New
#10
Poke, smoke and then sleep.
Windows 10 telemetry secrets: Where, when, and why Microsoft collects
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New #11
Well... as Lady says, there is no 100% guarantee on anything, but you can trust someone that starts telling you the truth, that they collect data (if you let them) and why they collect it.
When someone tells you they collect some kind of data, but you find there are backdoors, there's when you can feel there is no guarantee... At least Mozilla didn't lie to me...
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New #13
What I'm trying to say is that, since the beggining, Mozilla stated they use telemetry, and you can enable that or not, without "secret" phonings to home. By the other hand, since beta states, M$ said telemetry was only for beta testing and data collecting so they could fix issues within the OS, then, "final" release was out, and telemetry was still there, with shady moves and changes to the EULA on the fly. Everytime M$ was questoned about what data they were collecting and what for, just evasions were the answer, funny thing, the EULA clearly say what they collect, but they just hid under the water, until now, add to that that, even disabling telemetry, W10 still phoned home.
Now, this article explains WHY the OS still phones home, what exactly are the settings for telemetry and such, which is a good step forwards. Now let's hope that data is kept in good hands, and that probably, probably, they will return features like disabling WU without having to mess with services...
That's it, not that I'm complaining, in fact, I feel this is a good step forwards for them... I hope.
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New #14
There is another big difference between Firefox and Windows: Firefox is open source.
That means, its inner workings, incluiding the bundled telemetry can be analyzed by anyone with enough knowledge, disecting what exactly is being sent, where and when, in addition to knowing what the settings really do. Moreover, anyone can fork Firefox and create a version with no telemetry at all if you really want to. With Windows bundled spyware, you can only blindly trust Microsoft words or reject Windows 10 entirely.
There is another thing to worry about, not specific to Windows 10 but to all data collection, secret or not. What happens to the data once in their servers? Even if we suppose that the company is entirely trustful and really uses it only to improve its software (which MS obviously does not) things can still go bad. Hackers might break into their servers at any time, or a rogue employee could steal it, revealing that private data for whatever purpose he might have. A small chance, but still possible.
While in-transit, data is also vulnerable to being captured. An example of this is the Windows 7 (not 10!) WER service, that sends potentially confidential data over plain HTTP instead of HTTPS, so anyone can quite easily see it all. That's why that's service is a known NSA backdoor. Who knows if the Win10 keylogger (or any other telemetry) uses the same irresponsible transmission technique?
To be fair, the WER vulnerability was addresed in Windows 8 and it nows phones home though an encrypted protocol, so Windows 10 may have done so too.
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New #15
Alejandro85 you have made some very good points in my opinion.
The key words in your post to me is (who knows). We don't know for sure about anything except what Microsoft tells us.
I do believe that Microsoft will try not to misuse our information but (who knows for sure)?
Who know who will buy the information?
Who know who will steal the information?
Once my computers hit the internet their are a bunch of (who knows) that I only have some control over. I do have control over W-10 until it is fixed. Don't use it is my method of control.
The fact that W-10 is new and free has captured many. Me, I'm in no hurry.
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