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Comment by ksk | Hacker News Reader

I think Microsoft messed up the messaging and wording of their features, bigtime. Many products these days are integrating analytics to see how their users use their products. Personally, I prefer to disable such tracking, but I don't view it as malicious.

MS should have realized by now that people don't quite trust them with this stuff, and they should have make it clear at the outset that they are never going to use this data for "sharing with their partners" or any purpose other than explicitly as a signal for improving specific Windows features.

They used legal language that allows them much more latitude than what they require. This is most likely intentional (probably for future competition with Google), but IMO they should have gone with a very narrow data use policy.

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The thing is that a lot of things here are genuinely useful for most users, e.g.:

- Blocking malicious sites.

- Page prediction.

- Improving typing prediction.

- Finding open hotspots and automatic sharing of network credentials with contacts.

- Cortana.

- Search suggestions.

Multiple of these are also already done by Google and Apple, but the riots are much smaller. So, it's probably a mixture of: bad wording, spreading privacy options across too many configuration screens, and all that fuelled by some good old Microsoft hatred (I can't remember people being quite as upset about Android or iOS).

I think everyone would be better off if one of the first configuration steps would give three choices:

1. Protect my privacy completely. No data is sent at all to Microsoft.

2. Only send anonymized data to Microsoft. Data is used in a non-identifiable manner, enables some features such as blocking malicious websites and search suggestions.

3. Send useful data about me to Microsoft. Sends non-anonymous data to Microsoft to tailor Cortana and Windows to your needs. Data is not used for advertising purposes or given to third parties.

Simple to understand and everyone can make pick their own trade-off.

You are right. Another annoyance:

- non-optional forced auto updates (except on Enterprise "long term servicing branch" edition)

Give the user the choice. Compare it to iOS, Android, OSX, Linux everywhere the user has the choice to stop the auto-update, often for important reasons no one thought before.

We used to say the same thing about application software. However Chrome's auto-update feature has been a tremendous benefit. I would argue this is a reasonable direction for consumer OSes to go

Chrome's auto-update is barely noticeable and quite polite, in that it doesn't nag you to restart (or forcibly shut down your current work). Doesn't stop you from shutting it down and barely slows down the next time it starts.

A browser is one thing, it's just an application. The OS is the lowest layer, if you can't control it, you can't trust it. And there is always the option to stop the update in Chrome. If you don't run the OS behind a hardware firewall that can scramble SSL, Win10 will send a lot of data unfiltered and non-optional to its vendor - unacceptable for an operating system (the lowest layer).

if you can't control it, you can't trust it

Exactly, which is why Microsoft and enterprise IT like to control the updates. If they can't control the updates, they can't trust the computer!

Unpatched, dated, or even EoL OS versions has been a big problem for a long time, and it's arguably even more serious of an issue than dated versions of Chrome.

You want that control for yourself, and I can relate to that, but 99% of users cannot be trusted with that control which is why this happened.

Exactly, which is why Microsoft and enterprise IT like to control the updates

Neither enterprise IT nor consumers can control it, do you get it? Only with the very expensive "Enterprise Long Term Servicing Branch" License, which only a small group of large corporations will be able to license. No other operating system exists that behave in such a way. It's a "Windows as a Service", but many still want a traditional onprimise Windows, the same goes for all other Microsoft software incl. Office and Sharepoint.

Not true, any company who buys Win10 Enterprise with Software Assurance using volume licensing (minimum order is only 5 units) can get access.

> They used legal language that allows them much more latitude than what they require.

It's the same trap that people fall in to when site terms of use ask for worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable license to content that you post. Yeah, that sounds like it's a horrible nastyness, but from a legal point of view that wording is a safety net for the company, not an attempt to claim actual rights over contributed content.

MS has completely failed to control the message here, and everyone's working themselves into a groupthink riot, just like they did over the Ok Google binary blob nonsense.

I think in both the examples you give, what starts out as 'innocuous' and 'well meaning' will inevitably be subverted for something far more nefarious.

Not everyone with a different opinion to you is incapable of forming their own conclusions, or susceptible to groupthink.

Is Bruce Schneier also a victim of this 'nonsense'?

If people aren't rioting, the companies will never get the message.

its only one uninvited partner people world-wide are worried about, the US government..that is why China and Russia moved towards no MS software on government computers.

It might have helped to offer a "Plain English" version of their legalese, stating explicitly what their goals were for analytics and customer security privacy. People are very wary of things that are unclear, especially with something that they're practically forced to use.

It's a PR disaster for Microsoft, they tried hard to give little specific information and their paid commenters made it worse.

It's time to change for the Microsoft CEO, better release an early 10.1 than burn the Windows brand for generations.

If you believe this is the keystone issue that is going to permanently stain their reputation and pariah Windows around the globe for decades to come... well, you may be in an echo chamber.

I'm not saying it isn't important or a big deal. But- as best I can tell, this is a sideshow compared to some of the offenses that have come before, and in the greater public it seems most people don't even know, let alone care.

Honestly, the only action I can think of that would create a greater stain for Windows reputation is to close itself up, and only permit sandboxed software from a market.

MS may reverse things if they act fast, but Windows is mainly a corporation thing (in revenue, if not volume), and corporations care about information security (in a very incompetent way, but they do care). If Windows gets the fame of sending all your data abroad, it will suffer.

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