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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the trying-to-get-the-scoop-on-what-they-scoop-up dept.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused Microsoft of disregarding user choice and privacy with Windows 10. InĀ a scathing editorial, EFF employee Amul Kalia calls on Microsoft to "come clean with its user community" over a growing number of Windows 10 privacy concerns. "Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft," explains Kalia, noting that enabling Cortana increases the amount of data passed to Microsoft. Privacy advocates have argued that Windows 10 sends back location, text input, voice input, touch input, websites you visit, and other telemetry data to Microsoft.

"While users can disable some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft's servers," says Kalia. "A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives." Microsoft has previously insisted it anonymizes telemetry data, but the EFF is concerned the company hasn't explained exactly how it does this. "Microsoft also won't say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes."

While telemetry data is clearly a concern, the EFF focuses on Microsoft's confusing link between this data and security patches. "Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won't function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level," claims Kalia. "Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates."

The story then proceeds to blast Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics, as well.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:38AM (#392006)

    She just asked to have the linux partition expanded to be her primary OS, since her Windows partition (8 or 8.1) is only necessary for browser based online education that attempts to block you from cheating by looking up the answers in another window. Which is silly, since everybody has a phone with internet now, and a second computer device is cheap enough to do it side by side with no way for them to figure it out. Maybe they should focus on making tests that are difficult to find answers to without knowing the material instead?

    The key point here is she was a Windows user until about 10 years ago, then a Mac user for about 4, then after that computer became unreliable she moved back to Windows, and in just the past year or so (having previously dabbled with a linux desktop for web browsing in the early '00s, with a slew of complaints about it), she asked to have ubuntu put on it after I showed off the Unity desktop to her. While I'm not a big proponent of Ubuntu/Unity/systemd at this point, the 'average person' mindshare about using windows is definitely shifting. Linux distros have gotten good enough technically as well as having UIs that work similiarly enough to Windows/Mac OSes to make users feel at home immediately, rather than feeling like they are making a transition as they had in the past. Left with automatic updates on, Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE, etc is just as (un)reliable as Windows or OSX, but with the bonus of getting to reboot on your schedule, since only the kernel upgrade usually requires a reboot, and since most users shut their computers off daily, it isn't much of a risk to let them wait and do it during their normal routine rather than *NOW* like Windows often does by default.

    My only questoin at this point in time is if we will see Microsoft roll a debian distro, take over Debian, or as many of us had been joking about since the 90s, if they will finally buy out/merge with Redhat and live up to their legacy as the 'Microsoft of the Linux world.' Which as many people will tell you systemd seems to be working hard on transitioning their OS and by extension the majority of the Linux ecosystem towards.