Microsoft Removes the Option to Opt Out of Windows 10 Free Upgrade?
techfrag.com
techfrag.com
In the meantime, we added a question mark to the title.
edit: that's from October 15 (Thursday) and might or might not be the same issue, hard to say.
I ran windows update literally 10 minutes ago as well.
Meaning that the only chance that this is true(for windows 8.1 at least) is if I missed multiple micro-updates on my windows box and in that period of time they pushed an update enabling this forced conversion to windows 10 and then pushed a subsequent one returning to current functionality.
Previous update check to the latest performed update was ~22 hours ago. That's a very small window.
I doubt this is true.
edit: I think it's far more likely that some specific individual, perhaps the author or his friend was on the specific update effected by -> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/window... and as a result was 'forced to update'
Pretty ridiculous to publish this without looking into it though.
Not saying that Microsoft didn't mess up here, they very well may have, just that this article seems to be flagrantly false and it's disappointing how much attention it's gotten in spite of that fact.
I've been a Windows user since 1995 and a huge fan of certain MS products, but I'm done with using it as my desktop and laptop OS when I replace my current systems. I'll be running Linux or Mac OS as the base OS, and only using my existing Windows license in a VM where necessary for specific software (the list of which is growing shorter every day).
I'll miss Visual Studio in particular, but if I have to use the least-user-friendly OS to get the best IDE, I'm saying goodbye to the best IDE :\.
Who is claiming this? Maybe for hardware known to have good Windows 10 support it's a good move. For me, I've had more blue screens in the last month than I had in the 10 years before that. Lots of poor driver support (fingerprint reader doesn't work, touchpad reverts settings after every boot, crashes).
The user experience is an upgrade from my perspective, but the upgrade has been anything but painless.
During the installation, Windows uses weasel words to present the user with privacy settings hiding the option to change them at all. Take a look:
https://jonathan.porta.codes/images/posts/2015/07/window-10-...
In "express settings":
* Send contact, calendar and input data to Microsoft
* Send typing and inking data to Microsoft
* Let apps use your Advertising ID for "experiences across apps" (I'm not making this shit up)
* Send microsoft and "trusted partners" location data
* Turn on SmartScreen (Admittedly I don't know exactly how it works but seeing as it's in those options I can take a horrifying guess on the implications)
* Send your browsing data to Microsoft to "make your overall experience better" (WTF wording)
* Autoconnect to shared networks
* Autoconnect to suggested open hotspots
Damn. And then, one that's not in there which you have to find for yourself, if you even know about it: P2P share windows updates with any windows computer on the internet.
Ho-ly-crap. I like W10 as an OS so far but this stuff is just insane.
BTW, the only reason I went with W10 was that W7 doesn't support GPT.
Sources:
http://www.howtogeek.com/224352/what%E2%80%99s-the-differenc...
http://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-...
Edit: Yikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SmartScreen#SmartScr...
I'm not sure that concerns me since they're doing signature verification on the data before doing anything with it.
That still brings up the issue that Microsoft is leveraging my broadband connection, my power and my computer(s) that I pay for to issue updates to their customers without even asking. That's not ok.
Fuck them for even daring to do this. It's authoritarian arrogance, nothing more.
--
PSA: For people with Windows 10 installed, I've found the following tool quite useful in shutting down the large amount of information collected.
If anything what people want are less frequent releases with longer support periods. Or at least designate specific infrequent releases like Windows 7 for multi-decade long-term support -- if they would do that then they could reduce the support period for the non-LTS releases and end up supporting fewer versions at once.
I wish the big name software vendors would understand this, but the hype train has a lot of momentum right now and it seems like everyone is trying to jump on board.
The reality is that stability and reliability in your software bring huge benefits. Big changes can bring big benefits too, but usually any improvements are more modest. And the kicker is that even quite small changes can make something work worse from the user's personal, subjective point of view, and this is actively bad.
My standard policy on our Win7 machines at work has been security updates only for quite a while now. I don't see anything pushing us to install Win10 on any of those machines right now. In fact this whole farcical exercise has been a great demonstration of why we shouldn't: the more Microsoft try to abuse the update process in older versions of Windows, the clearer it becomes that a version of Windows where updates are mandatory shouldn't be trusted.
