Microsoft Blatantly Disregards User Choice and Privacy

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You know you are screwing up when the Electronic Frontier Foundation comes after you like this. I'm not sure why they waited until after the Windows 10 upgrade program ended before writing this but hopefully Microsoft takes heed anyway.

We at EFF have heard from many users who have asked us to take action, and we urge Microsoft to listen to these concerns and incorporate this feedback into the next release of its operating system. Otherwise, Microsoft may find that it has inadvertently discovered just how far it can push its users before they abandon a once-trusted company for a better, more privacy-protective solution.

 
You right, I am glad they were on top of this! Oh, wait the free upgrade has been over for about a month...
 
My favorite, is when it installs an updated build, and resets all your privacy settings back to defaults (that you spent 10 minutes setting up...)
 
Next release of the operating system? There isn't going to be another release. It's Windows 10 forever. MSFT is laughing their collective butt off at the EFF right now.
 
J3RK said:
My favorite, is when it installs an updated build, and resets all your privacy settings back to defaults (that you spent 10 minutes setting up...)
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That hasn't happened to me in the 4 months I've had 10. I check after updates and everything is the same (though I did expect otherwise).

The one thing that does seem to occasionally come up is the 'default apps' question; it seems MS would like you to reconsider using their apps instead of third-party software.
 
EODetroit said:
Every time I mention the telemetry in Windows 10, a bunch of Microsoft Apologizers respond telling me how wrong I am to care. Glad the EFF is on my side.
Click to expand...


Not quite the word I'd use...
 
EODetroit said:
Every time I mention the telemetry in Windows 10, a bunch of Microsoft Apologizers respond telling me how wrong I am to care. Glad the EFF is on my side.
Click to expand...

It's not that I don't care, I just know I have no real choice.

A PC gamer is simply stuck following along the MS upgrade path. I've been on the outside not able to play any of the games that are considered good.
 
amddragonpc said:
Next release of the operating system? There isn't going to be another release. It's Windows 10 forever. MSFT is laughing their collective butt off at the EFF right now.
Click to expand...
Maybe you havent been following.
Some updates are like a new OS installation.
They would qualify for the title of release.

EFF are late to the game, but at least they have made a statement.
 
Nenu said:
EFF are late to the game, but at least they have made a statement.
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The users have already been making statements. EFF are late to the game, and as much as I support what they do, at this point it's just name recognition and a "me, too" statement. Nothing new, nothing different. Just what users have been saying for the past year.... Almost like a "we support you guys! See?!" coming in after everything is mucked up then reaping the benefits...
 
Prisoner849 said:
That hasn't happened to me in the 4 months I've had 10. I check after updates and everything is the same (though I did expect otherwise).

The one thing that does seem to occasionally come up is the 'default apps' question; it seems MS would like you to reconsider using their apps instead of third-party software.
Click to expand...

The AU update reset most of mine. Otherwise, seems to work okay. I still have trust issues with it over Win 7, but I haven't gone back to 7 yet. Guess that either means I'm lazy, don't care enough to want to put 7 back in, or accept the fact that no matter the vendor, MS, Apple, or Google, we're all giving them telemetry.
 
A good place for the EFF to take a stand would be on the upcoming switch to the all or nothing 'we aren't telling you what's in it' Win 10 patch model for Win 7 and 8. With the current system, if you had a list of 'bad' updates you could unselect them. With the new model, Microsoft can easily slip in a telemetry sending patch or even a please install Win 10 patch and you have no way of knowing.
 
EODetroit said:
Every time I mention the telemetry in Windows 10, a bunch of Microsoft Apologizers respond telling me how wrong I am to care. Glad the EFF is on my side.
Click to expand...

That's because Microsoft is astroturfing the forums. It's always the same people, usually Heatlessun, ManofGod, and nilepez lately.
 
lcpiper said:
It's not that I don't care, I just know I have no real choice.

