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from the sunshine-is-the-best-disinfectant dept.
So far this is only in Switzerland, but there is every reason to suppose it will come up in Germany and other countries. In Switzerland, on the request of the Pirate Party, the governmental data protection office is having a look at Windows 10 (article in German, Here is a Google translation).
If the office determines that Windows 10 violates Swiss privacy laws, they can recommend changes to Windows 10. If Microsoft were to refuse to make those changes, the office would have the option of banning Windows 10 within the country. As the article points out, a similar process forced Google to make substantial changes to StreetView, so it can be effective.
Personal opinion: Switzerland is too small by itself. However, if the Pirate Party in Germany, France and elsewhere could initiate similar actions, Europe as a whole could force real change. And, hey, it will show that the Pirate Party hasn't totally lost its way.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Informative) by danomac on Wednesday August 26 2015, @06:47PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2015, @06:55PM
Obligatory list of updates to remove:
KB2652664 Compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7
KB2976978 Compatibility update for Windows 8.1 and Windows 8
KB3080149 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB3068708 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB3022345 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB2952664 Compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7
KB2990214 Update that enables you to upgrade from Windows 7 to a later version of Windows
KB3035583 Update installs Get Windows 10 app in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1
KB971033 Description of the update for Windows Activation Technologies
KB3021917 Update to Windows 7 SP1 for performance improvements
KB3044374 Update that enables you to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to a later version of Windows
KB3075249 Update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7
Services (commands):
sc stop Diagtrack
sc delete Diagtrack
sc stop RemoteRegistry
sc config RemoteRegistry start= disabled
Task Scheduler Library (things to disable):
Everything under "Application Experience"
Everything under "Autochk"
Everything under "Customer Experience Improvement Program"
Everything under "Media Center"
"Disk Diagnostic" -> "Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector"
"Maintenance" -> "WinSAT"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2015, @08:41PM
Now muh pewter duznt werk. Thanx.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday August 26 2015, @09:52PM
I approve of this list; I had made a text file that is essentially the same (all the same KBs if not more due to paranoia, but this list is not overkill and won't harm regular usage)... I check my list every time updates come out... and check to make sure these KB's are not unhidden unexpectedly (and also not installed accidentally... who knows what I did at 3am after a game night of Team Fortress2 or Talisman).
What irritates me even more are the descriptions for many of the task scheduler items that one should disable--it is ludicrous what some of them claim.
The descriptions indicate that one has to have "opted-in" to enable these data collection services to send to Microsoft. I know that I had done no such thing. I was never even asked if I'd like to, and before disabling these things I checked every thing I had--office products, windows control panel, drivers or applications that could refer to it. Nothing. Yet these are enabled.
And more than once (only noticed due to obsessively checking for some reason during the past few months), I have found the Application and Customer Experience Improvement programs re-enabled anyway. The others have remained disabled; time will tell if that remains to be the case.
I now make it a point to check weekly to make sure that my can of raid keeps the bugs dead, even if I have to keep spraying where they pop up.
It seems a shame that the more of an "administrator" I have become over time (or supervisor/engineer/sysop), the less control I feel I have as a whole. That sense of control has eroded over time.
I was told by a colleague long ago that the more of an expert one becomes, the more one is exposed to the unseemly side of that career. This is definitely one of those times.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:43AM
Is there a way to make this into a script, and perhaps block those updates via registry keys? No point waiting for them to appear and checking every time if you can just create a registry key and marks them as hidden before they are even pushed out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Jiro on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:09AM
You listed 2652664. This is not real; it's a typo for 2952664, which you also list separately.
Also, you left out 2977759.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acharax on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:23AM
It's also missing kb3075851, a recent WUSO update that had no description as to what it does and unhides itself. So possibly also related.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday August 26 2015, @09:09PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!