TL;DR: "By using Windows 10, you relinquish any expectation of privacy".
Stallman is an optimist! This "privacy policy" is much worse than what we expect from malware [1]. Cryptolocker might hold my files hostage for some bitcoins, but they're not going to sell me out to aggressive lawyers or overzealous law enforcement.
Not happening. Sorry this has gone on long enough.
Closed both Microsoft accounts and cancelled my MSDN and AP subscription renewals.
I do a big chunk of my work on a CentOS desktop machine already. There's not much of a push to chuck everything in an 8.1 VM and start moving it all over. The MSDN licenses I need persist past the sub so that's enough for me.
I've been on the verge of doing this for a couple of months already anyway for ref.
Edit: Also, I'm really not happy about the pro-Microsoft spin all over the media recently. It appears to be covering up a number of nasty changes behind the scenes and lacking in critical analysis.
Edit 3: does anyone know of a decent 4G modem for a laptop, preferably one that works in Linux. I can then skip my phone as a tether and use a dumbphone.
Yes I agree entirely; you're 100% right. The only 3rd party service I now rely on personally is my domain registrar and an IMAP box which is unavoidable to participate in the world now. I've closed most of my online accounts with services over the last year already. I moved my code from github to local fossil instances about 3 months ago as well. Everything I use is hosted by reputable companies in the EU.
I'm not touching Android. Too many bad experiences there about a year ago for me.
"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:
1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
4.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."
Definitely close your accounts if you want to protect your data, no fault there :) But make sure you know that this article doesn't actually tell an accurate picture.
It doesn't explicitly call out 4G support so you will have to work backwards.
fyi: some laptop firmware, such as thinkpads, have a whitelist of supported WWAN cards. If you can't find a suitable internal card you can use a USB dongle without restriction.
How do we not yet have a metric for noting specific security policies, so we can create a matrix of how different companies handle this information? I'm appreciative of information on what personal data policies Microsoft uses, but I'm more interested in how it compares to other companies. How is it the same or different than Google and Apple?
This is extremely important. Right now we have an extremely inefficient market with respect to privacy. Users don't know what policies companies have, and even if they know where to find that information, it's extremely inaccessible. Making it easy to compare services would allow users to actually distinguish based on this metric, which is the first step towards pressuring companies to actually compete on this metric.
Simplistically, this could be achieved with a set of data policy components (account information, login information, purchase information, location information, various activity information items, etc) and their policy on them in well defined terms, such as Not Applicable, Does not collect, Collects but does not share, Collects and may share, Collects and known to share. That would be the start of something beautiful.
With a much more clearly defined set of items they measure this is fairly close to an initial version of what I was describing. With that and a standardized legend for the rating for each item (save the specifics for a mouse-over) it would be fairly easy to create a service matrix of selected services.
Besides being too broad, it tracks only a few items. I outlined five possible states above for how a company deals with a subject, a sixth would be "unknown". The EFF just has a star, which considering their goal, which is similar but not quite the same, is fine. They are looking to encourage companies to change by influencing the consumers as well, but I think they are going for a more emotional influence, while I am espousing a more informational influence. Make it easier to see the specifics in a more granular fashion so consumers can be informed.
Additionally I'm not entirely sure how to split out all the different things to track with regard to privacy, which is why I think it's a big project. But I see a need, and I think someone could do well for themselves filling that need.
You really can't create a matrix of how different companies handle the information, because there is no practical way for you to determine that. You could, however, create a matrix of what different companies claim they do with the information. While this might be helpful to those who are inclined to believe that companies always do exactly what they say, it isn't going to be very helpful to those who want to protect information in a reliable way.
If you want reliable protection, you eliminate or block those mechanisms which expose information to others. You could create a matrix which identifies different types of exposures and shows which can be avoided when using a given product or service. It would be a major task though, because technical details that are often not well documented can have a big impact on exposures. You couldn't afford to miss something like a user identifier that accompanies phoned home data.
Of course, the available information is what's presented. But what I outlined isn't any less effective because the specific actions are unknown. You have to assume if they say they can/may do something with regard to your data, it's being done (or can/will be done in the future). Privacy policy violations are actionable, so what they say they are allowed to do is what should be started with. If there's specific credible information that they do otherwise, them you use that.
The whole point is making it easy to judge how companies interact with their customers in regard to data and privacy so market pressure can do it's thing.
I like your idea at the end there. Any known examples of this? Or maybe a proof of concept?
Maintaining it would be a pain. I'd like to see each company maintain their own table of terms and policies.
