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) by janrinok on Sunday August 23 2015, @09:44AM
And it appeared here after the merge.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 23 2015, @08:17PM
We at least are bringing the concerns back to the surface. It seems that the mainstream press, both IT and otherwise -- gloss over these things.
Soon, anyone not using Google/Apple/Microsoft for an OS will be IT terrorists because they will have "gone dark". And if they don't have a facebook account, heaven forbid they get pulled over for a speeding ticket without having a social media account up to date... because that will end up all over the news that the latest cop mortality statistic was mentally ill and probably shouldn't have been allowed outside without medication.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday August 23 2015, @11:48PM
After it had already left the front page so not two shits would be given and nobody would see it...why even bother?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 24 2015, @07:48AM
Sorry Hairyfeet, I don't suppose anyone here meant to post a Dupe.
You submitted your story at the same time as 2 others made their contributions on the same subject; it is normal for us to merge stories in this way and you were given full attribution for your submission, it is indicated as accepted in your submission list, and you were awarded the karma.
Unless an every editor can be on here 7 days a week then it is just as difficult for us to know which stories have been posted and which have not yet been covered. We have the same tools available to us ('search' from the menu) as you have. Unless we use precisely the same keywords the search engine often does not locate similar stories. Furthermore, as we read both accepted and rejected submissions, we can have problems remembering whether a new submission is a dupe of a story that was previously declined and therefore worth consideration in its own right. I can only apologise for the Dupe, but it seems to have gathered enough comments to justify it anyway.
My previous post was said with a grin - obviously that got lost in the translation, so to speak. There was no intended criticism of any of your submissions or comments. JR.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 24 2015, @12:01PM
A word of advice...if its off the front page? Please don't even bother, time was wasted for ZERO gain. Once it is gone from the front page it might as well not exist so there really is no point in bothering at that point, it servers no purpose whatsoever. As for dupes...does this site not have a functional search? Surely one could simply type "Windows 10" and found out if the same article had been posted before, hell one could probably write a script that looks at the links and see if those links have already been posted previously.
Its a computer friend, let the computer do the work and find the dupes FOR you instead of doing it yourself.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2015, @03:24AM
Well, here's one anecdote that says you're wrong, Hairy. I regularly read back beyond the front page, as I don't always visit SN daily.
Not that you'll see this, only browsing at +2...