

169 259 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

roughcoder• 11 years ago

Link to blog post https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/04/windo...

Spone• 11 years ago

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

caskance18• 11 years ago

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

akerro6• 11 years ago

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

jlgaddis3• 11 years ago

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

chinathrow• 11 years ago

Which would be what OS?

pc86• 11 years ago

Windows 95

krisdol• 11 years ago

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.

x0• 11 years ago

System V

ionised4• 11 years ago

Debian?

akerro6• 11 years ago

Hardened Gentoo? *BSD? ArchLinux?

They still come with some kind of tracking, like Chromium downloads binary blob that manages your microphone, or Firefox that includes telemetry and crash reporting, but at least you can easily recompile Fx without pocket, WebRTC etc. which you can't do in Win10.

mattkevan• 11 years ago

RiscOS

solidninja4• 11 years ago

Sigh I really wish it was easier to use a non-tracking OS.

Personally, I use Hardened Gentoo and actively avoid downloading binaries + a lot of other tweaks to the "standard" Linux setup to patch what I see as obvious holes. Perhaps I need to elaborate more on a blog post.

It is very inconvenient yet for me I accept it as a price worth paying. The great thing about Linux though is that there are many middle roads. On one hand, you could just use Ubuntu (hey, they even turned off the tracking stuff in 15.10) and the Tor Browser, and then you've pretty much eliminated most of the casual advertiser-level tracking (if you follow basic hygiene). On the other, you could go and build your own custom distribution with packages audited by you and always built from source, only after having verified personally all the developers' GPG keys...

jlgaddis3• 11 years ago

OpenBSD and FreeBSD, primarily.

jinst8gmi3• 11 years ago

"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?

akerro6• 11 years ago

Aren't Bing searches included when you search for local files?

cptskippy• 11 years ago

Yes, so that should give you an idea of how often people are searching from the task bar.

soylentcola3• 11 years ago

Only if enabled. It's a tick box in the settings menu for "search" that I've disabled since it was introduced in Win8. I'm sure it's useful for some people since they typically open a browser to search more often than they search for local files (and Microsoft wants people to use their services). Still, for me, web results just get in the way of local searches and I'm used to typing in the Start/Win menu for local, not web so new installs get their options adjusted accordingly.

maccard2• 11 years ago

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

wasn't IE/Bing the default in previous versions of the OS too?

timlyo• 11 years ago

Windows 10 has it integrated into the start menu.

holografix• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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?

tajen2• 11 years ago

MS has received and paid about €561m monopoly infringement fines from EU Commission for "forgetting" again to provide the choice of browser in the first 14 months of Windows 7 [1], totalizing €2bn fines from EU. Times seem to have changed though, as no-one seems to be pursuing MS for Windows 10.

[1] Last lines of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

tomswartz07• 11 years ago

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?

ionised4• 11 years ago

I doubt you could with Windows Firewall, but my firewall (Comodo) seems to do the job.

You can find all the known domains and addresses for the Microsoft telemetry and advertising networks through some searching online. I added them all to my hosts file as well as block lists in Comodo Firewall.

I did both because I assume Microsoft has wired access for some of these services in such a way that the hosts file would be ignored, as well as Windows Firewall.

I have my firewall also set to request user action on EVERY outgoing connection (all incoming stealthed, so no open or closed response) and so far all I have allowed out in terms of Windows processes is Windows Update. I haven't even allowed the error reporting.

The OS is still ticking along just fine.

Honestly though this whole approach they ahve taken with Windows 10 has really turned me off. It reeks of anti-consumerism. I basically just use this Windows 10 machine as a gaming machine now, and all my personal and professional computing is done on a separate Debian machine.

Microsoft won't be getting another penny from me for anything ever again.

delinka• 11 years ago

"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• 11 years ago

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.

cm21873• 11 years ago

I did notice that Windows 10 often messes with my firewall rules. I had a custom firewall rule to keep a port open. Windows deleted the rule when upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and deleted it again during a recent Windows update. So not sure your firewall rule would survive very long the "new Microsoft"...

gradschool• 11 years ago

The lazy way to firewall it without doing all that analysis would be to run it in Virtualbox with network access disabled. Do your networking on the host outside of the VM and exchange files between the host and the VM through a shared folder. If you need sharing between multiple windows machines, you can run Syncthing or similar on the hosts to synchronize the directories backing the shared folders across them. I run a setup like this at home for my other half, who needs to use windows for some things but balks at signing up for their cloud service.