Other than maintenance, I'm concerned about how conditional sharing would be expressed succinctly... of course it's just a watered down version but you'd have to do it carefully.
From your sibling comment, https://tosdr.org/ seems like it gets partly there. The items listed don't seem to be standardized for the initial view though. Then again, I just visited it for the first time in years (I had heard of it, but completely forgotten), so I don't claim to have a good idea of exactly what it offers.
The first step would be getting a formalized set of metrics, which is in itself a bit project. Once you have that, a framework to crowd source the specific answers from users (hopefully with references to a TOS/Privacy policy section) would be the easiest way to keep it up to date. Allowing comments and annotations for further info on a specific company's rating for an item that could be expanded would let people drill down on the details.
It is a little unsettling when you read these policies.
This is probably for Cortana. She has to understand and process your voice commands, learn your nickname and preferences to be effective. She already works in Windows Phone (very nicely), and I don't think a little phone processor would be enough to power her up. In fact, she doesn't work without an internet connection, at least in WP. What happens is that she takes the information you input to the cloud, processes it there with more than enough horsepower to do her stuff and brings it back to you. I suppose this is how it'll work as well on PCs.
So for all this to work, yes they need to collect our data. Face it, with any smart assistant that we want it's going to be the same, they're all cloud powered. Doesn't Siri also require a internet connection? Probably Alexa too, and any others work exactly the same.
It is a necessary evil to have a useful virtual assistant. Although if we don't want her we can opt out of the MSA account, as someone posted in the comments. Unsure if that removes all the privacy concerns, that would be useful to know. On Windows Phone it did (you can opt out of sending data to MS and Cortana is disabled).
On Windows 10 you can opt-out as well. In fact, using Microsoft account is an opt-in while installing. You can just make a local account and certain features would be off by default. If you try to access them it will remind you that you need an MS account to access them.
The fundamental problem with this privacy policy is the scary wording. When Gmail first came out, Google was (probably) the first company to read emails to figure out ads. But they enforced the not-touched-by-human-handsiness claim hard throughout. MS, on the other hand, not only says it will collect data but again and again mentions "disclose when necessary." There are too many uses of "disclose." It almost sounds like they will just hand over data without much conviction.
I went to the Privacy statement [0], to the "Reasons we share your data" (click on Learn More) and it does not sound scary at all (it' pretty much the same as any internet company that holds customer data). It's very clearly worded and I know exactly how/why my data will be used, so I can decide if I want to go ahead or if I don't.
There's also a Data Retention section further down that specifies how long your data is in their servers.
edit: In the top section (Personal Data we collect) it also says: "You have choices about the data we collect. When you are asked to provide personal data, you may decline. But if you choose not to provide data that is necessary to provide a service, you may not be able to use some features or services."
"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:
1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
4.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."
> Face it, with any smart assistant that we want it's going to be the same, they're all cloud powered.
> It is a necessary evil to have a useful virtual assistant
Not necessarily. With things like the Jasper Project [0], you can run your own personal assistant that decodes voice on your machine and doesn't use the cloud. Granted, Jasper doesn't fit in your pocket (yet).
The real reason I'll never use Microsoft products again: I'm sick of legally purchasing software and being treated like a potential charlatan every time I change a component of my computer or upgrade. I have lost countless hours to Microsoft Tech Support for licensing issues (which, to be honest, are reasonably efficient these days). However, the older I get, the more I just plain resent having to deal with this intrusion into what should be an experience I control.
Microsoft licensing is hellish, I've worked with it for years and I still don't entirely understand it.
Indeed. Wait until you have to deal with an audit. Apparently, even on microsoft's advice on licensing, we still owed them about £50,000 of missing licenses after an audit...
Most of this was down to a SQL Server upgrade where core and CPU terminology was changed.
I'm currently arguing for serious considerations of SQL Server alternatives for selected new development work (and where reasonably achievable), in order to mitigate spiralling license fees. The main issue is that mostly those fees are paid by our customers, but ultimately our customer's cost is our cost. Collectively it's becoming a stupid amount of money.
that's why I never, ever, EVER have official Windows installed. you should get soemthing extra when paying, and that extra shouldn't be inconvenience. heck, I have put cracked windows even on laptops that had Win licence with them on purchase, just because of this (you changed HDD, doubled RAM or similar? forget it! this ain't the same machine, and you won't run this OS again! just have this one hour call and maybe...)
Even back in the days of Windows XP, the call was 10 minutes and you talked to an automated machine and just read it your license key. Not an hour long call.
