Apparently a Voat user has collected some interesting data on the extent of Windows 10 data mining operations. With all of the available telemetry and data collection settings turned off Windows 10 still attempted to send data back to Microsoft thousands of times per day. Moreover the over 100 IP addresses the information is being sent to are not private and therefore vulnerable to hacking.
The raw numbers come out as follows: in an eight hour period Windows 10 tried to send data back to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses over 5500 times. After 30 hours of use, Windows 10 expanded that data reporting to 113 non-private IP addresses. Being non-private means there is the potential for hackers to intercept this data. I’d argue this is the greatest cost to owning Windows 10…
A further interesting fact is these tests were conducted using Windows 10 Enterprise Edition – the version of Windows 10 with most granular level of user control and far more than the standard Windows 10 Home edition used by most consumers. All of which confirms, this controversial data tracking simply cannot be stopped.
Edit: Unsurprisingly apparently Russia is considering banning Microsoft Windows from government computers. Although they say it has more to do with Microsoft complying with sanctions against the country over its annexation of Crimea, but I’m sure they’re not particularly excited about Microsoft’s data mining either.
While government officials seeking to pad tax revenue is hardly earth-shattering, Klimenko’s opinions on Microsoft are a bit bizarre, as he reportedly wants to ban Windows from all government computers because Microsoft “complied with sanctions over Putin’s annexation of Crimea by halting all business with the peninsula…”
And without Windows getting in the way, Klimenko further adds that it’s only a matter of time before the entire Russian government transitions over to Linux.
Heh, Windows 10 may be the greatest thing to happen to Linux since Ubuntu
I’m no longer sure if that will be the case though, the number of complaints from Win10 users have been going down and I myself have yet to see my machine lock up or bluescreen.
There’s also evidence that Win10’s problems early on seemed to be a fact for almost every Windows release since Win98 (even for the much celebrated Windows 7). That is they have numerous issues when they come out and then see a dramatic improvement with the first service pack (for instance, all of the praise that Windows 8.1 was getting vs. Windows 8 vanilla).
It’s the year of linux on the desktop ? Once again and again and again and again etc etc
In the real world, outside of geek nerds, for 99.9999% of windows 10 users there is no real issue and certainly no desire to switch to some flavour of linux.
I’m sure Windows will retain the lions share of the consumer market, but with countries like China and Russia moving their government operations away from Windows, China’s using a FreeBSD based OS, and other countries experimenting with it you have to imagine that support for Linux is going to grow quite a bit. Russia, for instance, would likely make contributions to Linux mainly to improve upon it for their own interests.
Plus given that, apparently, Windows 10 Enterprise Edition has data mining as bad as Home Edition many companies are going to be wary about sticking with Microsoft. Companies, unlike the average user, have a lot of information they want to keep hidden from prying eyes, a lot of trade secrets and intellectual property they aren’t going to want falling into the wrong hands and Microsoft not only collecting information off of their systems, but doing so over unsecured connections has got to be a big concern.
Companies have traditionally been very slow in adopting new Windows releases, this is only going to make that worse. Corporate customers have been the biggest source of income for Windows and yet Microsoft doesn’t seem to care.
I’m not saying that Linux is going to suddenly become the king of the desktop, but I think Linux is going to benefit from Windows 10. Not everyone is going to move to Linux, but there will be more Linux users and some of those users are going to be heavy hitters with the ability to make major contributions.
The fact that Linux is open makes this a double-edged sword, what makes you think those countries won’t roll a custom distro that includes monitoring utilities to make sure its users don’t make or do anything not approved by the state (and making the telemetry in Windows 10 look tame in comparison)?
Another thing to note, the media will oftentimes not tell the entire story (oftentimes omitting what you need to put it into context depending on the views of the editor). This being something that is likely made worse by the recent trend to allow things like Reddit posts and Twitter comments to become a valid source for stories.
Oh yeah Russia will probably roll out a custom distro, but that doesn’t mean they won’t contribute to kernel development, in fact I bet they would.
Corporations on the other hand would be more likely to choose something like Red Hat Enterprise. AT&T recently inked a deal with Ubuntu which will be powering AT&T cloud and networking services. Some suggest this could give Cononical a foot in the door to the US market by leveraging this connection to get the Ubuntu Phone offered by a major US carrier.
Sure, but I wouldn’t say for sure if their future contributions would really be intended to make Linux better or if they’re intended as attempts to gain control over the entire ecosystem (which would affect all users regardless of country).
Granted, it would have to get past Linus first, but I’m not sure if he can catch every ulterior motive that might be in the patches he reviews.
Aspirations of world domination are a potential motivating factor for anyone, not just Russia or Microsoft.
By the by apparently Dell is now offering a laptop pre-loaded with Ubuntu instead of Windows. The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition has been hailed, by some reviewers, as better than the MacBook Air. Also ships with instructions on how to install other Linux distros if you’re not all that into Ubuntu
I’d say that was true in the past, but going forward I don’t see that as much of an issue. Both AMD and nVidia have seriously stepped up their Linux support efforts.
The one thing which cannot be withstood is, simply, the truth.
It has always been this way. Corporate (and other …) abuses are always drawn, “like a moth to a flame,” to the point where recognition and intervention is finally compulsory.
Unfortunately, the corporations in question do not think this far ahead.
They forget, in this particular instance, two very important legal points:
There is ample legal precedent: The second “world-shaking instantaneous communication revolution” was called “the telephone.” Not only did people decide that they didn’t want their telephone conversations eavesdropped-upon … creating wiretapping laws that still exist … but they never forgot what the Nazis did to the Jews using telephone call records.
The damage has already been committed, and it can be objectively proved: “Good luck with that never-read EULA of yours, when His/HerHonor realizes just how much information about his/her family is included in that vast data-steal!” Exactly what did your corporate lawyers assure you … back then? :eek:
Welcome to "the next, inevitable, too-long in showing-up growing pains of “the Internet.” (And of “the Information Revolution” in general. Somehow, we forgot that “revolutions” always involve painful incidents.)
Me? I breathe a sigh of relief. Awkward as this truth will be, I’ve had my craw full of “bubbly illusions.”
There’s been a recent update on this story, and it turns out that it’s nothing more than bad reporting on Forbes part as they just blindly quoted a forum user without any check as to whether his credentials are accurate.
On top of that, it’s been reported that the Voat post was deleted (just goes to show that you can present almost anything as legitimate if you make the info sound compelling enough).
It’s not saying the telemetry part isn’t true, that part is true, but the extent was way overblown.
CNN is already at the point where they post stories that is little more than a list of twitter comments, so yes, they will actually look around in forums for new stories :eek:
When a company won’t talk about something, it’s probably because it’s associated with a project that isn’t ready for release. Companies are caught lying about this all of the time. A great deal of the data that companies collect is anonymous data that helps them design “experiences”. This is a strategy to lock down the usage of a product. Microsoft is one of the worst about this.
It’s easy to make a lie look like the truth when the model is nefarious. Microsoft is spying on you to narrow your “experience”. Those who try to suggest otherwise, don’t know what they are talking about.
I can’t say I really trust “Windows Central” to give me the whole story any more than Forbes or some random forum poster. I will say this, I used the bug reporting feature in Fedora the other day, this is probably kinda like a manual version of Windows telemetry which allows you to report bugs, crashes, etcetera to the developers. Unlike Windows this information is not sent automatically, you choose if you want to send it or not and if you decide to send the information it actually shows you all of the information that will be sent, highlights potentially sensitive information and allows you to modify the data, such as deleting entries you want to keep private, before sending it. Not bad
