Windows 10: What You Need to Know

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

The problem is that the primary function of an operating system should be to quietly organize your options and help you run the software on your computer. As recently as Windows 7,Windows did that.

Now the primary function of Windows is to try to sell you stuff. More than half the tiles on what used to be your start menu are advertising.

The secondary function of Windows 10 is data collection. It is a keylogger. It records audio from your microphone even when you are not using a program which uses the microphone. They do the same thing with your webcam. Then twice a day all that collected information is compacted, encrypted and sent to Microsoft. Equating that with information provided to insurance companies is really ludicrous. We're talking about invasion of privacy way beyond anything reasonable. Then add in the p2p style update system where your bandwidth is used to upload updates to complete strangers at your expense, the automatic login of people on various friends lists to your personal wireless network--all this adds up to an OS which no longer serves its customers. It preys upon them.

The primary business of any business is to sell you stuff. MS is a business. If anyone believes MS was making OS out of the goodness of their own hearts is sorely mistaken. OS are a item MS sells or hands out for free to promote the business. As a user one accepts all that comes with the OS.

Webcam, do not use one. I do not use one or put a piece of tap over it if the user has one.

Further, collecting of data twice a day is a lot of data. Who is fine tooth combing this information? How are you equating this to information provided to insurance companies? And what insurance companies? Health, house or auto? If it's health insurance, no one can be turned away for any reason per Obamacare.

Friends list? Auto logging in? Preying on customers?

Even this was tapped years ago:

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Once you find insurrances rejecting you as a customer, and this being due to you having talked about your life in a private talk, or you cannot find a job in a profession for similiar reasons - you will stop laughing. Like there is a policy of making people vulnerable and exposed tio state plundering by enforcing digital money and banning cash money, there is a comparable reason why so many companies and especially insurrances propagate the idea of a networking world where everybody is constantly being online and is overwatched and has no privacy anymore.

---

This is not 1984. It is far worse already, because it is subtle, omnipresent, and the evil comes with a smiling face. When you point finger at it, it will be you that people are wondering and laughing about, not the evil that you point at. Against wickedness that yells and threatens, you can protest, and it is easy to be recognised. But when it comes with charms, and flatters people, when it must not hide in shadows but is invited into the spotlights and gets applauded, then you can not defend yourself against it, cannot mobilise peopel against it, cannot organise resistence to it. And you slowly get strangled by it from behind while it friendly smiles in your face.

Skybird,

Per the Healthcare Act no one can be turned away from insurance coverage for any reason. What happens in Germany concerning healthcare insurance I can not discuss as I do not have a clue how the system works in Germany. (Although Black Forest cuckoo clocks are wonderful and I purchased one for my daughter for Christmas. Thanks to the net I was able to buy one direct from Germany)

Background check are done for employment purposes already. Some employers use FB as a tool. So, don't post anything your mom should not see because your employer would not want to see it either. My job required an extensive background check.

I do not know of anyone forcing digital money over actual cash money. In Gog we Trust. All others pay cash.


Here's an idea....get off-line and go out to enjoy the fresh air. Can not get into to much trouble with this activity.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

I don't have a problem with Win 10 or the spying crap.
If you don't want anyone to know what your doing stay off the 'Net!
I type in all kinds of crap in a search just to set up an insanity defense myself.


See. I know people are watching. I'm just not paranoid about it.
I got nothing to hide aside from the few hookers I choked to death.
They'll never find them as deep as I buried them in Pearland.

LOL

You as wel!!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Skybird,

Per the Healthcare Act no one can be turned away from insurance coverage for any reason.

Unfortunately, that is simply not true. If your AGI is below $24,000 per year you are not eligible for Obamacare. In addition, with the introduction of Obamacare (and you can check this at your local hospital) the signs in emergency rooms that said "Health care cannot be denied for financial reasons" have come down. Hospitals can and do refuse to care for uninsured and uninsurable people. Where we had universal healthcare at a reasonable price before Obamacare, we now have people like me paying more for health insurance than I ever paid for any of my various cars or houses. We have others who simply do not qualify because of their low income and are now shut out. Plus we have millions who are just passing on a crippling cost and daring the government to fine them, figuring that the fine will cost them much less than the premiums. Cynically, they know that if the government dares to fine them there will be a political excrementstorm and the politicians will be out of office who dared to make such a ridiculous law. Forcing millions to buy a product they don't need and can't afford is comical. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "In order for government to give something to you, it must first take it from somebody else."