I'm not sure they do that anymore for home users. A year ago I upgraded every part of my PC except the hard drive. Plugged the existing Windows-installed hard drive into a new mobo, processor, and video card and it just ran some updates for new drivers. Never asked me to re-license. And I've used this same license key to re-install Windows maybe five times since Windows 8 came out, never had any problems.
I have swapped hardware many many times, multiple re-installs of Windows 7 and _never_ had an issue with licensing on a single key. I am very confused and skeptical of your claims.
Well, at least you paid for those product which should give you better consumer protection than when you didn't (for Google/Facebook products for instance). But IANAL.
I wonder if what we're seeing here is basically the beginning of a new era of some sort of feudalism, and the end of "the age of equality".
The French revolution, US revolution etc. talked about and put equality into their constitutions, and that has kinda been the prevailing world view ever since. Although, I guess the real cause for this were technologies like the printing press, gun powder and the assembly line - technologies that made people more equal.
But now, even if most people hear about this, I'm guessing that most will continue using Windows. For the last 200 years or so, we've had various leaders standing up for the little guy, but I wonder if anybody will bother in the future, when they see that most "little guys" will not even bother to switch operating systems or use a different search engine in order to preserve their freedoms and rights.
We have been in an economic feudalism for the last century. The fact that companies have all the right and none of the duty of a normal person in front of the law with the all power money can buy means there is a strong disparity between normal citizens and them. Corporation have effectively replaced the Lords of the previous despotic regimes in the Western World.
Only when we cease to consider Corporations more important than the rest of the economic actors can we move the balance of powers back where the it has been intended by the previous revolutionary movement.
But this is kind of off-topic with this news.
I hope MSFT get a bash for this kind of niceties and implement an opt-out solution for all their in-built spyware.
> Summing up these 45 pages, one can say that Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties. The company appears to be granting itself the right to share your data either with your consent “or as necessary”.
And this differs from Google's and Facebook's usage policies how?
Throwing out a red flag at this point for a corporation stating that people^H^H^H^H^H^H^H users are their product is the quintessential example of "closing the barn door after the horse is out."
We (edit: used to[0]) paid for windows, we shouldn't be the product.
I believe the problem (and I am outraged about that) comes from the fact people are paying for Windows and practices such as the collecting of e-mail and contact shouldn't be necessary for 1. the OS to run smoothly and 2. for MS to cover for a low selling price.
The OS and its default bundled application's set price should be enough to guarantee MS doesn't need a user's private data and metadata to provide the product (aka: we gave MS some money, they shouldn't need our private data to make money in order to keep the price `low').
There are many things like "data about network you connect to" that need to be collected and stored on the device unless the user wants to introduce the same password over and over again. This has to be stated somehow and phrased.
Now if MS stores it on-line through the windows account for convenience it's almost the same thing if it's encrypted and hashed so MS just stores something that can't be exploited if leaked.
I have been looking at Surface recently and now I wonder if I can run Debian on it.
[0] but considering the upgrade path implies a paid product (win 7/8) it's a huge change for the user and my point still stand.
You make a cogent argument, which I almost completely agree (excluding an OS vendor storing account info on their own servers).
The consideration I hope to make evident now is: how do your points differ when applied to an Andriod device for which Google has been paid their licensing fees by the device manufacturer?
Facebook's offerings are different, true, yet their Machiavellain use of whatever is presented to them warrants inclusion in this type of discussion IMHO.
The difference is that this has been Google's and Facebook's business model ever since they became profitable, while MS was in the business of selling software products to users. The fact that they include this now combined with windows (the previously second largest cash cow) now being effectively free, indicates that MS sees user data as the future of their business too. Given MS makes their money mostly with enterprise/businesses I doubt that this will succeed.
> The difference is that this has been Google's and Facebook's business model ever since they became profitable, while MS was in the business of selling software products to users.
I respect the point you are making, yet must point out that all it does is establish a timeline. There is no significant difference between the three companies' treatment of their customer base in this regard.
And don't forget, including Google _also_ includes Andriod.
> Given MS makes their money mostly with enterprise/businesses I doubt that this will succeed.
I believe it would not be a surprise to find that the enterprise/ultimate/wtf-ever-they-call-it are excluded from this. Of course, I'm sure a user could receive the same exemption should they choose to pay the fee...
> And this differs from Google's and Facebook's usage policies how?
This article has nothing to do with Google and Facebook. It doesn't even mention them.