PhantomGremlin• 11 years ago

Do your networking on the host outside of the VM and exchange files between the host and the VM through a shared folder.

This is what I do when I run Windows XP under VMware Fusion. Works like a charm for the few apps I need. I don't care if my XP is unpatched, it can't get to the Internet.

But I thought that Windows XP SP 2 (what I use) was the final version of Windows that didn't need to check in with Microsoft periodically (every few weeks?) or it would stop working. At least that's what Microsoft's original plans were; perhaps they relaxed that requirement?

mikegerwitz3• 11 years ago

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.

sz4kerto• 11 years ago

You bet that the smart-toilet manufacturers will track the usage. :/

ourmandave• 11 years ago

My wife tracks how many times I don't put the lid down.

cm21873• 11 years ago

What I would like to know if how much of this tracking is not blocked by installing something like Spybot's Anti-Beacon (https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/) and using a Local Account. If all it takes is to install a similar tool when I buy a new machine, it's not a big deal. There are many other tools I need to install anyway (winrar, etc).

andrewchambers• 11 years ago

you don't need winrar, 7zip is far better.

jinst8gmi3• 11 years ago

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!

sageikosa2• 11 years ago

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

serge2k4• 11 years ago

Assumption being the data can be traced back to a user.

petke• 11 years ago

Such statistics would be very useful to society. Tracking people as a group to figure out how they behave. Its only when the tracking targets individuals that it get creepy.

"New York'ers goes to the toilet x times a day" is fine vs "John Doe goes to the toilet x times a day" is not.

mikegerwitz3• 11 years ago

I'm not arguing that they aren't useful---they are, and quite fascinating.

But they should always be opt-in.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

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

three strong startup/KS ideas right there

caskance18• 11 years ago

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

MikeNomad2• 11 years ago

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

caskance18• 11 years ago

It would still be a preposterous mischaracterization of what happened.

MikeNomad2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

ionised4• 11 years ago

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.

akerro6• 11 years ago

Get TronScript https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/

DanBC2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

Like Ubuntu?

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

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.

DanBC2• 11 years ago

Yes, probably.

Windows 8.1 with Bing (come on, who thought that's a good name for an OS?) has tiles that are ads for aps and games in various stores. No searching needed, these ads are baked in and served when you click start button. (Or whatever that's called now.)

akerro6• 11 years ago

In Ubuntu you can remove it very easily, in Windows if you disable one tracking or telemetry feature it will turn itself on after some time.

gtk40• 11 years ago

Easily removed and has been removed by default in the new version.

tajen2• 11 years ago

Ubuntu has indeed probably exchanged a notable percentage of its userbase with this affair.

ionised4• 11 years ago

Yes. Stay well away.

mc8082• 11 years ago

Ubuntu is great. "Hmm, I wonder if Brasero is installed. b-r-a- Oh! I hadn't even considered wearing a bra before. I shall click through and buy one right now."

monochromatic3• 11 years ago

There are ads in the fucking start menu?

Everything I hear about Windows 10 confirms my choice to steer clear.

KirinDave7• 11 years ago

Generally: no. By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps, but that's as far as it goes.

The live tiles for stores can show pictures of products. You can elect to remove them if you don't like them.

Live tiles are one of the most powerful and useful features of the windows start menu. Like any feature, it's conceivable they could be misused. Unlike notifications, the user has complete, simple, and quick control over offending input.

You're missing out. Win10 is very good to developers these days.

forgotAgain• 11 years ago

Well one can hope that they evaluate the pictures your looking at in the photo app and use that to insure the ads shown in the start menu provide value and joy to the user.</snark>

ausjke• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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!).

akerro6• 11 years ago

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

junto2• 11 years ago

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.

JustSomeNobody• 11 years ago

I feel scroogled.

skrebbel• 11 years ago

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.

