Windows 10 Worst Secret Spins Out Of Control

Hamish McPanji

Hamish McPanji

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Back in November Microsoft confirmed Windows 10’s worst kept secret: its extensive telemetry (or ‘spying’ as it has been labelled) cannot be stopped . What no-one realised until now, however, is just how staggering the extent of this tracking really is…**

Blowing the lid on it this week is Voat user CheesusCrust whose extensive investigation*found Windows 10 contacts Microsoft to report data thousands of times per day. And the kicker? This happens after choosing a custom Windows 10 installation and disabling all three pages of tracking options which are all enabled by default.

The raw numbers come out as follows: in an eight hour period Windows 10 tried to send data back to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses over 5500 times. After 30 hours of use, Windows 10 expanded that data reporting to 113 non-private IP addresses. Being non-private means there is the potential for hackers to intercept this data. I’d argue this is the greatest cost to owning Windows 10.
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Full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonk...-10-data-tracking-spying-levels/#4291e6ff7aa9
 
It's difficult to evaluate to what extent stories like this are unfounded hysteria or real concerns. This all seems very suspect, though. The fact that MS won't tell users exactly what they're tracking and that it phones home thousands of times a day, far in excess of what would be necessary to merely gather usage data, is concerning.

MS has an ethical responsibility to at least disclose what types of data it is tracking and what it is being used for. They can hide behind their EULAs but ultimately if this blows up into a major issue corporates and governments might be forced to avoid Windows entirely for compliance reasons. For example, how do you guarantee information privacy in your organization if you simply don't have any knowledge about what the operating system might be doing with it?
 
Garp raises a good point. How do we know MS isint collecting corporate infomation from overseas companies to use for the advantage of US based firms? My conspiracy nut is starting to come loose I know. But because there is no clarity on what is being transmitted suspicion is all that remains.
 
reactor_sa said:
I don't have anything to hide anyway
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First they came for the security and I did not speak out—
Because I was not connected to the internet

Then they came for the open source software, and I did not speak out—
Because I used proprietary software

Then they came for the privacy, and I did not speak out—
Because I had nothing to hide

Then they came for my private life—and there was nowhere left for me to hide
 
Still glad I haven't updated to 10, and I don't install update on my Win7 anymore, after I started getting the "upgrade" notification on my taskbar. Will keep it this way for now.
 
reactor_sa said:
I don't have anything to hide anyway
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You may think you have nothing to hide, but intelligence can be gleaned in ways that may not be obvious to you.

For example, in an industrial espionage scenario it may be very informative to know that your friend dropped you an email to say he can't make drinks at the pub on Friday because he's off on a business trip for the week. Your friend's colleagues from the same division of the company all had similar discussions online with their friends, not mentioning where they're going or what they're working on because (unknown to them) the project is commercially sensitive and secret.

So now, in aggregation, an observer knows that x amount of staffers in x division of a rival company are travelling somewhere at the same time. Separately, the information is meaningless. Put together, you have intelligence that the company may be working on a new deal or product. None of this has anything to do with you, but the fact that information was gathered from your PC, even though you have "nothing to hide" can be used to glean advantageous information.

This is tin foil hat stuff, and maybe a stupid example, but this is how mass surveillance information gathering works. It's not about any single piece of information. It's about combining a lot of seemingly insignificant data into a bigger picture.
 
LazyLion said:
http://naumov.co/2016/02/blocking-windows-10-telemetry/
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Thanks for that link. I already use Peerblock, but I will add the MS list just for in case.

One point, they mention up to 6000 connections a day, but this is from the blocked list. I have seen a lot of programs that keep on sending requests if the first one fails. So they should check it on the allowed list as well to see how many connections are normally made.
 
LazyLion said:
http://naumov.co/2016/02/blocking-windows-10-telemetry/
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Good luck https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/835741
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...ndows-10-Talks-To-Dozens-of-Microsoft-Servers
Curious about the various telemetry and personal information being collected by Windows 10, one user installed Windows 10 Enterprise and disabled all of the telemetry and reporting options. Then he configured his router to log all the connections that happened anyway. Even after opting out wherever possible, his firewall captured Windows making around 4,000 connection attempts to 93 different IP addresses during an 8 hour period, with most of those IPs controlled by Microsoft. Even the enterprise version of Windows 10 is checking in with Redmond when you tell it not to — and it's doing so frequently.
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