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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

> 7. To disable telemetry (...)

Why should I disable that? What does it do? My understanding is that it's only statistics on data usage, which I find useful?

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Nearly all of the windows privacy issues come from useful features.

If cortana wants to automatically recommend appointments from emails? Guess what? She has to read your emails.

If you want to be blocked from downloading malware? Guess what? You have to check with a central db first.

etc

Apple, Google devices etc have had this stuff on for ages.

It doesn't work if you use a third party email app like Postbox (for now). If you use Windows Mail then it works.

> If you want to be blocked from downloading malware? Guess what? You have to check with a central db first.

Or it could download the db and do the checks locally. There wouldn't be privacy concerns about MS knowing which sites one's browsing.

But then you would have download definitions, and send new stuff onto the central db anyway.

You realise Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft all use Google's database[0] for this and have for at least seven year. Why is this anti-phishing blacklist all of a sudden an issue in 2015?

[0] https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/developers_guide...

As far as I know, that should be okay. Browsers don't query the database online like some RBL, but download it locally and check visited sites against a local copy. No URLs are sent to Google.

Which is - as far as I know - is very different from how Windows anti-malware system works. At least I think I saw a network requests from Windows 8 machine when "untrusted" applications (.exe) were started.

I find myself reminded of how people oh and ah over Google Now being helpful, while i am sitting here wondering how much Google must know about each person to produce those results.

I am sure the technologists at both Google and Microsoft has the best of intentions with their creations, the question is what happens when a TLA or similar comes knocking.

Cortana is not an essential part of the OS. Malware databases can exist locally. You're just making excuses for MS's anti-privacy architecture.

Lots of apple, and google features are not essential part of the system.

Shall we turn siri off by default?

"Malware databases can exist locally" - You still have to download, and upload definitions. This is what windows defender does. People still complain about that.

It's not that I'm not concerned about privacy. It's the hypocritical nature of people. It only becomes a big issue when Microsoft does it. Anyone else, very little complaints.

Yes, I think Siri should be off by default. Malware databases can be updated when the user updates everything else. The reason people are complaining is that this data is being sent automatically by the OS without their permission or knowledge. It's not just a complaint against MS, but also against other OS's that do the same like Android.

The difference is:

In one case, you download the whole database.

In the other case, you essentially tell the company "hey, I’m visiting website with hash 12345, is that bad?".

This can be abused. Google could with it create a database of everyone who visit, say, pornhub.com, for example, by logging everyone who visits a page with the same hash as pornhub.com

Same with file-based malware databases:

You tell it "I have the file with hash 12345, is it bad?" And, if Google - or the NSA, CIA, FBI, whatever – want to get a list of everyone who has that file, they just ask the database provider to log everyone who checks that hash against the database, then go to the ISP to get the real name of the owner of that IP, and then SWAT the person.

This is very much a possible risk.

My personal computer is not a phone. I do not require the help of a spyware disguised as an AI to operate it. I have a mouse and a full keyboard.

When I want to interact with the internet, I use a browser. This browser is managed by many extensions that cut down on the information that is being sent about me. I do not want my operating system to talk to the internet without asking me.

Well put. That's exactly my feeling. Even on a phone, a voice based helper should be opt-in as it's not an essential feature and not everyone wants to use it, but everyone wants to not be recorded by default.

"She has to read your emails."

cough, she = it, read = process

Apple is moving to local processing of "intelligent" stuff, actually.

> If cortana wants to automatically recommend appointments from emails? Guess what? She has to read your emails.

"She"

Exactly because we don't even know what does it do. (Hey, had anyone did a protocol analysis and/or telemetry binaries reverse-engineering already?)

Do you want your machine to send some information, derived from your personal data, at third-party discretion - without you knowing what exactly is being sent?

If you're using your laptop to look for directions to locations on their map app then it's useful. Otherwise, it's useless since it uses geo-ip to find your location.

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