I think the article's purpose is to dispute the claim that the terms aren't as "straightforward" as Microsoft would have us think, as evidenced by the sarcastic closing line, "So much for clearly understandable and straightforward terms of service."
In part, it is quite convincing. Phrases like "or as necessary" and "we collect voice input, as well as your name and nickname" is a little unsettling to me.
> This article has nothing to do with Google and Facebook. It doesn't even mention them.
Agreed. My point was not that the article critiques either of those organizations, simply that this move by Microsoft is quite comparable. To the point of being indistinguishable, IMHO.
> I think the article's purpose is to dispute the claim that the terms aren't as "straightforward" as Microsoft would have us think, as evidenced by the sarcastic closing line, "So much for clearly understandable and straightforward terms of service."
I recommend detailed reading of the ToC's the various Google and/or Facebook offerings which you are interested in as well then. Perhaps they are less shrouded in "legalese", but I submit their implications are no less disturbing.
>> And this differs from Google's and Facebook's usage policies how?
Let's remember that you aren't running your desktop on facebook, you can use custom android rom or self-built chromium that doesn't interface with google.
You don't see a significant difference between terms of service governing the use of data you entrust to computers owned by some web service, and terms of service governing the use of data you store yourself on your own computer?
> And this differs from Google's and Facebook's usage policies how?
Was waiting for someone to bring that up. Microsoft has never done anything different than Google does yet, until now, no one bothered to check up on Microsoft. However, Microsoft has its tentacles more tightly wound around Windows users.
What I find most disappointing is that Microsoft could have stopped all of this in the beginning if they had simply put adblockers on IE way back when they were giving the finger to all of the anti-trust legislation anyway. Google would have had to have a different model, and the currency of the Internet would be money.
If you charge me $25/year to use facebook, I know what that means. If you charge me $25/year to use google, I know what that means.
Now, however, the currency of the Internet is privacy, and not very many of us know what that means. It's still too abstract- and abstract thinking is hard for many of us.
I'm going to hold off on the "free upgrade" to Windows 10 until I can find a trustworthy and comprehensive blog post on how I can disable all of the privacy-invading "features".
Not linking a Microsoft account with the local account seems to be a good starting point. I also plan to do my best to get rid of OneDrive and Cortana, neither of which I have any use for. But I have no idea how to go about discovering and tackling all the other possible channels for data leakage, which we're bound to hear about in the days and weeks to come.
Free upgrade means you're no longer a customer. It's a cliche, but it fits perfectly this time. Some of the things I'd like to disable will probably require upgrading to the Pro edition, which of course is only available to paying customers.
It's a valiant effort, but you're navigating a privacy minefield. Even if you find/disable all the known things, a single windows update can introduce a new opt-out "feature" that undoes it all. Your effort might be better spent migrating to a less invasive system.
"Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always."
Well, I guess it's inevitable as long as I'm using a proprietary operating system. I don't expect Apple to be any better. Heck, even Ubuntu nowadays comes with ads that you need to opt out of.
At least if I get Windows 10 Pro, I'll be able to turn off non-security-related updates.
Readit News
Stallman is an optimist! This "privacy policy" is much worse than what we expect from malware [1]. Cryptolocker might hold my files hostage for some bitcoins, but they're not going to sell me out to aggressive lawyers or overzealous law enforcement.
[1] http://www.networkworld.com/article/2926215/microsoft-subnet...
Closed both Microsoft accounts and cancelled my MSDN and AP subscription renewals.
I do a big chunk of my work on a CentOS desktop machine already. There's not much of a push to chuck everything in an 8.1 VM and start moving it all over. The MSDN licenses I need persist past the sub so that's enough for me.
I've been on the verge of doing this for a couple of months already anyway for ref.
Edit: Also, I'm really not happy about the pro-Microsoft spin all over the media recently. It appears to be covering up a number of nasty changes behind the scenes and lacking in critical analysis.
Edit 2: Proof: http://imgur.com/a/ZYWZM
Edit 3: does anyone know of a decent 4G modem for a laptop, preferably one that works in Linux. I can then skip my phone as a tether and use a dumbphone.
I appreciate the sentiment there, but you'll have to close pretty much everything if you really want to protest the abuse.
Don't use any stock/operator/manufacturer version of Android either, by the way. They're full of spyware.
I'm not touching Android. Too many bad experiences there about a year ago for me.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...
"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: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.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."
Definitely close your accounts if you want to protect your data, no fault there :) But make sure you know that this article doesn't actually tell an accurate picture.
fyi: some laptop firmware, such as thinkpads, have a whitelist of supported WWAN cards. If you can't find a suitable internal card you can use a USB dongle without restriction.
