> By default, when signing into Windows with a Microsoft account, Windows syncs some of your settings and data with Microsoft servers, for example “web browser history, favorites, and websites you have open” as well as “saved app, website, mobile hotspot, and Wi-Fi network names and passwords”. Users can however deactivate this transfer to the Microsoft servers by changing their settings.
That's reasonable - at least people can opt-out of it.
>Users who chose to enable Microsoft’s personal assistant software “Cortana” have to live with the following invasion to their privacy: “To enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device. Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history, and more.” But this is not all, as this piece of software also analyses undefined “speech data”: “we collect your voice input, as well your name and nickname, your recent calendar events and the names of the people in your appointments, and information about your contacts including names and nicknames.”
Alright, that sounds like a fair trade off in order for a program, designed to be a personal assistant, to work.
> More problematic from a data protection perspective is however the fact that Windows generates a unique advertising ID for each user on a device. This advertising ID can be used by third parties, such as app developers and advertising networks for profiling purposes.
Umm...
> “We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to”, for example, “protect their customers” or “enforce the terms governing the use of the services”.
Well, looks like I'm going to stick to Windows 7. As for the laptop running 10, that's moving back to Linux.
- Well, looks like I'm going to stick to Windows 7. As for the laptop running 10, that's moving back to Linux.
You know, I'm not sure that a new privacy policy will only be valid for Win10.
Here's the relevant part:
- Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:
comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services - however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.
Its URL is https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.aspx .
Note how it says nothing about Windows 10 in there? I think this is for everything MS.
I've kind of been waiting for a good enough reason to finally make the switch. General usability just isn't that reason anymore for me. This just might. Damn, and I thought Win10 was shaping up so well, too.
- Note how it says nothing about Windows 10 in there? I think this is for everything MS.
On a further note, Google's privacy policy says very similar things about how/when they might go disclosing their users' information.
As much as I'd like to join the "Microsoft snooping muh privates" bandwagon, aside from all that stuff they're doing with Cortana (which you can decide not to use), they don't really seem to be doing anything terribly new here as far as privacy policies are concerned. Unless you're storing your personal data (including emails and such) on a truly private server, chances are you're already subject to something similar than what MS is doing.
Well, I don't use google products either.
I use alternative search engines, I don't use any of their products (except Youtube, which I use without an account). That goes for my phone, which runs a variant of android, too. My mail, contacts and calendar sit on an encrypted, cure53-certified server.
I'm not under any illusions about the effectivity of my amateur work here. If the spooks want my data, they're probably getting my data. Hell, the same probably goes for that smart kid next door who really knows how to massage his 4/86's keyboard the right way.
But I'm done handing over the rights to my privacy to corporations who now openly announce that they can and will fuck with my private files and emails if they decide it's necessary in "good faith".
I actually agree that Microsoft's announcement does, in fact, not change all that much. They're just letting us know what they (even have to) do anyways. But it made me realize that it's about time that I decided whether I am going to continue giving my implicit consent to the general worrying trends in the world of "Big Data"... or if I at least try my best to make sure that I'm not part of the problem.
Yeah, I just used Google as an example of one of the several services which are doing pretty much the same thing as MS. If you can avoid using any of these services by running your own server(s), more power to you.
I suppose I'm just mildly annoyed at everyone shitting their pants for Windows 10's security policy, because it's probably giving some people a false sense of security that they won't be subjected to near-identical stuff in pretty much all of the other likely alternatives.
Personally I consider all this cloud/big data stuff deeply fascinating. They are unquestionably useful tools and they can't be as useful as they are without compromising a lot of privacy. It'll be very interesting to see how all of this stuff pans out in the coming decades, especially after some government/corp somewhere makes a high-profile blunder of abusing their access to all of this data.
Yes. I'm debating wether or not I want to keep a Windows partition for my occasional gaming needs. It sure would be nice to have, but experience has taught me that I tend to just boot into the OS I know after a while. That, and setting up my partitions for a dual boot probably is going to be a bit of a pain. Hm...