AlexandrB5• 11 years ago

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.

caskance18• 11 years ago

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.

marcosdumay• 11 years ago

An OS's access is potentially everything on the computer.

And that's an understating.

An OS can know all your passwords, can look everywhere around on your network, can sign documents legally impersonating you.

KirinDave7• 11 years ago

but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account.

Which is often enough to completely divorce you from your identity legally, steal all your money, and possibly incriminate you.

That's all. But hey! My porn browsing habits are SAFE ON MY OS.

vetinari• 11 years ago

When you started using Gmail or ChromeOS, you started with understanding, that you are using a browser and everything happens pretty much on Google servers.

When you started using Windows, it was pretty much offline affair. Many people were connected to internet only occasionally, if at all.

So basically, Gmail/ChromeOS was adding something to your options - you have a new service, you can decide whether you can start using it - or not. Windows is taking away from you - you were using it for years, maybe decades, most of the world is dependent on it, and suddenly, the rules of the game change and you cannot do anything about it.

yuhong4• 11 years ago

Yea, they didn't call it "Windows as a service" for nothing.

codingdave2• 11 years ago

The "its on the web argument" has a technical backing to it. Google own's their own servers, and understands what their own hardware and software is doing. Collecting metrics on all that makes sense.

It is when you change it to an individual level that it becomes problematic. Instead of talking about what is happening with a product across all users, you are now talking about what a specific person is doing. And that is why tracking at the OS level is more problematic than at a web server level - by definition, my OS is personal usage.

m_fayer• 11 years ago

Rational or not, it's somehow creepier when an OS is doing it, as opposed to most of the crunching being done on Google's servers.

If you have any feeling at all for how an OS operates, Windows 10 with default settings has the air of someone creepily muttering to themselves and fidgeting with something under the table (half the time some component is eating 20% of the CPU). Then the second you walk away they spring up and maniacally run into a closet and commence making mysterious banging noises (walk away and some component spins up to 100% CPU and stays there, fans commence howling). You walk back into the room and there they are - sitting, red, panting, comically failing at looking nonchalant. It's a unique combination of creepy and comical, all in all.

Whereas with Google docs, you really have to know what you're looking for to see manifestations of all the tracking, though of course that doesn't make it better.

cm21873• 11 years ago

I'm actually more annoyed by gmail tracking than windows tracking.

It seems I can disable the windows tracking. Microsoft can spy on others, but if can opt out I don't care that much, it is just one more annoying default to change when I use a new machine like unchecking the "hide known extensions".

I run my own mail server. But gmail, yahoo and hotmail represent like 99% of my personal contacts. That means that these three companies have pretty much access to all of my personal emails, with personally identifiable information (my first name, last name, email address) and I have no way to opt out, other than convincing my contacts to stop using these services (good luck with that!). I didn't ask for that tracking. I do not agree with google having access to my emails, I did not agree to google's terms and conditions. I am not a gmail customer. But my private correspondence is still recorded by gmail.

monochromatic3• 11 years ago

It's expected with gmail (although I don't like it) because every interaction I have with gmail is sent over the wire to google's servers. That isn't the case with my operating system.

FussyZeus• 11 years ago

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.

Aleman3604• 11 years ago

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

ancymon• 11 years ago

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

voltagex_2• 11 years ago

Yeah, no thanks: https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/issues/137

dimman2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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

imtringued• 11 years ago

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

Terr_• 11 years ago

"But we WILL spy on everything you do to figure out if our untargeted advertisements are working, and to create detailed profiles which we could share with other companies who do send out ads..."

gottam2• 11 years ago

It's because they DO look through people's files for their own purposes. Example:

https://blog.onedrive.com/onedrive_changes/

a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings.

I'm pretty certain they didn't get permission to look at their users movie collections or DVR recordings, they were just flagged for high usage and they went right in to see what those users were storing. For any form of data collection they do, it's a guarantee they're analyzing the outliers... in fact they're practically bragging about the fact they do.

dantillberg4• 11 years ago

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.

dimman2• 11 years ago

joke Let's hope you won't get systemd'd now instead end joke

tremon• 11 years ago

It's a sad state of affairs that these tags are perceived mandatory even here.

agentultra5• 11 years ago

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_returns2• 11 years ago

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).

serge2k4• 11 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 think these "spyware features" actually help a ton with that. Without some level of usage data (anonymized is great) how are you supposed to know how your product is actually being used.

