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In a forthcoming Windows 10 release, Microsoft will let you view the telemetry data that the OS collects via a new Windows 10 app called Windows Diagnostic Data Viewer.
Microsoft announced its commitment to "be fully transparent on the diagnostic data collected" from Windows devices today and the release of the application adds options to Windows 10 to view collected Telemetry data.
Microsoft says that it wants to increase trust and confidence, and give users increased control over the data.
[...] You need Windows 10 build 17083 or newer to access the new data viewer. You can access the tool with a tap on Windows-I to open the Settings application, and the selection of Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback in the window that opens.
[...] Diagnostic Data Viewer is a Windows application to review Telemetry (diagnostic) data that Microsoft collects on the device to send it to company servers for analysis.
Note: Microsoft notes that enabling the feature may require up to 1 Gigabyte of additional hard drive space for storage.
A click on the button launches the application's Microsoft Store page on first run. You need to install the application from there before it becomes available.
[...] You find options to export the data to CSV files and to open the Privacy Dashboard on the Internet and the Privacy Settings on the local device as well there.
Search functionality is available which you use to find specific event data. The app returns event data that matches the entered text. Type your name, email addresses, PC name, IP address or any other data that you can think of to run searches across all Telemetry data that Microsoft collected on the device.
While you may use the search for that, you may click on any event listed in the sidebar to access it directly. The data is quite extensive, especially if Telemetry data collecting is set to full and not to basic. I had hundreds of events listed on the Windows 10 Insider build PC after the update to the most recent version. It will take some time to go through the information.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 26 2018, @01:16AM (20 children)
Microsoft will let you view the portion of the telemetry data they want you to see that the OS collects.
That's the problem with closed-source software: You have no good way of being sure what it's doing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday January 26 2018, @01:28AM (17 children)
Yeah: how about a 'feature' to let you turn OFF the telemetry collection and dispersal. You know: privacy? (as well as, if MS can collect it, why not Captain Feathersword and Pirate Tinky Winky)
The shite people will up with put.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @01:42AM (10 children)
The 'best' part of proprietary software is that it's difficult to know exactly what it's doing, and, even if you do know that it's abusing you, it's hard to stop it because you're dependent upon the company developing it. If free software abuses you - which is unlikely, but it can and has happened - it is significantly easier to solve the problem. It's hard to feel sympathy for people that realize this and continue to use or even outright defend proprietary software. They'll throw freedom under the bus for shallow things such as technical capability, so to some extent, they deserve all the abuse that happens to them. The problem is that those short-sighted people give these companies power (through money) and therefore also allow the companies to abuse people who care about freedom; they are able to place their proprietary devices and software in places that are nearly unavoidable, such as in schools, hospitals, etc. Proprietary software developers who realize the implications of what they are doing are even worse and deserve nothing but ridicule, no matter how much they whine about how they 'need' to do unethical things in order to make money. I do feel sympathy for the totally ignorant.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @10:56AM
I don't feel sympathy for the totally ignorant. I mean, look how they voted.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 26 2018, @01:55PM (1 child)
That's a little short sighted. How about noting that the collective customers of those companies do not respect freedom by continuing to support companies which use proprietary devices and software, over companies that "respect freedom" and use open source? If the customer, who is always right, did so, the problem would be solved. Instead, you expect the business to swallow the costs of losing competition to the business next door who uses proprietary software.
Gear change. You pay lip service to this, but what would you advise, say, a hospital to do when they need a particular clinical device, and the interface for that device is built by the manufacturer on Windows and is completely closed source, and there is no competitor who builds an open source product? Do they then tell patients, "We'd like to do this for you but the solutions we can offer are not open source so you'll just suffer, OK?" And at one remove: Let's say there is an open source competitor, but it costs $1,000 more and there is no insurance company who will subsidize that extra cost because there won't be. "Hi, patient, here's your XXX, but you will pay $1,000 more than we could have charged because we believe in your Freedom!" That hospital, if it were really advanced, give the patient the choice between the expensive open source and cheap proprietary, but it can be a foregone conclusion that a fully informed patient won't CARE about Open Source Freedom if it hits them in the wallet. If, instead, there is an open source solution that is in fact cheaper than a proprietary solution in the market, that is fine and should be used. Find me such a situation, and we'll find which hospitals are and aren't using it. (And I'm aware there may be such - I seem to remember a report about open source 3d-printable prostheses.... But I don't remember who takes liability for the design - remember that clinical practitioners must also have someone who takes liability for the reliability and usage of the device.) At any rate, you expect the hospital to just eat that $1,000, regardless of if puts the hospital in the red, because Freedom, right?
As to the developers, not my table. But if a developer has to eat, he or she is probably bound to the standards of their employer. If they're on their own, a lone developer, they get the choice... moderated by if they are consultants again they follow the tune of the manufacturer.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Wootery on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:48PM
Good post. In short: Free Software idealism often collides with reality. For all its faults, the closed/non-free/proprietary payware model gets shit done, and in many domains, FOSS turns up essentially empty handed.