United Health Care, which last year and the year before, lowballed their prices on the exchanges below their costs to administrate in order to build market share, then drastically increased them to profitable levels this year, have found that strategy just generated a lot of angry people who exit to other plans. They have announced that they will be withdrawing from Obamacare in 2017. If they do so look for other major insurers to jump ship and for Obamacare to be in big trouble.

Of course, Obama will be gone, and like a corporate fatcat with a golden parachute, it will no longer be his problem. It will be OUR problem, we who did not want the program to begin with, a program passed through fraud and administrative hocus-pocus because the votes were not there.

What will we do? If universal health care is what we think government (that's us) should provide, we surely don't have it now and the cost is way too high. The young people who were supposed to pony up the money to pay for us old coots haven't ponied up and they won't. Insurance companies are looking queasy and the #1 company is already announcing they're taking to the lifeboats.

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Background check are done for employment purposes already. Some employers use FB as a tool. So, don't post anything your mom should not see because your employer would not want to see it either. My job required an extensive background check.

When you say your job required an extensive background check, that means a criminal background check and possibly a credit check. It did not require you to put a keylogger on your computer. It didn't involve their ability to listen to your microphone and watch your webcam any time they chose, while you are singing in the bathroom, what you say if you stub your toe on the end table, a family arguement. They aren't collecting every keystroke, including passwords, and sending the info dump to their company twice a day forever. There is no equivalency between background checks and other monitoring like your house's CLUE report, your credit report or arrest record. A year ago if someone would have told you you had a keylogger on your computer you would download software to eliminate it. Now you're saying it's no problem at all. What changed? I say right is still right. Wrong is still wrong. Reasonable is still reasonable and unreasonable is still unreasonable. What Microsoft does is wrong and unreasonable, conduct preying on the customers they are supposed to serve.

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I do not know of anyone forcing digital money over actual cash money. In Gog we Trust. All others pay cash.

In fact most governmental transactions, like corporate fees and income tax refunds, are required to be paid for by digital money electronically transferred. Oftentimes the only payment method accepted is using their website to make payment with a credit or debit card. Some private companies, like car and truck rental companies, also do not permit cash to be used. "Legal for all debts, public and private" now means nothing at all in either public or private spheres.

Legally the practice is illegal but as usual with present and past administrations, they pick and choose which laws they wish to enforce, making arbitrarily chosen actions either quasi-illegal or quasi-legal. We are no longer a nation of laws. We are the nation of arbitrary rule by capricious and corruptable individuals. It was no error when President Obama, upon his election, began his goals with "Under my rein....." The imperial presidency under all recent presidents is just as much a danger to our culture as representation without taxation for more than 50% of citizens. We are running our country like it would be reasonable to allow Ford owners and managers to vote in GM corporate meetings. No stake in the system should mean no vote.

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Here's an idea....get off-line and go out to enjoy the fresh air. Can not get into to much trouble with this activity.

Yes, if we all just accept gross invasion of privacy with a smile and just go out and play, no harm will ever result. I'm sure all the articles I've posted were entirely the products of warped imaginations from people who don't go outside and breathe.

Microsoft's behavior is going to get even worse before anything gets better. It will only get better after we, their customers, refuse to buy products whose purpose is marketing and invasion of privacy. When we refuse their EULAs, which tell us exactly how to bend over and when to smile in the graphic and unashamed language of a character from The Godfather.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Unfortunately, that is simply not true. If your AGI is below $24,000 per year you are not eligible for Obamacare. Funny, my wife's cousin makes less than $24k a year and she has healthcare for free. So what your telling me is what exactly? In addition, with the introduction of Obamacare (and you can check this at your local hospital) the signs in emergency rooms that said "Health care cannot be denied for financial reasons" have come down. Hospitals can and do refuse to care for uninsured and uninsurable people. Where we had universal healthcare at a reasonable price before Obamacare, we now have people like me paying more for health insurance than I ever paid for any of my various cars or houses. We have others who simply do not qualify because of their low income and are now shut out. Plus we have millions who are just passing on a crippling cost and daring the government to fine them, figuring that the fine will cost them much less than the premiums. Cynically, they know that if the government dares to fine them there will be a political excrementstorm and the politicians will be out of office who dared to make such a ridiculous law. Forcing millions to buy a product they don't need and can't afford is comical. As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "In order for government to give something to you, it must first take it from somebody else." So what does this entire paragraph have to do with Windows 10?