I've got a ThinkPad X201 with a built in Gobi 3G card already. Just used to 4g speeds :)
Annoyingly my ThinkPad has a Gobi 3G card in it but I've got used to 4G speeds now.
This is extremely important. Right now we have an extremely inefficient market with respect to privacy. Users don't know what policies companies have, and even if they know where to find that information, it's extremely inaccessible. Making it easy to compare services would allow users to actually distinguish based on this metric, which is the first step towards pressuring companies to actually compete on this metric.
Simplistically, this could be achieved with a set of data policy components (account information, login information, purchase information, location information, various activity information items, etc) and their policy on them in well defined terms, such as Not Applicable, Does not collect, Collects but does not share, Collects and may share, Collects and known to share. That would be the start of something beautiful.
They need much more contributors though.
Additionally I'm not entirely sure how to split out all the different things to track with regard to privacy, which is why I think it's a big project. But I see a need, and I think someone could do well for themselves filling that need.
If you want reliable protection, you eliminate or block those mechanisms which expose information to others. You could create a matrix which identifies different types of exposures and shows which can be avoided when using a given product or service. It would be a major task though, because technical details that are often not well documented can have a big impact on exposures. You couldn't afford to miss something like a user identifier that accompanies phoned home data.
The whole point is making it easy to judge how companies interact with their customers in regard to data and privacy so market pressure can do it's thing.
Maintaining it would be a pain. I'd like to see each company maintain their own table of terms and policies.
Other than maintenance, I'm concerned about how conditional sharing would be expressed succinctly... of course it's just a watered down version but you'd have to do it carefully.
The first step would be getting a formalized set of metrics, which is in itself a bit project. Once you have that, a framework to crowd source the specific answers from users (hopefully with references to a TOS/Privacy policy section) would be the easiest way to keep it up to date. Allowing comments and annotations for further info on a specific company's rating for an item that could be expanded would let people drill down on the details.
This is probably for Cortana. She has to understand and process your voice commands, learn your nickname and preferences to be effective. She already works in Windows Phone (very nicely), and I don't think a little phone processor would be enough to power her up. In fact, she doesn't work without an internet connection, at least in WP. What happens is that she takes the information you input to the cloud, processes it there with more than enough horsepower to do her stuff and brings it back to you. I suppose this is how it'll work as well on PCs.
So for all this to work, yes they need to collect our data. Face it, with any smart assistant that we want it's going to be the same, they're all cloud powered. Doesn't Siri also require a internet connection? Probably Alexa too, and any others work exactly the same.
It is a necessary evil to have a useful virtual assistant. Although if we don't want her we can opt out of the MSA account, as someone posted in the comments. Unsure if that removes all the privacy concerns, that would be useful to know. On Windows Phone it did (you can opt out of sending data to MS and Cortana is disabled).
The fundamental problem with this privacy policy is the scary wording. When Gmail first came out, Google was (probably) the first company to read emails to figure out ads. But they enforced the not-touched-by-human-handsiness claim hard throughout. MS, on the other hand, not only says it will collect data but again and again mentions "disclose when necessary." There are too many uses of "disclose." It almost sounds like they will just hand over data without much conviction.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...
There's also a Data Retention section further down that specifies how long your data is in their servers.
edit: In the top section (Personal Data we collect) it also says: "You have choices about the data we collect. When you are asked to provide personal data, you may decline. But if you choose not to provide data that is necessary to provide a service, you may not be able to use some features or services."
Few IT departments will allow opting-out -- it'll be part of how your work computer is setup, and part of your job to use it.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...
"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: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.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."
> It is a necessary evil to have a useful virtual assistant
Not necessarily. With things like the Jasper Project [0], you can run your own personal assistant that decodes voice on your machine and doesn't use the cloud. Granted, Jasper doesn't fit in your pocket (yet).
[0] http://jasperproject.github.io/
Microsoft licensing is hellish, I've worked with it for years and I still don't entirely understand it.
Most of this was down to a SQL Server upgrade where core and CPU terminology was changed.
The French revolution, US revolution etc. talked about and put equality into their constitutions, and that has kinda been the prevailing world view ever since. Although, I guess the real cause for this were technologies like the printing press, gun powder and the assembly line - technologies that made people more equal.
But now, even if most people hear about this, I'm guessing that most will continue using Windows. For the last 200 years or so, we've had various leaders standing up for the little guy, but I wonder if anybody will bother in the future, when they see that most "little guys" will not even bother to switch operating systems or use a different search engine in order to preserve their freedoms and rights.
