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posted by janrinok on Friday January 26 2018, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-late? dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Jiro on Friday January 26 2018, @07:31AM (2 children)

    by Jiro (3176) on Friday January 26 2018, @07:31AM (#628139)

    "It’s important to note that this functionality is not intended to capture user viewing or, listening habits."

    If it doesn't capture user viewing or listening habits, they would say that it doesn't. If it's "not intended" to, that means that it does, but they wanted to imply that it doesn't while still being literally truthful so nobody could call them a liar if they are ever discovered. Also, intentions can change; they could collect the data for years without "intending" to, then suddenly decide that the data is what they wanted all along.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 26 2018, @10:41AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 26 2018, @10:41AM (#628195) Journal

    Bingo.

    I think it's actually worse than that, though. The intention is to track usage. Pretending that music and movies and such isn't use of the OS is just silly. They track anything and everything. The name of the song you like best isn't just incidental information, either. Take any two people from same or similar demographics. Person A likes band 1, and person B likes band 2. And, their purchasing habits differ in two or six distinct ways. Toss that info at a database, along with millions or billions of other users. And, the number crunching spits out the fact that almost all people who prefer band 1 over band 2 share some or all of those distinctive purchasing habits. That is very valuable information, that Microsoft can probably make us of - or sell to interested third parties.

    Oh yeah - don't forget that band 1 can be signed to a contract to push various products, either! That is probably the single most valuable bit of data to be gleaned, in this instance. The knowledge that some band has tremendous influence over a group of people's purchasing habits. Microsoft will almost certainly want to sign that band for themselves!