They do listen though.
What's known (and can be independently verified and reproduced) are search queries, crash reports, hardware specs and new executables. Mostly, if appropriate settings are not disabled. And performance metrics, but their sensitivity is mild at best. Don't get me wrong - it's not any small deal and it is already quite sensitive, but this is nowhere near "all secrets". There are a lot of outcries about serious spying - on the order of webcam shots, audio streams or even hard drive scans on typing in movie names, yet I haven't seen any details and highly suspect those are rumors and speculations at best.
Is there anything like those rumors - a private data leaks that can't be justified (i.e. not usual "search improvements" or "malware protection" stuff), but that can be verified and reproduced? I bet, many would love to hear about some, check the facts and went to police and/or court with those.
We do have state-of-art decompilers, protocol analyzers and IDS software. Yet I'm somewhat bothered by the gap between the rumored privacy implications and analysis published.
... not a word from Microsoft on the matter.
I'd expect them to conclusively defend themselves from such allegations, but no, the marketing mill is still going on non stop.
To be honest it's like a toddler talking incessantly to avoid talking about the puddle of piss he/she is trying to hide.
This whole thing started because three things happened at once:
- Cortona got released (with a bunch of privacy options, since they want to support the same functionality as Google Now, so email access, location, etc).
- Microsoft moved tons of privacy settings from previous versions of Windows into one unified location.
- Microsoft is trying to do continuous development so wanted analytics related to how people are using their software (so they know what to focus on).
The ironic thing, to me, is that Microsoft unlike Google/Apple/et al decided to put all of the privacy settings in a single location (the new Privacy category in settings), and it was THAT which really got them into trouble. If they had left the privacy settings scattered all over the place, I doubt we'd be discussing this right now.
Ultimately it is up the accusers to show what Microsoft is doing wrong. It isn't up to Microsoft to respond to vague hand waving and FUD. So far I am yet to see one shred of evidence that they do anything beyond what the privacy settings screens claim.
If this is true, why are the same analytics and telemetry slowly being back ported to Windows 7/8 where no continuous development is happening?
Microsoft release an update for it to gather more metrics. It is still an optional program to provide Microsoft information about how you use your computer.
Information about people who are sticking to Windows Vista-8.1 is valuable. These are people who have rejected Windows 10, so understanding what 10 might be missing could help determine future development.
Why is it in 2015 that people are suddenly having a moral panic about an optional program started in 2006 that still exists in 10?
Snowden happened. Also many would be pleased if those "metric gaining features" would be opt-in and mean it, not having to hunt it down through the system to disable it.
Vista largely got criticised for:
- Higher memory usage (than XP).
- Driver issues (in particular graphics and sound). Because Microsoft made changes to the Windows Driver Model, and big name manufacturers (Nvidia, Creative, et al) weren't ready at release, and produced either buggy drivers, or no drivers at all.
The reason why Windows 7 was better received is:
- It wasn't called "Vista." It was/is fashionable to bash Vista. They could have literally re-released Vista without one change and it still would have been treated better than Vista was (which is essentially the 7 strategy).
- Hardware moved forward. Vista and 7 don't run well on 1 GB of RAM. By the time 7 shipped most new PCs had 2 GB or more.
- Drivers were fixed/improved. When 7 shipped it ran Vista compatible drivers which were time tested by that stage.
Ultimately I just roll my eyes at people who continue to be critical of Vista. At least 8/8.1 I understand their perspective (Start Screen, etc), but trying to bash Vista while holding up 7 as this incredible release is just strange given how similar the two are.
I'd say that Apple could have had a similar issue with going from OS9 to OSX, though they at least had a long period of some degree of backwards compatibility. They, however, handled the transition much better since they controlled all of the hardware and drivers.