Destroy Windows Spying tool
github.com
github.com
We need an operating system, paid for it, and we just can't use it without going through regular troubles to ensure some sort of sanity.
Any attempt to have it the normal, guaranteed by law, way, are countered from Microsoft with either no reasons why, or very shallow explanations.
Looking at the boarder picture, at other windows products, licensing is becoming more expensive. At the same time, attempts that look like MS is opening itself to the world, are just a curtain that ensures user entrenchment on windows platforms.
This, so far benign behavior, is just becoming outright hostile at the moment (auto updates going against what we changed, and having new code to hard reset user changes, etc etc).
I get that this will sound like a sad rant, but that's how I feel about this whole windows 10 thing: It's just a really sad sad state of affairs.
Decades of progress, is this supposed to be it?
* I suggest Arch instead of Ubuntu, as I feel that a lot of users automatically go with Ubuntu and then blame the broken stuff, (i.e. Wifi in 16.04) on "Linux", whereas in reality Arch, Gentoo, Fedora users are having no problems.
It still isn't a good situation to anyone put a power user. We would want an Arch derivative with better security (ie, MAC, package hold-back for stability, etc). And the AUR is in practice a security nightmare given anyone can upload anything as a PKGBUILD.
On the other hand, OEM versions of Windows have done lot worse. First of all, you are not supposed to alter the OS provided by your OEM if you want to keep the license. Second, there are all those drivers that are supposedly necessary and which installed the Ask toolbar, IE skins, and even a root CA certificates in the case of HP! They take away up to 40% of the power of your computer in average (yes, when it's the OEM's supposedly antivirus), they display advertising, they communicate your personal information and open breaches. Actually I kind of wish Microsoft provided OEMs with a set of APIs where they can do their harm, but forbade them from going further.
So your Windows PC has been full of malware way before Windows 10 added spy tools. I'm just happy it's official now - Hope it will help more people switch to other OSes.
Recent? There were 500 distributions 10 years ago! :)
It would also be nice if companies like Adobe ported their design apps to Linux. Currently this is one of a few reasons I continue to use MS. That and being able to test in IE helps some too.
Not sure what's keeping Adobe from doing this tbh. I would pay for a solid, secure Linux distro in a heartbeat as well as a port of Adobe creative suite.
It is equal parts of:
1. Trying to make a universal OS. If you look at most of the "spying" bits, they're things that already exist and are taken for granted on Android/iOS phones all over the planet. Windows isn't doing anything new here. They're making an OS that is equally meant to run on desktops and phones. As a side effect people are suddenly seeing all the things that any other phone does direct and naked.
2. Recognizing the fact that the average user is a horrible idiot and giving up. Customer grade Windows is aimed at "users". And what average users have done in the past is never update their windows. Most not even because of any decision against it, but because they don't even understand what's going on and ignore it. The result being hordes upon hordes of machines are out in the wild, unpatched, with open security holes, for which MS gets the blame. So they made automatic updates the default and did not provide a way to disable it in the standard user interfaces.
Doesn't mean they force it though. If you truly wish to take control over it, they allow you to. All they require is that either you hire an administrator, or learn how to handle Group Policy Editing yourself.
For example, on Win10Pro, changing the setting of "Configure automatic updating" is sufficient to switch scheduling of updates off.
How is this different from the way it works in older versions of Windows? My understanding is that it's much harder than this to defer forced reboots farther than 12 hours, and becoming (deliberately) more difficult update by update.
You can tell it to wait with downloading until you click go, or to auto-download and wait with installing until you click.
This worked on WinXP, Win7 and Win8. It does not work on Home editions, since the Group Policy Editor isn't available there, but enterprising individuals have worked around that as well.
> If you're government, the possibility of the government spying on your data isn't shockingly worrisome.
which makes little sense to me. If you're government, you should be quite concerned about the possibility of Microsoft spying on your data.
Actually, thanks to the third party doctrine and the regularity with which the government subpoenas tech companies, there is little functional difference - they are part of the spying apparatus.
Nor am I confusing Microsoft with the government, but merely recognizing that in a backdoor model, the most interested party is probably the government.
A mixed list of some of them can downloaded from http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortname/windows_10_fixes.html
m.hotmail.com
watson.microsoft.com
Assorted *.msn.com domains
apps.skype.com
msftncsi.com
"Add spying domains to hosts file" is dishonest, at best. This appears to be a determined effort to break random services for the user which happen to be run by Microsoft. Hotmail, Skype and the NCSI detection are particularly inexcusable things to block under the guise of "destroy spying".
Msn domains are only subdomains that are most likely ads related
Watson is Microsoft report tool so "spying"
Hotmail no idea but I don't think you'd use the mobile website on desktop anyway and the domain is live.com now
Add to that, in the software there is a Open hosts file to see/edit it so you can remove whatever you don't want to block
[1]: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/032d394fd6884a275b8a24dc5...