A PC gamer is simply stuck following along the MS upgrade path. I've been on the outside not able to play any of the games that are considered good.
Click to expand...
Well paint me as living in denial then. I'm a PC gamer and I'm still on 7. You're right about being stuck on Windows as eventually I likely will have to move over to 10, but I find the forced updating so atrocious it's going to make me stay off as long as possible. I consider even the possibility that the OS could update then either introduce a problem that wasn't there before or break a program I need (since I do lots of multimedia work on my system also) WITH NO RECOURSE if something goes wrong completely unacceptable. If I'm in the middle of a project, changes to my OS or any other interruptions to my workflow because of it sounds like a pure obstruction. When I do finally upgrade to 10, my plan is to go to some hacked-up copy where hopefully some paranoid programmer has come out with tools to strip all the crap out of it.
 
Well, I am no big fan of 10 or MS and put off upgrading to 10 until weeks before the free offer threat was over. Having said that and after a huge number of tweaks, I am quite happy with 10. The telemetry thing bothers me, but there are a couple of settings that make a significant difference in what it sends and when.

As for updates coming in the middle of work, well, a few simple changes end all of that; I only get updates when I shut down my system and have not once been interrupted by them. Frankly, there is a lot of misinformation out there from non-users; I am not claiming that 10 is the shizzle, but a lot of the complaints, while true in a given situation, are remedied - or at least leashed - with some reading and tweaking. This means going through the 'settings' menu and turning pretty much every slider to 'off' as well as going one or two levels deeper on each menu to disable even more 'features'. While some users above have stated that these are re-enabled by some updates, I haven't found this to be the case. Perhaps this is a per-user thing or I have just gone deeper down the 'turn crap off' rabbit hole than others, but so far, so good in that regard.

There is a lot of research out there now about how to lock things down to an acceptable degree and as a privacy-minded user, I am reasonably satisfied with 10 at this point. It can be better of course and as the poster above says, there will be a lot more tweaks (hacks?) to come and I look forward to those. I also hope that MS make some core changes in this regard, as I don't think we are ready for an always-on, 'as a service' type OS yet; our privacy has taken a tremendous beating in the last decade, but we aren't down and out enough yet.

I suppose I 'upgraded' to 10 for gaming primarily; my workflow was fine on 7 and the features I wanted I had learned to work around on 7, so it wasn't like 10 offered anything really new, just a bit more efficient. The wondow 'ribbon' is the best example of this for me; MS really added a lot of options at the top which for me, was quite helpful. I also appreciate the new task manager. Older games work fine on 10 with some work and the newer games coming with DX12 will require it, so I felt compelled to move forward.

Anyhow, I think that 10 has huge potential and a lot of good as it is. I loved 7; it really is the modern XP and even now, I don't see what all the fuss was about 10. I think most of the fuss was MS pushing this thing on us for free and I, like millions of others, took the bait (when a service is free, you are the commodity, right?). Like I said, I don't regret it and am enjoying many features that I wanted in Win 7, but it does have some privacy shortcomings that I am confident will be addressed by either MS or the users.
 
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I actually love the OS. It's worked flawlessly on all the machines I've put it on, performs well, and otherwise pretty decent. I actually don't mind sending the "Basic" telemetry data. (though it really would be nice to know what that contains) It really is just the fact that several updates (only the major ones that are a full build update) reset my privacy settings that really pisses me off. Some of the options are just stupid on a desktop too, and look like they were designed more for mobile platforms anyway. The EFF statement is a bit late, but it's still nice to have a bit more visibility about this. MS isn't going to listen to users alone. Now if only we had Tron here. He fights for the users...
 
DeathFromBelow said:
That's because Microsoft is astroturfing the forums. It's always the same people, usually Heatlessun, ManofGod, and nilepez lately.
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LOL! Dude, if you say so, LOL! Last time I checked, I receive ZERO from Microsoft but hey, you carry on believing the lie, LOL!

Basically, if I am not bitching, whining and complaining, I must be an apologist, LOL! Tells you more about something about others than about myself. :)
 
Since the latest update it crashes like a bitch on Steam for me. That other article was prescient. If this persists, I no longer have a need for Windows 10.
 
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jpm100 said:
Since the latest update it crashes like a bitch on Steam for me. That other article was prescient. If this persists, I no longer have a need for Windows 10.
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That is odd, do you run an NVidia card? Have you installed the latest drivers and also, did you try disabling the XBox DVR if it is enabled? That seems to be more of an issue with Nvidia drivers but, they never seem to get it right on the initial release of a major update anyways. They do get around to fixing it though.
 
