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The administrator of AE News (an online news portal for Czech and Slovak expatriates) writes a very revealing article regarding the Windows 10 collection of user data. Here is the original Czech article. Here is a Bing translation to English. Here is a English condensed version translated by a blogger. And finally a PDF of the original Czech article.
In the post the AE News administrator states:
With the advent of Windows 10, I decided to undergo several tests. The collected knowledge for someone may be alarming. The Windows operating system 10 is essentially the end terminal, more than the operating system, because many of the processes and functions of this system is directly or indirectly dependent on remote servers and databases to Microsoft.
All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to:
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
pre.footprintpredict.com
reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
AE News also references an arstechnica.co.uk article which states it might be impossible to stop this communication:
And finally, some traffic seems quite impenetrable. We configured our test virtual machine to use an HTTP and HTTPS proxy (both as a user-level proxy and a system-wide proxy) so that we could more easily monitor its traffic, but Windows 10 seems to make requests to a content delivery network that bypass the proxy."
arstechnica.co.uk also "asked Microsoft if there is any way to disable this additional communication or information about what its purpose is". Microsoft did not reply as to a way to disable this chatter but did respond to the 'additional communication' stating Microsoft is now 'delivering Windows 10 as a service'.
Although the original source for this story is skeptical, Smart nerds on soylentnews can easily fire up Wireshark and reveal the communication for themselves. It appears that MS has fully embraced the cloud where your OS is now a terminal. And regarding privacy? Well, according to arstechnica.co.uk: Windows 10 privacy policy is the new normal
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:30PM
Golly, bro, you so l33t. But if your OS is untrustworthy, why do you trust it to use your hosts file?
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:04PM
But if your OS is untrustworthy, why do you trust it to use your hosts file?
Perhaps that's why the comment in the file says that you should use a 3rd party firewall? I would not use anything less than an external, hardware firewall if there is a need to use Win10 on the network (say, if you are a developer.) I cannot trust the software firewall (that runs on the same box) for exactly the reasons that you pointed out.
I have a Win10 Technical Preview box currently, but I already have plans to wipe it clean and install Mint 17.2 KDE, now that it is available. Android Studio is supposed to work on Linux, and that's all I expect to need. For everything else there is VirtualBox.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:07PM
Windows or Android, choose your evil...
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:12PM
You mean: Share your data with Microsoft or share your data with everyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 23 2015, @10:06AM
Dude, Google is not "everyone". Besides, as Android is open source, for some devices you can install a clean build without any of Google's crapware. Unfortunately there is no such option for Windows.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday August 23 2015, @12:05PM
I didn't mean Google is everyone, I mean android is so insecure that anyone can... nevermind.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday August 22 2015, @10:53PM
Windows or Android, choose your evil...
My Android code is for controlling industrial hardware. Even if Google is evil, there is nothing for them to steal here. My code does not deal with personal information. The customer is not required to connect to the Internet even (the hardware has USB interface.)