All else equal, I'd certainly take Free over non-Free - it's one of the reasons I use Firefox - but Stallman disciples often forget that very often, the choice is between non-Free and nothing at all.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 26 2018, @01:59PM (6 children)
And rereading your post, AC, I see you actually are holding the customer accountable to some degree - sorry I missed that. But the situation still obtains - how much more is it "ethical" to require a customer to pay because Freedom? And that assumes they have an alternative.
I know the times when I choose proprietary, it's either because I do not have any choice - the software I need has no open-source equivalent, or because I must have functionality that the open source package does not include. The best analogy I have is using DuckDuckGo versus Google. I want to support DuckDuckGo, but every time I use it on a search and then use Google, Google delivers the best results to me. And I don't have the time to always search both. So what do I do? If it's an "important search" I use Google, even though I really dislike having to do so.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 26 2018, @03:37PM (4 children)
I just plain switched to DuckDuckGo. They'll get better and the likely reason Google is giving You better results is due to the fundamental reason I use DuckDuckGo. That pesky thing called tracking.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @08:51PM
I actually generally get better results with duckduckgo, because I block everything Google stop they don't have the relevant info except what they get off my phone which is usually garbage.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday January 30 2018, @01:57PM (2 children)
I wish DuckDuckGo every success, but let's not kid ourselves: right now, it's nowhere near as good as Google. It's not even close. Fire up private browsing and compare:
Google search for D without garbage collection [google.com]
DuckDuckGo search for D without garbage collection [duckduckgo.com]
Half the DuckDuckGo results pertain to Java, Rust, Lua, C#, Unity, git, SSDs, language-agnostic GC research, or even to neighbourhood waste collection. All but one of Google's first-page of results are directly related to the search.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:16PM (1 child)
Google started a decade earlier and has no qualms about selling your data to the highest bidder. They are slightly less invasive than Facebook, but Facebook doesn't have that Do No Evil mantra. There's a Lot of gray area in that Do No Evil mantra. Considering DuckDuckGo has 40 employees (wikipedia) and Google has 73,992 employees (wikipedia), I would say DuckDuckGo is doing really well. DuckDuckGo may never be "as good" as Google when it comes to doing a search and I'm okay with that. Especially, if the price is invasion of privacy.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:35PM
Yes, I understand the privacy case for DuckDuckGo, but we were talking about the quality of the search results.
Personally, I find the cost in quality to be high enough that there's no way I'd make the switch. Again though, I really hope it improves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 27 2018, @03:38PM
Another DDG user chiming in. What helps tremendously with getting the results you want is using search operators. It seems that Google's search algorithm guesses the most likely search operators in a given query, saving you some typing and actually formulating your input properly. But I seldom leave DDG search unsatisfied and look for what Google has to offer instead. Usually, Google is ahead in searching for people or merchants selling a specific item, which is where I sometimes have to fall back on using that ominous Kraken of a "search engine".
There is also Startpage as an alternative, it incorporates Google's results.
(Score: 3, Funny) by captain normal on Friday January 26 2018, @02:32AM
Hey! Don't knock Captains. Now Pirates...that's a different matter.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 26 2018, @02:48AM (1 child)
There is sort of that feature in place, but to really do it requires registry changes [winaero.com].
That of course doesn't mean those switches and settings do what they say they do, either.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 26 2018, @08:22AM
Those settings are not enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 26 2018, @06:42AM (2 children)
It works really well for me. let's see if I can dig it up for you:
BEHOLD:
Don't say I never did nothin' for ya.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 26 2018, @12:22PM (1 child)
The easier solution: don't. use. Windows!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday January 26 2018, @12:55PM
Embedded coders have far less choice than do desktop and server developers
For example my client owns some USB protocol analizers. All of them require windows for the UI
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 26 2018, @10:46AM (1 child)
They could and should add it to the EULA... i.e. "We will collect data and we legally bind ourselves to letting you see the data that we collect". The EULA could and should cut both ways!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 26 2018, @06:52PM
1. Why would Microsoft have any reason to do that? They know full well that doing so wouldn't budge their market share very much.
2. If they broke that promise, how would you know? Remember, you can't look at the source code, so discovering what it is your Windows system is sending, especially since it's likely encrypted, will be challenging.
3. If you did catch them, what would you do about it? A class-action lawsuit is not an option, because both class actions and lawsuits are specifically banned in the EULA, and the Supreme Court ruled in AT&T v Concepcion [wikipedia.org] (one of the most important cases you've probably never heard of) that it's legal for them to do that. Even if your state, or the state where they're headquartered, has laws saying those conditions aren't legal. Instead, all you can do is go to binding arbitration, where Microsoft gets to pick the arbitrator. Guess how fair that is?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.