What Microsoft did is make their Windows 7 platform market share so small that supporting it until January 14, 2020 is a super small operation. Less costs down the road. Additionally, stripping the Skylake compatibility to Win 10 as a minimum is another way to make sure the market of 7 users does not increase. They're doing everything they can to phase 7 out.

I get the need for it, but the way they implemented it is utter rubbish and has really pissed me off as an end user.
 
wgm3446 said:
What Microsoft did is make their Windows 7 platform market share so small that supporting it until January 14, 2020 is a super small operation. Less costs down the road. Additionally, stripping the Skylake compatibility to Win 10 as a minimum is another way to make sure the market of 7 users does not increase. They're doing everything they can to phase 7 out.

I get the need for it, but the way they implemented it is utter rubbish and has really pissed me off as an end user.
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Pretty sure MS has done a 180 on the Skylake support. There are some articles out there about it.

What really rubs me the wrong way is they have a good OS with Win10. No doubt, tons of bugs have been fixed. I really want to like Windows 10! But how can I with all this mess?
  • Total abrasive response to anything not well received in the community by MS - "You will take it and like it approach"
  • Telemetry
  • One-size-fits-all patching - This is coming to Win7 as well - Going to be a nightmare for the corporate world
  • Box of chocolates - Never know what you're going to get (or lose) with the next patch​
  • Inability to disable or uninstall items - Ever tried to uninstall the built-in flash?
  • Etc - it's been said time and time again

It all boils down to people feel like they're being taken advantage of. All of these changes feel shady and underhanded. I feel sorry for the devs who have to code all this crap coming down from upper management. At this point, I think it's time for a new CEO. Someone who will listen to the concerns of the user-base and strip all this unwanted garbage out of a potentially great OS. Image if someone were to come in and clean house. Folks would rave about it!
 
Prisoner849 said:
...There is a lot of research out there now about how to lock things down to an acceptable degree and as a privacy-minded user, I am reasonably satisfied with 10 at this point. It can be better of course and as the poster above says, there will be a lot more tweaks (hacks?) to come and I look forward to those. I also hope that MS make some core changes in this regard, as I don't think we are ready for an always-on, 'as a service' type OS yet; our privacy has taken a tremendous beating in the last decade, but we aren't down and out enough yet...
Click to expand...

what are best sites with info about how to control win10?
 
elation said:
It all boils down to people feel like they're being taken advantage of. All of these changes feel shady and underhanded. I feel sorry for the devs who have to code all this crap coming down from upper management. At this point, I think it's time for a new CEO. Someone who will listen to the concerns of the user-base and strip all this unwanted garbage out of a potentially great OS. Image if someone were to come in and clean house. Folks would rave about it!
Click to expand...

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, more control for those that want it but for the typical computer user, automatic updates, cloud integration, curated sandboxed apps, that's just simply how smartphones work today and they are today's PCs.
 
EODetroit said:
Every time I mention the telemetry in Windows 10, a bunch of Microsoft Apologizers respond telling me how wrong I am to care. Glad the EFF is on my side.
Click to expand...

It's almost like they have a personal and/or financial stake in MSFT.
 
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heatlesssun said:
I don't think it's that simple. Sure, more control for those that want it but for the typical computer user, automatic updates, cloud integration, curated sandboxed apps, that's just simply how smartphones work today and they are today's PCs.
Click to expand...

One's got nothing to do with the other. Phones may be today's PC, but PC's definitely aren't today's phones. UWP is a pipe dream and DOA. And just because "phones do it" doesn't make Microsoft's underhandedness okay on desktops/laptops.

There's simply no excuse for systematically removing features, choices and controls from an already shipped version of Windows.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't think it's that simple. Sure, more control for those that want it but for the typical computer user, automatic updates, cloud integration, curated sandboxed apps, that's just simply how smartphones work today and they are today's PCs.
Click to expand...