United Health Care, which last year and the year before, lowballed their prices on the exchanges below their costs to administrate in order to build market share, then drastically increased them to profitable levels this year, have found that strategy just generated a lot of angry people who exit to other plans. They have announced that they will be withdrawing from Obamacare in 2017. If they do so look for other major insurers to jump ship and for Obamacare to be in big trouble. Again, what does this have to do with Windows 10?

Of course, Obama will be gone, and like a corporate fatcat with a golden parachute, it will no longer be his problem. It will be OUR problem, we who did not want the program to begin with, a program passed through fraud and administrative hocus-pocus because the votes were not there.

What will we do? If universal health care is what we think government (that's us) should provide, we surely don't have it now and the cost is way too high. The young people who were supposed to pony up the money to pay for us old coots haven't ponied up and they won't. Insurance companies are looking queasy and the #1 company is already announcing they're taking to the lifeboats.



When you say your job required an extensive background check, that means a criminal background check and possibly a credit check. It did not require you to put a keylogger on your computer. It didn't involve their ability to listen to your microphone(what microphone? I have none) and watch your webcam(I have no webcam) any time they chose, while you are singing in the bathroom(I do not sing in the bathroom), what you say if you stub your toe on the end table, a family arguement. They aren't collecting every keystroke, including passwords, and sending the info dump to their company twice a day forever. There is no equivalency between background checks and other monitoring like your house's CLUE report, your credit report or arrest record. A year ago if someone would have told you you had a keylogger on your computer you would download software to eliminate it. (you assume to much) Now you're saying it's no problem at all. What changed? I say right is still right. Wrong is still wrong. Reasonable is still reasonable and unreasonable is still unreasonable. What Microsoft does is wrong and unreasonable, conduct preying on the customers they are supposed to serve. (buy Apple)


In fact most governmental transactions, like corporate fees and income tax refunds, are required to be paid for by digital money electronically transferred. (now your are talking specifics. Last post it was all encompassing requiring electronic transactions) Oftentimes the only payment method accepted is using their website to make payment with a credit or debit card. (then go to the mall) Some private companies, like car and truck rental companies, also do not permit cash to be used. "Legal for all debts, public and private" now means nothing at all in either public or private spheres. (at the end of the day, when my card was compromised twice, the bank returned all monies taken, issued a new card number. Life went on. And truth be told, the card compromised was last used at a restaurant where the card leaves my sight to be charged. The server took the number. It had nothing to do with a web purchase.)

Legally the practice is illegal but as usual with present and past administrations, they pick and choose which laws they wish to enforce, making arbitrarily chosen actions either quasi-illegal or quasi-legal. (I can assure you the folks in DC are not getting keylogged by MS, watching webcams and pulling their wallet out of their pockets) We are no longer a nation of laws. We are the nation of arbitrary rule by capricious and corruptable individuals. It was no error when President Obama, upon his election, began his goals with "Under my rein....." The imperial presidency under all recent presidents is just as much a danger to our culture as representation without taxation for more than 50% of citizens. We are running our country like it would be reasonable to allow Ford owners and managers to vote in GM corporate meetings. No stake in the system should mean no vote. (this Windows 10 thread has turned into railing against government)

Yes, if we all just accept gross invasion of privacy with a smile and just go out and play, no harm will ever result. I'm sure all the articles I've posted were entirely the products of warped imaginations from people who don't go outside and breathe. (If you are sure why did you post them? Quite honestly, the cloak and dagger here is a bit out of control)

Microsoft's behavior is going to get even worse before anything gets better. It will only get better after we, their customers, refuse to buy products whose purpose is marketing and invasion of privacy. When we refuse their EULAs, which tell us exactly how to bend over and when to smile in the graphic and unashamed language of a character from The Godfather.

Apple has a MAC for you.

I understand where are coming from RR but no one is forcing anyone to use Windows. Chromebook, Apple and Amazon Kindle are other choices. However, these are just as nosy. I know many that survive just fine without the use of the internet and all it's ills.

[AVGWarhawk]

I have found this site that walks a Windows 10 user through getting rid of the open book privacy issue with Windows 10. When I get a chance I will go through each step on my home computer with 10 to see what is what.

https://www.hackread.com/windows-10-is-spying-on-you/

[AVGWarhawk]

Straight from MS:

1. Safety and Reliability Data
We collect a limited amount of information to help us provide a secure and reliable experience. This includes data like an anonymous device ID, device type, and application crash data which Microsoft and our developer partners use to continuously improve application reliability. This doesn’t include any of your content or files, and we take several steps to avoid collecting any information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address or account ID.