Especially the spying experience is an upgrade. Thanks to the excellent relationship between the NSA and Microsoft. Nice try, Nadella, to make us believe Microsoft has changed.
My ThinkPad T430 runs Windows 10 without any Lenovo crapware, and it's such a smooth experience. No more invisible windows randomly popping up in the taskbar, stealing my keyboard focus, no more dozens of TPCRAP.EXE in my autostart.
Nice coinage: "TPCRAP.EXE"
On a new ASUS X205ta ("Windows 8.1 with Bing") the audio drivers are broken, and which don't have Linux drivers yet. (at least, the websites I read from July suggest that.)
Microsoft has said the force push was a mistake. I suppose you could argue their sincerity on that, but the fact remains that they did remove it.
The OP is about GWX removing the option to delay the upgrade.
What do you know about lizard people?
"The government is using mobile phone technology to track people all the time. Yes/No."
Also includes an interview with David Icke.
I don't think that question is decisive anymore...
I actually fall into the group of people who can see the possibility of conspiracy everywhere. While I don't believe in lizard people, I do believe in the strong possibility that the US gov't was at least partly behind 9/11. Matter of fact - I believe the lizard people story was put out there to make conspiracy theorists look ridiculous. I also believe, for instance, that the CIA runs the illicit drug trade...and I believe that Mao Zedong was a controlled assets of the western elite, just like China is today and that this will all culminate into a really scary new world order with China as the only superpower. My favorite thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that it has actually freed my mind up a bit because I don't sweat the small stuff so much anymore and I have fully accepted the fact that I am going to die one day since I have spent so much time thinking about all the ways I'm going to get killed by the Illuminati :)
I very much like Microsoft too, but I also get the hate. Even this move of nagging you to update to Win10 seems to come out of the brain of marketeers, not engineers. When companies get big enough, they often lose some of their engineering/academic spirit to commercial thinking. Understandable, but annoying, as it becomes less about building a great product, but more about building great profits.
I do not think the US gov had anything to do with 9/11. I think they just didn't share information correctly and it could have been avoided (dropped the ball). I am always a bit mystified when Americans say that 9/11 was an inside job. If true, their government would be directly responsible for the deaths of 1000s. That should cause riots, not conspiracy theory forums. I think 9/11 conspiracy theories are interesting, because I have a conspiracy theory that most of these theories are propagated by the Middle East (shift the blame) and Russia (destabilize US politics, comparable to Operation INFEKTION, where they tried to paint the US as creating AIDS).
I think the lizard people are the product of a troubled mind and plain old antisemitism. In an allegorical sense it may hold some truths though. The crack cocaine flights of the CIA are no theory anymore, these have been pretty much confirmed, culminating in the "suicide" of Gary Webb by two(!) bullets to the head.
I like Robert Anton Wilson when he says that belief in the Illuminati is driven by our current information overload: The brain wants to make sense of it all, and that is easier when you picture an evil force behind the curtains pulling the strings. But also that there simply are a lot of people conspiring to do evil things (for instance the P2 lodge). So it is a balance between reality and psychology.
My favorite thing about conspiracy theories is that it allows you to draw all sorts of connections. It's a form of data analysis to occupy the mind with, only bounded by your imagination.
I think the China-themed conspiracy theories are very US-centric. Europe seems less afraid of China as a competitor, decreasing the popularity and adoption of such theories.
It will probably be spun like Windows 10 is a security update to old OS's, but that is simply not sincere. Given the problematic privacy/sharing/phone-home settings on Windows 10 one can hardly call it a security improvement.
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This update installs the Get Windows 10 app, which
helps users understand their Windows 10 upgrade options
and device readiness.
Another type of update changes to the product in ways that are not necessary for the original product to be used as intended. They may be desirable for the customer and/or the developer, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, from the point of view of things like consumer protection law that says you should get what you paid for and it should work as advertised, these two cases look qualitatively different to me.
So, for me, I need a way to say, "I don't ever want to upgrade automatically. I'll upgrade when I'm ready".
On the other hand, auto-upgrading software gives the US diplomacy a lot of leverage over the rest of the world. A country in negotiation with US could have all GPS, mobiles and computers shut down at the flick of a switch.