Yea, it kind of is. PC's are not phones and there's virtually no reason for MS to pull control away from those of us that wanted it. They needed to do this in reverse. Put out a base 10 product that PC's could install with all the controls of 7/8.1 and allow an optional download if you wanted store, apps, and such. I've never seen MS act so desperate or so dirty. They didn't even try to pull any of this when they wanted to bury and forget all about Vista. And they couldn't drop that fast enough.
 
DPI said:
One's got nothing to do with the other. Phones may be today's PC, but PC's definitely aren't today's phones. UWP is a pipe dream and DOA. And just because "phones do it" doesn't make Microsoft's underhandedness okay on desktops/laptops.

There's simply no excuse for systematically removing features, choices and controls from an already shipped version of Windows.
Click to expand...

Shotglass01 said:
Yea, it kind of is. PC's are not phones and there's virtually no reason for MS to pull control away from those of us that wanted it. They needed to do this in reverse. Put out a base 10 product that PC's could install with all the controls of 7/8.1 and allow an optional download if you wanted store, apps, and such. I've never seen MS act so desperate or so dirty. They didn't even try to pull any of this when they wanted to bury and forget all about Vista. And they couldn't drop that fast enough.
Click to expand...

I said there should be more control over things. UWA, you need that platform for things other than keyboard and mouse driven desktops. While I get that Windows phone is "dead", Windows on touch devices is far from that. It makes sense for Microsoft to carry over mobile device experiences to PCs as smartphones are some common now. Natural language, cloud and services integration, touch, etc. these are valid and useful on the PC.

Again, I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be better controls for end users to control these things, but that can't just go away either.
 
heatlesssun said:
It makes sense for Microsoft to carry over mobile device experiences to PCs as smartphones are some common now. Natural language, cloud and services integration, touch, etc. these are valid and useful on the PC.
Click to expand...

No, they're really not. In your utopia, we'll all be using Unicorn pads driven by thought alone all headed to the great MS cloud. The reality is that maybe in 15 years PC's will all be tablets. But that'll never happen in enterprise work environments. And there's NO REASON this shouldn't be optional.
 
Shotglass01 said:
No, they're really not. In your utopia, we'll all be using Unicorn pads driven by thought alone all headed to the great MS cloud. The reality is that maybe in 15 years PC's will all be tablets. But that'll never happen in enterprise work environments. And there's NO REASON this shouldn't be optional.
Click to expand...

I said there should be more control over this stuff like the Enterprise and Educational versions. And it's not an either or thing. I use Windows 10 like I would Windows 7 with keyboard and mouse or like an iOS and Android on a tablet and with 2 in 1 devices switch easily between those modes. These kinds of devices are becoming increasingly popular because of that kind of flexibility.

So I get wanting the ability to have off switches for everything. But if one does use all of this stuff on different kinds of devices, Windows 7 is pretty useless.
 
But if one does use all of this stuff on different kinds of devices, Windows 7 is pretty useless. Well buddy, circular be circular. Optional is optional. Round and round we go. You're just wrong. It's hard to be right and not let someone else drink the water. No reason none of this should be optional. No reason.
 
Prisoner849 said:
As for updates coming in the middle of work, well, a few simple changes end all of that; I only get updates when I shut down my system and have not once been interrupted by them. Frankly, there is a lot of misinformation out there from non-users; I am not claiming that 10 is the shizzle, but a lot of the complaints, while true in a given situation, are remedied - or at least leashed - with some reading and tweaking. This means going through the 'settings' menu and turning pretty much every slider to 'off' as well as going one or two levels deeper on each menu to disable even more 'features'. While some users above have stated that these are re-enabled by some updates, I haven't found this to be the case. Perhaps this is a per-user thing or I have just gone deeper down the 'turn crap off' rabbit hole than others, but so far, so good in that regard.
Click to expand...
It's not just an update coming up in the middle of the work is the thing. It's having no control over an update that could cause you problems. I mentioned it in another thread, but I've come across 2 updates for Windows 7 that completely broke proper z order on my windows in Litestep (a desktop shell). I was able to isolate them and remove them, and my system worked properly again. If an update came down the Windows 10 pipeline that broke something I used, I'd be screwed. That's an unacceptable level of risk for me, especially since I actually have experienced MS break compatibility on something I used.