>SetRegValueHklm(@"SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender", "DisableAntiSpyware", "1",
>SetRegValueHklm(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer", "SmartScreenEnabled", "Off",
It seems like the first thing you'd have to do with a new Windows 7 system is turn off Windows Update, to keep the camel's nose, head, humps, legs, tail, and extended family out of the proverbial tent.
Now, when upgrading, I think I'll buy a mac. I can't be bothered to deal with this crap any more.
But on the mac side, there's a lot of blocking of non-store apps and general walled garden-ness? Or is this just something I've conjured up in my paranoid mind?
It's no use comparing a rolling release to whatever OSX is.
Overall I find it nicer to work in Fedora than Ubuntu fwiw.
I don't know what i'm doing wrong, hell the reason I want to go with fedora is because I work with redhat based systems at work, so it's more familiar, but it just seems so unstable.
I don't like fascism, even half of it. So I don't like Arch, mainly because of the often times toxic community. How good pacman then may be - becomes irrelevant.
Ubuntu is most polished desktop distro, and it's absolutely horrible, so I don't use linux on a desktop.
So far I've been able to figure out everything I need. I may have to do our taxes on my wife's computer, unless the tax software will run under wine. Although I suppose I could run a VM with Win 10 just to do the taxes.
That's what I've been doing for quite a few years now (WinXP, then Win7) and it works well. Catching up on Windows updates once a year takes almost as long as doing my taxes. :-O
The other alternative is to do your taxes online, but that is a Really Bad Idea IMHO.
In addition, the attack surface of a company providing tax services on the internet is huge compared to a powered down VM on a machine that I know is physically secure and (IMHO) well secured against hackers.
[1] In a famous apocryphal story, Willie Sutton was asked by reporter Mitch Ohnstad why he robbed banks. According to Ohnstad, he replied, "Because that's where the money is." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton#Sutton.27s_law
Maybe I'm fighting a losing battle, but I still value my privacy.
That said, I'll be checking this out for my Windows 10 rig (for gaming).
Except the maximize button.
And scrolling.
that's why I wiped MacOSX and installed Ubuntu.
Also, I haven't come across any "blocked" apps. I am unsure of the walled garden some others are referring too!
And display management.
And file management.
And you can only launch one instance of an app at a time.
And you have to wait forever for Apple to update your hardware.
And they are so, so, so many other problems with macOS. It's laughable how much is broken.
Edit I remember now that I didn't install it through the App Store.
* keyboard layout (fn and ctrl was swapped but only on laptop and small wireless, not the fullsize keyboard) and
* modifier keys (e.g. no consistent way to jump one word ahead).
Some of my colleagues used it and loved it though, and I very much tried to myself but failed utterly.
It's a walled garden, but the walls aren't as tall on the desktop OS. Yet.
As someone who has used windows from 1995 to 1999 and, on my secondary workstation, OSX since 2015: MS is just catching up on what Crapple has been doing for a very long time and thus MS is not as sophisticated when it comes to providing a user friendly experience that comes with telemetry. Install Little Snitch on OSX (app level fw) and you'll have just as many WTF-moments as with Windows 10.
> But on the mac side, there's a lot of blocking of non-store apps and general walled garden-ness?
Same difference (see above).
The question boils down to whether UX is more important than privacy for you. If you favor UX, use OSX, if you favor privacy, use a UNIX with a very strict local FW. For me, the answer is to carry two laptops: A small and cheap apple device for fun and a lenovo thingy (don't dare to call it a laptop) for serious work.
Take this stuff elsewhere please, thanks.
Just an FYI, I stopped reading and downvoted when you started with childish name calling.
PS: If you read MS as "MickeySoft" as I do, does it help?
Sometimes that's the best way to express the full weight of an opinion. Diluting the expression changes its meaning.
So you can't use any UWP apps with this? Why is this something that happens?
As more and more critical parts of the Windows system is moved over to the UWP model, though, disabling UWP apps would just be silly. And UWP doesn't require the Windows Store to work.
Edit: Why the downmoding? The above is just stating the fact.
I agree that MS will counterattack this tool though. Almost every time there is a Windows Update it restores all of the modifications these tools make. It was the same with the GWX killers that did not follow process. Unfortunately there is no process to disable telemetry (outside of Enterprise versions).
Why feed Microsoft when it bites you in return?
The problem is using any such tool will put you into the world of unsupported modification.
Facebook and Google obsessively hoarding data about me is all good. Microsoft trying to collect usage data, horrible nasty evil no good rotten scoundrels.
> Microsoft trying to collect usage data
Microsoft is using also collecting information for targeted advertising. It assigns you a unique advertising ID.