If Microsoft actually did force an involuntary upgrade this, it seems likely they would be on the receiving end of real lawsuits or even facing criminal charges for unauthorised access to computer systems (particularly if they did it to anyone who had actively avoided installing or keeping earlier updates related to Windows 10), not to mention any later formal data protection complaints over Windows 10's privacy implications, opening the floodgates to complaints under consumer protection legislation, and other risks. Even given that I wouldn't trust Microsoft as far as I could throw it at this point, I still doubt they're arrogant/naive enough to go that far.
Is this just a vaguely rehashed story about one of the optional updates being ticked by default from the other day?
"[...] since whenever you restart or shut down your PC, the next time you use it, the machine will start installing Windows 10".
This is absolutely false on at least 2 PCs I manage (one Win7 home, one Win8.1 home, both have had the tray icon offering the free upgrade for months). They have both been restarted in the past couple days and neither has upgraded itself to Win10.
Microsoft would certainly promote that view, but is it really? Am I one of the minority of users who prefers a stable environment customised exactly as I want it, instead of "latest and greatest"?
I don't even want to think what would happen if they called me out of the blue because that upgrade happened without their knowledge, and they can't find anything anymore.
The "but your whole security will break down if you miss a year of security updates" argument is lazy and counterfactual.
But you know what? I didn't have to re-learn anything! It just worked. It was a cool new color, felt better, actually helped me dig better, but the functionality it provided and the user experience was largely the same.
Modern software companies will "have" to understand this and tell their designers to go for a long walk. Software is too important to simply say, "Everything has changed! Surprise!"
Most people don't care about software "changes" about like I don't care how the engine in my car works. Just make it go. Fix it, improve it, make it safer, blah blah ... but don't make me do something different because your designers are bored with consistency.
This is sad for security because people see things like "stupid UI changes" and they make upgrade decisions based on the parts of the change that are most visible instead of the parts that are most valuable.
Software should probably be designed so that it can be distributed in a layered fashion. I shouldn't want "git cherry-pick" every time I click an Update button.
Remote exploits that don't require any user action (i.e. simply be connected to the network and get pwned) are the really important ones to worry about, but are thankfully very rare. Newer versions of Windows come with more network services that only add more, unknown, attack area; and they are seldom actually needed because I have no use for those features.
Could you imagine the outcry from Linux users if someone wanted to run as root all the time? Hell no!
When I switched from programmer to admin I was basically handed binders of various laws (US, UK, EU primarily) on data security and the penalties when you screw up. Now I sit at the other side of the table and inform developers what they can and can't do with user data. I've never had to walk into the bosses office and say we have to call the police, someone has walked off with our users PIDs.
Needless to say a few macs and centos boxes have made an appearance and everyone suddenly knows python.
I'm making the jump when 7.2 drops and moving to windows in a VM.
Since you bought (a license) for Windows 7, I would think if Windows 10 degrades your experience sufficiently, you might prevail in small claims court.
The only reason we're not looking at criminal charges here is because this is MS. There is absolutely no difference between this W10 behavior and malware except that most malware is nowhere near this harmful. And in this case, we know that MS has both a motive and actual intent to do harm and access a system it was not given authorization to access.
My story:
A few months ago, I trusted MS to provide necessary updates to my system. This means when they said something was an improvement, I accepted this and installed the update. For my trust I got the Get Windows 10! Ad-Ware installed. "'Reserve' your copy today" it said. Sounds good, I can reserve the free upgrade but wait to install it until the dust settles and I can make a reasonable decision about those apps that won't work any more. I "reserved" my copy.
What this really meant is that I had scheduled the upgrade. Windows Update had now become Microsoft's beachhead for capturing my PC. The release date came and Windows update was going to go ahead and install Windows 10. No prompt. No choice to leave it on my hard drive and install later. It was doing it... right then and there.
I rolled the system back to a restore point and hid the upgrade. No matter. Win Update had its heart set on getting Win 10 installed. Those new security patches... Nope, Win 10. That update to the keyboard drivers... Nope, Win 10. So I rolled up my sleeves and began hours of research and diving into forums and the registry and reboots and...
I uninstalled the updates for the GWX application. Removed its registry keys, cleared its directories, uninstalled the preparatory updates related to it. I marked them all as hidden. Success; Windows Update was doing normal updates again.