There is a lot of research out there now about how to lock things down to an acceptable degree and as a privacy-minded user, I am reasonably satisfied with 10 at this point. It can be better of course and as the poster above says, there will be a lot more tweaks (hacks?) to come and I look forward to those. I also hope that MS make some core changes in this regard, as I don't think we are ready for an always-on, 'as a service' type OS yet; our privacy has taken a tremendous beating in the last decade, but we aren't down and out enough yet.
Click to expand...
You just said that an update can cause things to turn back on, doesn't that make things a losing battle if you have to keep fighting your OS to turn off settings you don't want? Is it unreasonable to have something you want turned off to stay off, permanently?
 
heatlesssun said:
I said there should be more control over things. UWA, you need that platform for things other than keyboard and mouse driven desktops.
Click to expand...

Who needs it? Consumers certainly don't care. The few million Surface Book Pro's that sold - which some people wrongly assume is Microsoft's "beachhead" into mobile and touch - well most people just use them as an ultraportable laptop running Win32 programs. On the rare occasion you see one in a coffee shop or in the wild, they're never poking at the screen using a metro/UWP apps; they're usually in Chrome or the full-fat Win32 version of Excel or Word.

Touch is dead on Windows. UWA/WinRT10 is DOA. Consumers don't care, developers don't care. The only place MS might have some success is on established mobile platforms other than their own. It's time for MS to stop annoying desktop users with their failed mobile/touch pipedream, because it just ain't happening.
 
Glad the EFF has come forth with this. There have been many of us decrying Microsoft's behavior with regards to Windows 10 (not just how you upgraded, but the OS itself) but the EFF's legitimacy is always a good thing and may help to pressure Microsoft to roll back these changes. Ideally, Microsoft could approach W10 and privacy from a completely new angle.

Its really frustrating because Microsoft snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Even as a Linux preferring user, I could say that if Windows 10 didn't foul up the privacy issue royally, it would have been a worthy upgrade from Win7 and a return to form after the disappointing Win 8 / 8.1. Why they feel the need to have such privacy hostile policies and keep digging the hole deeper I can't understand unless the absolute worst explanations are true. They could have said "Hey, we're Microsoft. We're not Google, we have a fuckload of money and we want to sell software, not your information." but yet they went with the big data, wide-mandate mining of a ME TOOism that has infected the industry and worst -asked users to just trust they weren't using it poorly. Now, Microsoft has a checkered past to say the least when it comes to trust, but even in this very campaign, things like the upgrade "X doesn't mean no, I'll just do it later" simply made them even less trustworthy. Stack that with backporting the spying to Win7 and 8, the "We have a toggle for certain things that say 'off' but don't really do anything unless you're on Enterprise" , and the nebulous terms of the EULA/TOS which basically states "We can gather any and all things you say, type, write, or do. You know, for whatever we want. And just trust us that its like...for your benefit and stuff".

After all this garbage, I can still see a way Microsoft could at least attempt to come back from the brink. Stop any deceptive practices and make users able to opt out - and let it actually work - of any behavior they don't want to share. Furthermore, redo the EULA/TOS top to bottom to specify exactly what data will be collected when which settings are turned on, how to turn them off, and what any collected data will be used for EXCLUSIVELY. No more of this kept for whatever uses Microsoft might want at a later date, selling to third parties, giving to governments etc. If you want telemetry data, it can only legally gather telemetry pertinent data and then purge it within a specified timeframe once it is added to whatever aggregate is present. Things send to Cortana can ONLY be used to provide a service to the user and then will be immediately purged once that service has been rendered; any profiling must be easy for the user to assess / purge and is to be encrypted. Full opt-out capability should be available at any time, even if it means ceding access to certain cloud-only features; the user should decide. That kind of thing would be a start, but there's way more MS could do.