KirinDave7• 11 years ago

Come move over to windows. I have. I'm not unhappy.

1. The Dev environment is basically superior to everyone else's now.

2. Microsoft is very open about the stats and rules they collect. Apple does many of the same things (don't believe me? Proxy your apple machine and use it for a day. Start typing in spotlight, too) and it's straightforward to disable them.

3. The hardware is nicer. Especially now that the rev0 bugs are mostly worked out.

4. The ecosystem is more open by design. You can bring in an iPhone or Android Phone without trouble. Heck, many of the interesting bits even run on OSX.

5. There is an MIT license over most of the core dev tools (some other projects use the Apache license) Microsoft has released, and their libraries and APIs. This means that unlike Oracle's java, the Mono project has a great deal of future proofing against these absurd lawsuits.

clouddrover• 11 years ago

dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop distribution

A dearth of something is a lack of it (see http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dearth). So a dearth of problems is a very good thing. I think you mean a plethora or an excess.

ymm102p4• 11 years ago

Free software isn't in competition with non-free software. Free software is 100% up-side. It's not either-or, unless you see a reason for it to be.

I need to support Windows for a paycheque, but I use Linux and free options wherever I realistically can, and it has improved my quality of life drastically. Even before I cared about privacy, I grew sick of the constant licensing treadmill. The privacy concerns, however, have long-since passed my tolerance, and I now consider proprietary software itself to be a backdoor. If I must run proprietary software for some practical reason, I will use tools like firewalls, virtualization, and proxies, to limit its potential.

barsonme• 11 years ago

I had become tired of the dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop distribution.

I don't quite understand this. I've been on the bleeding-edge (using testing packages) of Arch for quite some time now and have had fewer problems than when I used, say, Fedora or Ubuntu.

What sort of problems were you having?

TheRealDunkirk2• 11 years ago

I had become tired of the dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop distribution.

I'm glad to hear this "out there." I've run Linux on the desktop for 20 years now, and just concluded, as of today, that I was done forever. It was my main OS at home AND work for probably 15 of those years. I've done many years each with Slack, RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. I know them all very well. When I ran them on my desktop, I was running them on all my servers too, and getting both sides.

With all the kerfuffle, I decided to reboot out of my work-from-home Visual Studio gig into my Ubuntu install yesterday, and I did the apt-get update and upgrade bit, and then COULD NOT LOG IN. (It would think about it, then kick me back to the lightdm login screen.) Simple reading of the logs showed me that the nVidia kernel module was out of whack. For about an hour I purged the packages and tried reinstalling. I tried the x-edgers PPA packages. Then I remembered that I had had this sort of trouble before, and had concluded that Ubuntu's graphical "restricted hardware" driver-installer widget does things outside of the normal package management, and decided that I didn't care any more. I scraped the whole thing off my machine.

But I couldn't just NOT HAVE a Linux installation, so, today, against my better judgement, I installed Fedora. Within 5 minutes -- FIVE MINUTES -- of trying to install software, I had 2 SELinux error messages. Why in the world would installing native packages cause SELinux errors? And trying to install the Chrome browser RPM gave me some cryptic Gnome library error. I decided that was enough of THAT too.

I've fought this kind of stuff for a couple of decades. I was using Linux when getting it going required asking for advice from the most pretentious jerks on the internet -- #linux on EFNet -- because the "internet" wasn't big enough to have a lot of documentation about it yet. I've learned the ins and outs of RPM, apt, and portage. I'm just done. I have enough trouble with Windows, and Linux is at least 2 orders of magnitude worse. (I'm typing this on OS X, which an order of magnitude better than Windows.)

