Looks like Microsoft wants to send out your wifi info to everyone on earth.
It is also not limited to just you sharing, Friend visits who has windows 10, they too can share it with people.
From what I seen it is ether On or Off feature. That needs to ask to share to facebook contacts but does not need to for any contacts in skype and outlook and will do so automatically if it is on, and it appears to just shotgun the sharing without control.
I do not know if it is on by default.
and if you do use it anyone after that can share your wifi access to all there friends too.
Another article on enabling the so called "feature".
skype and outlook are MS products im guessing they are done differently.
The weird thing for me is the odd integration with third party services. Generally in GNU/Linux you can add and remove the components at will. Would this be the case with Windows 10?
From what I seen it is ether On or Off feature. That needs to ask to share to facebook contacts but not to any contacts to skype and outlook and will do so automatically if it is on, and it appears to just shotgun the sharing without control.
You get to control which of your Wi-Fi network connection details are shared. When you connect to a Wi-Fi network in Windows 10, you’ll see a “Share network with my contacts” checkbox.
If someone connects to your network with a Windows 10 device, they can choose to share the connection details with all their friends — at least those friends using Windows 10. You can choose to opt out of this by changing your wireless network name, or SSID, to end with optout. In other words, if your network name is currently “HomeNetwork”, Microsoft would like you to change the name to “HomeNetworkoptout” to opt out.
Not too big of a fan of the way you optout on a network basis (it's optin on the PC). Though I guess that is an easily understood implementation.
Possibly it could have been done via a website though that would mean Windows 10 devices would need to ping/update a database of disallowed wifi networks and many have similar names, so that wouldn't work so well either.
From what I know, It is a feature already in windows phone. It works like this, You connect laptop to your wifi, it shares it with outlook and skype contacts and ask to share to facebook. anyone in those can now automaticlly log into your wifi with a win 10 device.
Also if a win 10 device connects to your network they can then share it too. unless you add _optout to your SSID.
" If someone connects to your network with a Windows 10 device, they can choose to share the connection details with all their friends — at least those friends using Windows 10. You can choose to opt out of this by changing your wireless network name, or SSID, to end with optout. In other words, if your network name is currently “HomeNetwork”, Microsoft would like you to change the name to “HomeNetworkoptout” to opt out."
That would be realy awfull. It sounds the same as allot of isps are currently doing with installing a hotspot on your wifi modem. But in this case, MS wants to use your own private wifi network as some sort of a hotspot, so that they can mine data.
If thats the case then it realy stinks, but i'm looking to the legal law side of things right now. A password to your own private wifi network, is personal. If you give trusted users your wpa key, so that they can use their tablets, mobiles or laptops wenn they are at your home, Windows 10 could basicly share those login information with other contacts of those persons.
How is this going to be according to legal rights and laws?
I have no idea, I have the tech preview but its on a pc that doesn't have wifi. so I can't test anything about it. All I am going off is what I have read in the above links.
It doesn't share the key itself so the other users don't know the real key but they can still automatically connect.
All I can say is I am glad I took the 1 year Linux challenge and have switched to GNU/Linux. I will update my win partition and be disabling 90% of the features and adding a firewall and blocking every port other than what the game I am playing needs to run.
If they have this in the OS, what other things are hiding beneath the Behemoth that is win 10?
exactly, i said this before, wenn the hype came to light, with Microsoft collecting real time interactions with the OS in the Technical Previeuw, for development supposes. They claim, that the future will not be in the Official release. But yeah who know?
If MS starts with these kind of awfull things, what else will be hidden in Windows 10?
It's convenient but i wouldn't use it. i have this "Feature" on a Smart TV i have in the house. a Sony Smart TV. you have the option to turn it off of course. just like you do on Windows. i could see the paranoia, but it's not that big of a deal. it's not like any of you guys are using any Microsoft owned services to begin with. remember you have to use the Modern / Windows 10 Apps for all this spying to work. most of these features added are no different than what is on Android or iOS.