The EFF should continue to apply pressure not just to Microsoft over Windows 10, but to Google and many others who subordinate user control and privacy whenever it is convenient and profitable.
 
tetris42 said:
Well paint me as living in denial then. I'm a PC gamer and I'm still on 7. You're right about being stuck on Windows as eventually I likely will have to move over to 10, but I find the forced updating so atrocious it's going to make me stay off as long as possible. I consider even the possibility that the OS could update then either introduce a problem that wasn't there before or break a program I need (since I do lots of multimedia work on my system also) WITH NO RECOURSE if something goes wrong completely unacceptable. If I'm in the middle of a project, changes to my OS or any other interruptions to my workflow because of it sounds like a pure obstruction. When I do finally upgrade to 10, my plan is to go to some hacked-up copy where hopefully some paranoid programmer has come out with tools to strip all the crap out of it.
Click to expand...

I was a little more focused on being stuck with Windows in general, not the specific version of Windows.

I used to have Amigas and I loved them. I had a 1000, 2000, 3000, and modified and resold over a dozen 500s. But the problem with Amigas wasn't the hardware, it was software. So many times I would walk into GameStop or Walmart, or the PX ans look at the newest games that would never be released for my Amiga computers. It was depressing as hell. I would check the latest magazines, Amiga World I think was the big one, and look for adds for new games and it was always the same three titles, that were six years old.

Then I got fed up and bought a 386DX and never looked back. So I learned my lesson. I don't drift from the path.
 
tetris42 said:
It's not just an update coming up in the middle of the work is the thing. It's having no control over an update that could cause you problems. I mentioned it in another thread, but I've come across 2 updates for Windows 7 that completely broke proper z order on my windows in Litestep (a desktop shell). I was able to isolate them and remove them, and my system worked properly again. If an update came down the Windows 10 pipeline that broke something I used, I'd be screwed. That's an unacceptable level of risk for me, especially since I actually have experienced MS break compatibility on something I used.

You just said that an update can cause things to turn back on, doesn't that make things a losing battle if you have to keep fighting your OS to turn off settings you don't want? Is it unreasonable to have something you want turned off to stay off, permanently?
Click to expand...

Sure, I hear you and completely see your point and its a good one. While I hadn't considered that specifically, I haven't had such a system-breaking update yet, so maybe ignorance is bliss!

As for the resetting of options, I said it hasn't happened to me. A previous poster stated that this had happened to them, but as I said, this hasn't happened to me....yet. And no, it isn't unreasonable to expect things to stay as you want them; again, a good point.

All of these things are truths, I don't doubt, but thus far, my experience has not seen them happen and has been very positive overall.
 
lcpiper said:
I was a little more focused on being stuck with Windows in general, not the specific version of Windows.

I used to have Amigas and I loved them. I had a 1000, 2000, 3000, and modified and resold over a dozen 500s. But the problem with Amigas wasn't the hardware, it was software. So many times I would walk into GameStop or Walmart, or the PX ans look at the newest games that would never be released for my Amiga computers. It was depressing as hell. I would check the latest magazines, Amiga World I think was the big one, and look for adds for new games and it was always the same three titles, that were six years old.

Then I got fed up and bought a 386DX and never looked back. So I learned my lesson. I don't drift from the path.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would switch to linux in a heartbeat if it meant I could still run all my games. We're still a good ways off from that, but who knows, maybe if MS keeps making missteps we'll see that in 10 years.


Prisoner849 said:
Sure, I hear you and completely see your point and its a good one. While I hadn't considered that specifically, I haven't had such a system-breaking update yet, so maybe ignorance is bliss!

As for the resetting of options, I said it hasn't happened to me. A previous poster stated that this had happened to them, but as I said, this hasn't happened to me....yet. And no, it isn't unreasonable to expect things to stay as you want them; again, a good point.

All of these things are truths, I don't doubt, but thus far, my experience has not seen them happen and has been very positive overall.
Click to expand...
I admit I'm on the more paranoid end of the spectrum of this stuff (the auto-updating, the telemetry I just think is lame), but it's not without cause (BTW for anyone curious, the updates that broke the z-order for me were KB3145739 and KB3153199). I like to have complete faith in my system being reliable under any circumstance short or hardware failure and Windows 10 core design makes that impossible because they're constantly changing it. So I could have it run perfectly today, but next week, I don't know what they'll do.

Also this thread has become highly relevant.
 
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