I BRIEFLY considered trying Arch, since that seems to be the only other viable alternative for Linux besides Ubuntu or Fedora, but my experience with Gentoo leads me to think that, like you say, it's just going to be a hassle. Even more of a hassle than either Ubuntu or Fedora, and I'm already DONE with them. So I guess that's that. Linux will be ready for the desktop just in time for everyone to stop running desktops in favor of tablets, phones, and -- according to Cringley, recently -- gaming machines in the cloud.

If handing my activity stream to Microsoft and Apple is the price to NOT have to faff about with tweaking package management systems, then I guess I'll pay. As Murdoch said, in the Lethal Weapon movies, "I'm too old for this st."

caskance18• 11 years ago

Complain about the feature all you want, but pretending that it's not well documented or configurable is just silly.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85...

dantillberg4• 11 years ago

Microsoft is pretty good at catering to the desires of enterprises, so you're right, but in the linked article I see at [0] that with a typical consumer license of Windows, I can reduce the "telemetry" level, but only to "Basic" from the default level of "Enhanced" (side note: how is it "enhanced" if it's the default?).

While the Enhanced level accounts for a lot of the usage-specific statistics detailed in TFA, Basic still sends a lot of valuable data to Microsoft. And, despite paying for Windows, you can't turn it off unless you get an Enterprise/Academic license.

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

sdegutis• 11 years ago

I've been trying to switch to (Arch) Linux -- away from OS X -- for a few years now, with no luck. Mostly because the only hardware I have is Apple hardware, which is notorious to get working with Linux drivers as good as it is with built-in Apple drivers. That's the main thing stopping me from making the full switch. And using Linux inside a VM isn't ideal either, it's kind of the worst of both worlds.

dantillberg4• 11 years ago

I did have fair share of trouble with my own apple hardware. My mid-2010 mac mini required me to create a modified ISO with EFI booting disabled, and it took me a while to figure out how to get sound working on the HDMI output; my old macbook pro has kernel panics on startup that I never figured out, and my new macbook had trouble getting wifi set up; and I have yet to configure the trackpad to get it to work the way I want it to. There are a lot of other people that have struggled through issues, though, and so the bbs.archlinux.org forums and the wiki docs are helpful, but I had to do a fair amount of trial and error and figuring stuff out myself to get what I did running.

I'm currently using custom-built desktop systems (which run arch linux like a dream; most everything just worked out of the box) for most of my daily work, though, and my longer-term plan is to sell off my mac hardware and replace it with hardware that runs linux with less fuss.

Fuxy• 11 years ago

Arch Linux is not exactly ideal for security and it requires too much technical knowledge to offer privacy for the masses.

The unfortunate reality is that non technical uses will never achieve the same level of privacy and security as technical ones.

I personally feel like I have no choice Windows is collecting way too much data for me to be conformable using and Apple is just a benevolent dictator for now it can change its mind at any point and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it so I see Linux as the only choice.

Not to mention that most development tools i use these days are way easier to use on Linux then on Windows.

If I need Photoshop or some software that only runs in Windows I can always run them in a VM.

Alupis2• 11 years ago

If I need Photoshop or some software that only runs in Windows I can always run them in a VM

Or try running it in PlayOnLinux (a very good WINE wrapper). It supports all of CS6 and also Creative Cloud installs on Linux.[1]

[1] https://www.playonlinux.com/en/app-2316-Adobe_Photoshop_CS6....

rpgmaker2• 11 years ago

I think that System Integrity Protection augurs an iOS-like walled-garden future for OSX

I believe they are going down that road too, eventually. They are also going to dump Intel at some point not too far off, which may not matter to many Mac users but it will be significant to the hackintosh crowd.

mikegerwitz3• 11 years ago

It's important to emphasize that Stallman advocates and emphasizes _freedom_.

"For privacy's sake, you must avoid nonfree software since, as a consequence of giving others control of your computing, it is likely to spy on you. Avoid service as a software substitute; as well as giving others control of your computing, it requires you to hand over all the pertinent data to the server."

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.en....