Only when we cease to consider Corporations more important than the rest of the economic actors can we move the balance of powers back where the it has been intended by the previous revolutionary movement.
But this is kind of off-topic with this news.
I hope MSFT get a bash for this kind of niceties and implement an opt-out solution for all their in-built spyware.
Can you unpack that for me? I own a corporation and enjoy nothing of what you mention. I fear I'm missing out on something.
And this differs from Google's and Facebook's usage policies how?
Throwing out a red flag at this point for a corporation stating that people^H^H^H^H^H^H^H users are their product is the quintessential example of "closing the barn door after the horse is out."
I believe the problem (and I am outraged about that) comes from the fact people are paying for Windows and practices such as the collecting of e-mail and contact shouldn't be necessary for 1. the OS to run smoothly and 2. for MS to cover for a low selling price.
The OS and its default bundled application's set price should be enough to guarantee MS doesn't need a user's private data and metadata to provide the product (aka: we gave MS some money, they shouldn't need our private data to make money in order to keep the price `low').
There are many things like "data about network you connect to" that need to be collected and stored on the device unless the user wants to introduce the same password over and over again. This has to be stated somehow and phrased.
Now if MS stores it on-line through the windows account for convenience it's almost the same thing if it's encrypted and hashed so MS just stores something that can't be exploited if leaked.
I have been looking at Surface recently and now I wonder if I can run Debian on it.
[0] but considering the upgrade path implies a paid product (win 7/8) it's a huge change for the user and my point still stand.
The consideration I hope to make evident now is: how do your points differ when applied to an Andriod device for which Google has been paid their licensing fees by the device manufacturer?
Facebook's offerings are different, true, yet their Machiavellain use of whatever is presented to them warrants inclusion in this type of discussion IMHO.
I respect the point you are making, yet must point out that all it does is establish a timeline. There is no significant difference between the three companies' treatment of their customer base in this regard.
And don't forget, including Google _also_ includes Andriod.
> Given MS makes their money mostly with enterprise/businesses I doubt that this will succeed.
I believe it would not be a surprise to find that the enterprise/ultimate/wtf-ever-they-call-it are excluded from this. Of course, I'm sure a user could receive the same exemption should they choose to pay the fee...
This article has nothing to do with Google and Facebook. It doesn't even mention them.
I think the article's purpose is to dispute the claim that the terms aren't as "straightforward" as Microsoft would have us think, as evidenced by the sarcastic closing line, "So much for clearly understandable and straightforward terms of service."
In part, it is quite convincing. Phrases like "or as necessary" and "we collect voice input, as well as your name and nickname" is a little unsettling to me.
Agreed. My point was not that the article critiques either of those organizations, simply that this move by Microsoft is quite comparable. To the point of being indistinguishable, IMHO.
> I think the article's purpose is to dispute the claim that the terms aren't as "straightforward" as Microsoft would have us think, as evidenced by the sarcastic closing line, "So much for clearly understandable and straightforward terms of service."
I recommend detailed reading of the ToC's the various Google and/or Facebook offerings which you are interested in as well then. Perhaps they are less shrouded in "legalese", but I submit their implications are no less disturbing.
By very little. Why are you still using google and facebook?
Let's remember that you aren't running your desktop on facebook, you can use custom android rom or self-built chromium that doesn't interface with google.
Unlike Microsoft, Google didn't criticize their competitors for their privacy polices. They really are hypocrites.
Was waiting for someone to bring that up. Microsoft has never done anything different than Google does yet, until now, no one bothered to check up on Microsoft. However, Microsoft has its tentacles more tightly wound around Windows users.
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If you charge me $25/year to use facebook, I know what that means. If you charge me $25/year to use google, I know what that means.
Now, however, the currency of the Internet is privacy, and not very many of us know what that means. It's still too abstract- and abstract thinking is hard for many of us.
Not linking a Microsoft account with the local account seems to be a good starting point. I also plan to do my best to get rid of OneDrive and Cortana, neither of which I have any use for. But I have no idea how to go about discovering and tackling all the other possible channels for data leakage, which we're bound to hear about in the days and weeks to come.
Free upgrade means you're no longer a customer. It's a cliche, but it fits perfectly this time. Some of the things I'd like to disable will probably require upgrading to the Pro edition, which of course is only available to paying customers.
"Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always."
At least if I get Windows 10 Pro, I'll be able to turn off non-security-related updates.