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from the we-are-really-security-conscious dept.
According to The Register Microsoft plans to enable their WIFI Sense feature on all versions of Windows 10 by default.
WIFI Sense has been lurking on Windows Phones since version 8.1.
A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a significant security risk: it shares access to password-protected Wi-Fi networks with the user's contacts. So giving a wireless password to one person grants access to everyone who knows them. That includes their Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends.
With every laptop running Windows 10 in the business radiating access, the security risk is significant. A second issue is that by giving Wi-Fi Sense access to your Facebook contacts, you are giving Microsoft a list of your Facebook friends, as well as your wireless passwords.
Microsoft offers a totally ridiculous workaround: you can simply add _optout to the SSID to prevent it from working with WiFi Sense.
Microsoft's page on WIFI Sense hasn't yet made it clear that every Windows 10 computer using WIFI will have the feature on by default. But that page does also include this little gem:
Wi-Fi Sense uses your location to identify open networks near you that it knows about by crowdsourcing.
Where are the lawyers when you need them?
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @05:51PM
crap!
now i have to have nmap scan every wifi client first and if it find windows 10 running hardware add the MAC to the "no-legal-fees.txt" list and route all future traffic to 127.0.0.1 .. or something.
it is always wonderfull to see a commercial OS that HIDES stuff from the user .. customer, doesn't consider the user as the real grown-up owner ...
put in functionality (get encrypted wifi passphrase) but remotely controlled, thus like with this DRM shit, the computer owner isn't in control of the system at all.