Then Microsoft back-ported the "user telemetry" system from Windows 10 to Win 7 and pushed it as a pair of updates. "Eases the upgrade experience" their KB article said, but I knew enough now not to trust that. I had to find alternative reviews of every KB. Now every update MS pushed was suspicious. The software that was supposed to keep my machine secure and running properly, was now the software attempting to erode my control over my hardware. Even though I had hidden the updates for the GWX app and the user telemetry "enhancements" Microsoft put them back in the update queue by reissuing them. Hide says I.
Now, with the latest round of updates, I carefully select only those marked as "Security updates", having read the KBs and confirmed them with non-Microsoft sources.
Update
Downloading Windows 10
I hate what Microsoft is doing here.
TP-Link i'm looking at you
If anything like this happens on those versions a lot of business might get into trouble.
Switching to osx at the end of year anyway, never realized how linux-like the back-end was, I would have switched sooner.
Guess some can never be satisfied no matter what.
Do people tend to complain about Chrome's auto updates?
This is especially true for Windows, which doesn't have a seamless upgrade process.
They didn't give that option to people with xp, and they aren't giving that option to people with windows 7.
I'd bet most of those are minor bugfixes which don't change behaviour drastically, but fix things like exploits. Most people won't even notice any changes and they can keep using the software like they used to.
On the other hand, operating systems and most software have distinct major versions and automatic updates only happen within those versions.
Automatic updates are easy (mostly). Healthy software and vulnerability management that doesn't damage productivity needlessly can be a lot of work. What do you test?
The classic simplified use case for this is Java runtimes: Your organization needs: a) A specific Java version to run a critical application b) Not to have workstations compromised though weak Java versions.
As a technology and security professional in this space your objective is to meet both of these goals. As the application developer you may have totally different goals (release date, market share, sales, renewals) and may not have these on your map at all...
It seems like this aspect, at least, could be a very good thing. Thinking about the very non-technical and casual user who uses the default IE and doesn't upgrade/switch for no particular reason other than some mixture of doesn't know it'll be better/afraid of breaking something/doesn't know how.
It'll just kill all those IE 8s/9s/10s still running out there that, really, should be replaced. Yes, it's a little brute force, but I can't see this being anything other than a good thing for (the vast majority of) these users and for developers.
For developers? I think they are quite capable of deciding for themselves.
For users? Here I can see where you're coming from, but let's think this through:
- Some users know how stuff works. They'll upgrade when they want to, no need to force them.
- Some users have no clue about how stuff works, but they know someone who does (e.g. my grandma and me). If there would be an opt-out of this forced upgrade, that someone (me) could perform that on their computer and upgrade them when they're ready. But there is no opt out, so instead they (me) will have a hell of an explaining job on their hands. It might actually be the perfect excuse to install Ubuntu since the only reason not to is because they're "used to Windows now". And remember, this group didn't need a forced upgrade in the first place since they have someone who helps them stay up to date and does stuff that needs doing.
- Some users have no clue and have nobody to help them. There's no point trying to get them the latest updates when they'll click accept on anything their screen tells them to accept (e.g. fake flash update). Some protection is better than none and thus Edge is better than IE8, I agree on that, but I'm not sure there is that much of a point. And they may become unable to use a computer altogether with a disruptive change like this.
In other words, nobody benefits. Maybe not even Microsoft, but I can't tell yet.
Sorry, to be clear on this I mean devs building the stuff users use, as in no more need to support older, less standards-compliant, less fully-featured browsers. It saves an incredible amount of effort, time, money and stress.
I'm not even saying Edge is good, I'm just saying it's evergreen and regardless of its current state you'd hope it will only improve in these areas over time, and getting users on it removes the upgrade issue now and forevermore.
As for the three categories, I'm emphatically talking about the last one, which is absolutely massive. I used to work at a company where a significant proportion of our userbase was composed of this type of person. Lots of money is wasted on this problem, which is so easy to fix. It's a hugely important consideration, unless your market is developers or technologists, in which case this isn't an issue at all.
I see what you mean but still, an opt-out button would pretty much solve everything. Forcing everyone is just a bad move I think.