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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: 1) by anubi on Monday August 24 2015, @02:53AM
Especially if they are in a position to force the rest of us into it... such as requiring it for signing up for healthcare or processing income tax.
Noncompliant people can always be instructed to "upgrade to a supported browser" and those that do not have no way of complying with laws already on the books mandating compliance with doing certain things.
Note one can no longer go to the library or post office to get mail-in IRS tax forms anymore. I flat do not trust any of these income tax businesses to keep my affairs private... they are businessmen, and they will do whatever is allowed them to do to make a buck, and that includes sharing anything they get from us. I know the day is coming soon when I will be flat required to submit my tax to my government via some company hiding behind "hold harmless" clauses, or the internet while being forced to use insecure javascript laden servers.
I have tried to enroll for government mandated healthcare over the internet, but have yet to get an operable server that does not hang up on me and do stuff like put me in a loop or send me pages with inoperable buttons.... or worse yet, incomplete pages where certain options simply do not display at all.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by dr zim on Monday August 24 2015, @02:18PM
Note one can no longer go to the library or post office to get mail-in IRS tax forms anymore
Put away the tin foil hat, sparky... you can still go to http://www.irs.gov/Forms-&-Pubs [irs.gov] and download .pdfs of any form you need and print out as many as you like.