Logan, Wendell, what do you think of Windows 10 spying?

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I'm curious to know what @Logan and @Wendell think of the windows 10 spying stuff that's coming out. Namely the terms of service that state "We will access, disclose, and preserve personal data" including the contents of emails or files in private folders.

To me, this seems completely egregious and is a big reason that I am not switching to windows 10. I am strongly considering Linux (if I can play fallout 4 on it) instead.

My bigger problem with this is how many people, who are supposedly "tech enthusiasts" who seem to be okay with this kind of behavior from MS. Yes all the corporations and governments are spying on us, but that doesn't mean we should just give up and not try to fight against it, does it?

Am I crazy, or do you find this kind of spying to be egregious as well?

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There are ways to switch off the telemetry in WIN 10 even though they do include tweaking an average user would not do. Best way to protect your privacy: Use Software you can control for as many things as it can serve you. Just to not expose that information on WIN 10 as much as it is possible.

Dual boot with Linux and use Windows only when you have to play a game. Use WIN10 on a Virtual Machine when you can so that you can control better and so on.

When ever I hear someone say the line "Why should I care. I have nothing to hide" I lose a bit of faith in humanity. Shows that being "tech savvy" does not mean you understand the consequences of the technology you are using on yourself and others.

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All things I hadn't considered. I suppose I will wait until there is a good tutorial on how to do those things (if there isn't already).

Still, I would like to hear what Logan and Wendell have to say about this. Perhaps they will cover it on the next episode of The Tek.

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The ones that count though aren't OK with it, and are switching to the most unlikely platform ever for them:

Remark the terminology "accelerated migration as soon as possible".

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Holy crap.

Why would they switch to apple instead of Linux?

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Because apple along side with google are enacting the no-knowledge strategy for data on their systems for businesses. The strategies that the US congress did not want them to implement. So for IBM this does make sense business-wise as their data would be "guaranteed" to be private.

Hopefully some of the enterprise Linux distros will manage to get a piece of the pie.

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I've spoken to a number of Windows users about this and largely I'm just regarded as just paranoid loony. Reactions range from "No, they wouldn't be doing anything like that", "I don't care, I've nothing to hide" to "It's just something we have to put up with these days". Personally, as a Linux user I find this acceptance of the loss of privacy amazing!

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You would give away your private life, just to play a game!

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I have read many people say that you can turn of all the spying things in win10 but I don't trust M$ that the things are turned off and not running hidden away instead no matter what version you run.

I will wait and see what people can dig up, and maybe prove me that I am just a paranoid loon instead of a cautious skeptic of M$

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You can't blame them for dumping the Lenovo machines and probably Windows 10. No company could risk their private data getting into the wrong hands.

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Lenovo is not the problem. Linux on Lenovo is just fine and no SuperFish is going to be an issue.

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You mean like Red Hat? The guys who don't share stuff with the Government?

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@Zoltan has an Amazing Tutorial on running Windows in a VM for Gaming using GPU Pass-through.

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Yeah or Suse and others...

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The reason some people strike these claims that people have as being a paranoid, is for a few reasons.

  • People act like it can't turned off.
  • When Google does it, it's okay? but When Microsoft does it, EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS! (Joker voice)
  • If Microsoft wanted to spy on people, they would of done it YEARS ago. it makes no sense to start now.
  • Google is just as or far worse than Microsoft when it comes to spying, in fact Microsoft is fairly minuscule compared to what Google is capable of. simply because there are more people on this planet using their services than Microsoft will ever have.

that's about it. Microsoft isn't being original, they are just taking ideas from everyone else. if anyone is to blame for Microsoft's doings.. blame Google and Apple. cause most if not all of these ideas that Microsoft is trying to promote now came from them.. and a little bit from Linux of course.

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Because they want a piece of the iOS ecosystem. Development for iOS is only available on Mac, which makes a Mac the most versatile development machine. You can do on a Mac what you can do on a BSD machine, which is almost the same as what you can do on a linux machine. IBM is funding Linux development directly with obscene amounts of money, they are to thank for a large chunk of useful Linux development efforts in the last couple of years. Apple does not give money to linux, but they contribute quite a lot of money to select open source projects that benefit linux directly, like MP-TCP.

IBM put the original NSA keys in Windows, Microsoft didn't even know at the time that Windows NT had the original NSA keys in it from the IBM OS/2 source NT is based on. You can be sure that IBM knows what's going on. Maybe IBM doesn't want it's employees to use the one operating system that doesn't have MP-TCP or advanced security features or a decent virtualization solution.

To be honest, the latter is the only thing that counts for companies like IBM. Whatever the bottom feeder's machines are running as operating system, all the company applications run in VMWare or Xen anyway, and thus they run on the company's linux servers.

Mac and Linux also can do virtualized application cloud services, delivered by a modern linux server cluster, something Windows can't do either.

IBM also uses Lotus Notes, they are not on the MS-Office crap, they need more robust solutions and they make them themselves.

These are the things that matter in modern companies. Whatever way you look at things from an enterprise perspective, Windows is a consumer operating system with an emphasis on media consumption and entertainment, the days that Windows was even remotely an efficient productivity platform are long gone, and the same is true for Office. The last version of Office that was a true productivity platform was Office 2003, and that version, still the most popular version right now, doesn't run on Windows 10 any more.

IBM is the most knowledgeable IT company in the world. They don't fall for the cheap cheesy marketing by Microsoft. Microsoft markets a featureless mobile browser à la standard AOSP browser like it's the best and most innovative thing ever. The standard browser hasn't played any significant role in Android since Android Gingerbread. Why would that be different in Windows. Everything about Windows 10 is meaningless marketing, there is no substance, no innovation. Cortana doesn't work in anything but American English, and requires extreme spying to even work. At least Siri and OK Google are now available in other languages and have spyware opt-out functions after legislation and feedback from the customer base. In Windows, nobody even cares, the market penetration of Windows on modern mobile devices with the professional and consumer markets combined is less than the market penetration of GNU/Linux on the old PC platform in the consumer market. IBM is not going to invest in that. Even Microsoft doesn't invest in their own platform any more lolz.

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Accessing files in personal folders isn't something Microsoft is allowed to do, at least not anywhere in Europe, regardless of their ToS. It's as illegal as it gets. Someone needs to rip them a new asshole for this violation of privacy.

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If your mother board & CPU supports hardware passthrough and you have the willingness to learn and probably spend a little money and time you can play whatever game you like by running windows on top of Linux in a KVM, I just finished playing Fallout 3 and started Fallout NV this morning, Fallout 3 was never intended to run on Win7 and I did have a few issues but like I said just finished the game yesterday.

I haven't tried every game out there but I can play GW2, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Borderlands 2, Half Life 2, Team Fortress, are there issues? sure, but do you want to tell MS everything your doing? or just give them the finger and pave your own road into the future?.

And no your not crazy....but all the folks that submit to this crap and smile because it's a free upgrade, they are the crazy ones.

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Your main argument is that Microsoft can spy because Google and Apple also spy?

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No. my point is that Google can and does spy MUCH MORE on people than Microsoft ever will. so before getting paranoid about windows. get paranoid about google first. they are just as or more evil than Microsoft.

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