But free software can still do bad things. RMS is currently discussing (within GNU) standard guidelines for privacy expectations for GNU projects, which I'm encouraged by; once those are released, it'd be a good thing for other non-GNU projects to follow as well.

gcb0• 11 years ago

yeah, Ubuntu is getting out of hand. but Debian continues to be awesome. though i love Arch's documentation effort, it's just perfect.

on another note, i just helped my mom set up an iPhone. try it once with no previous accounts for anything. it's maddening! dozen of EULAs, several different accounts needed for every menial thing, dumb and dumber password restrictions, options to skip useless accounts hidden in the UI...

lewisl90295• 11 years ago

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.

caskance18• 11 years ago

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.

lewisl90295• 11 years ago

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.

talmand2• 11 years ago

Please share what these options are and how to implement them. All I've seen so far are lists of hoops you have to go through that may eventually be changed back with a future update.

frik• 11 years ago

I would consider Win10 if there is an option to disable the phone home stuff. Without the LTSB license, you simply cannot deactivate all stuff. Why are various IP addresses and domains white listed in signed kernel mode dlls?

Microsoft still thinks the will get away with this. Their bad. They will get problems with their mass collection of data from sensitive areas like doctors, lawyers, etc.

Windows 7 is a very good OS until at least 2020 (minus recent phone-home updates). And every other OS including OSX, iOS, Android and Linux are more forthcoming and less hostile to the end user. (all tracking, crash reporting and phone home features can be deactivated in all OS except Win10)

jrcii• 11 years ago

Microsoft still thinks the will get away with this.

It wouldn't be the first time they overplayed their hand in the area of privacy. Recently they were trying to tell everyone their new Xbox was going to be constantly on and watching them in their living room even if they shut it off. When there was a huge uproar they backtracked.

rpgmaker2• 11 years ago

From the headlines that have been popping up lately about Windows 10 usage I believe the news cycle is about to produce 'Windows 11 Beta is around the corner!' type of headlines any day now.

justncase802• 11 years ago

I hear that Win10 is the last "version" of windows. They'll just continually patch it instead.

ocdtrekkie7• 11 years ago

I agree with this comment and your responses in the following discussion to it. Microsoft has made such huge strides, and it's costing them a lot of that because of their hardline attitude on this. And it actually stands contrary to their own advertising, where Microsoft highlights themselves as a more privacy-respecting alternative to using Google products which track you.

The cost/benefit decision here for Microsoft just makes no sense.

euske• 11 years ago

Remember that a large corporation often acts schizophrenicly, because there are so many decision making bodies that have conflicting interests within the company. (I took this comment from someone else on HN a while ago)

gottam2• 11 years ago

The more baffling thing is they went as far as to prevent you from blacklisting the telemetry servers via hosts file. The data SO important to them they put that amount of effort into obtaining it.

The only reason I can think of that doesn't resort to tin foil hat theories is to prevent a rise of "windows 10 privacy enhancement" software.

voltagex_2• 11 years ago

Do you think the hosts file protection might be a side-effect of increased malware protection in 10?

codingdave2• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

They probably mean Windows Store apps in the game category.

alkonaut• 11 years ago

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

personomas• 11 years ago

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.

justncase802• 11 years ago

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?

solidninja4• 11 years ago

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.

Animats• 11 years ago

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

Just think of it as Microsoft Total Information Awareness.

EdSharkey• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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.

scrollaway• 11 years ago

MS was never about "Developers developers developers". They're more about that today than they have ever been before, in fact.

What ballmer actually meant in his demented rage was "Developer lock in, Developer lock in, Developer lock in!". Linux is a million times friendlier to developers.

The new MS is getting there, but the new MS also has its glaring flaws, like the ones being discussed here.

yuhong4• 11 years ago

Off topic, but I like to submit this: http://www.networkworld.com/article/2866286/microsoft-subnet...

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...

harigov• 11 years ago

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.

ocdtrekkie7• 11 years ago

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.

username223• 11 years ago

I remember a time when so-called "beta testers" would be given your broken software for free, in exchange for providing bug reports. Now I guess everyone gets your broken software, gets data-mined in arbitrary ways, and maybe the next step on the version treadmill makes things less awful.

moonshinefe• 11 years ago

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."

Kenji• 11 years ago

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.

mc8082• 11 years ago

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".

sireat• 11 years ago

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

quantumpotato_• 11 years ago

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.

Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

Related Stories