A great example of how this data was used effectively was just last month, when aggregate data showed us that a particular version of a graphics driver was crashing on some Windows 10 PCs, which then caused a reboot. This driver was not widely used, but still the issue was impacting customers. We immediately contacted the partner who builds the driver and worked with them to turn around a fix to Windows Insiders within 24 hours. We used the data on Insiders’ devices to confirm that the problem was resolved, and then rolled out the fix to the broad public via an update the next day – all-in-all, this data helped us find, fix and resolve a significant problem within 48 hours.

3. Advertising Data We Don’t Collect
Unlike some other platforms, no matter what privacy options you choose, neither Windows 10 nor any other Microsoft software scans the content of your email or other communications, or your files, in order to deliver targeted advertising to you.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...ws-privacy-faq



With all the issues concerning Hillary and emails do we believe that MS has simply sent a new OS that allows them to check State Department emails and dump a list of contacts as well?

[AVGWarhawk]

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computi...ws-10-privacy/

Data or telemetry
One of the keys to understanding why the Microsoft privacy policies aren’t that scary is knowing the difference between data and telemetry. While data is the actual contents of the files on your system, telemetry is the usage data that every system keeps track of, and Microsoft treats them very differently.

Solutions to avoid
One of the most popular solutions the privacy changes in Windows 10 is to stick with Windows 7. That’s a far greater security risk than updating, even if you’re convinced Microsoft’s cronies are after you.

Microsoft couldn’t be clearer about the difference. In a plain English blog post discussing privacy concerns in Windows 10, it’s clearly stated that collected data includes “an anonymous device ID, device type, and application crash data” and “doesn’t include any of your content or files.” In addition, Microsoft takes “several steps to avoid collecting any information that directly identifies you, such as your name, email address or account ID.”

[AVGWarhawk]

As far as MS not listening, they are. RR, you stated a few post back about accepting gross privacy invasion and everyone going outside to play, there are many like you that blow the whistle and get corporations to take heed. We are after all in the information age. I doubt MS thought that invading privacy with such ferocity(real or imagined) would not go unnoticed.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/28/94...cerns-response

While Microsoft isn't addressing every concern today, the company is welcoming feedback if Windows 10 isn't "behaving the way it should with your privacy settings." Issues can be reported at Microsoft's website or though the Insiders program.

[AVGWarhawk]

From ZDNet.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/does-wi...er-spoiler-no/

If there were really anything resembling a keylogger in the Windows 10 Technical Preview, it would be very easy to discover and document exactly what information it's transmitting. I've done a cursory check and can't find anything that matches that description. And I'm certain that researchers in the security and privacy communities would immediately publish details of their findings if they found something through a more thorough search.
I'll update this post immediately if any such evidence turns up. So far, there's nothing.

What I'm finding from good sources appears to make the "Grand MS Conspiracy" anything but.

[fred8615]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

What I'm finding from good sources appears to make the "Grand MS Conspiracy" anything but.

Yeah, but haters are gonna hate.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Straight from MS:

“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.”

“To enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device.”

“Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browsing and Bing search history, and more.”

Fixed this for you

[AVGWarhawk]

Quote:
Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Straight from MS:

“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.”

“To enable Cortana to provide personalized experiences and relevant suggestions, Microsoft collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device.”

“Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browsing and Bing search history, and more.”

If Cortana likes what she is finding she quite possibly will date you. However, for full disclosure, Cortana is a known gold digger.

Originally Posted by Catfish

Fixed this for you

I made an addition.

[AVGWarhawk]

I took a look at the settings on my new machine. The privacy on/off buttons is quite extensive. From ad tracking to shutting down the camera not allowing any app use it at all. The privacy statement is quite clear. I really can not find cause for alarm. Ok, so new updates are installed automatically. That can be addressed as well.

BTW, I clicked on the button to stop Cortana from following my arse. She is now in the Gulag.

[Jeff-Groves]

AVG,

You know you are now branded as a heretic and blasphemer right?
Anyone that posts ANYTHING the differs from the "SMASH MICROSOFT" BS is after all an idiot it seems.


I'll give you all a clue. If your storing personal info on a system hooked to the 'Net?
Your an idiot and deserve your **** getting hacked.