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Comment by nathanaldensr | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter what Microsoft says or how they paint it. It doesn't matter how "transparent" they are. As long as data-gathering (read: snooping) is a part of the operating system, there will be a conflict between that and a user's desire for privacy. The only acceptable option for privacy-conscious users is to not use Windows 10 at all, unless and until Microsoft introduces an "Off" setting.

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Even if they introduce an "off" setting, there's no good way to verify that they aren't collecting/sending that data anyway.

What about using something like TCPView[1], and Process Explorer[2]? Saying that there's "no good way" is throwing in the towel a bit early.

[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/tcpview.asp... [2] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexpl...

If it's the OS doing the data gathering, it can just hide that stuff from whatever you would use to monitor it. Look at how rootkits hide for an example.

Not to mention they bypass their own hosts file to make sure you don't override anything that might stop their data theft.

Those tools rely on Microsoft-developed APIs to monitor traffic though...

A monitoring device connected along the network path would be more trustworthy.

Or won't again in the future. I finally bailed on MS completely (at home only unfortunately) when 10 came out and telemetry was first reported. I let myself get too comfortable with Windows 7, and will not make that mistake again.

Now, for example, it feels great to happen to notice my harddrive spin up when I'm sitting idle at my desk, and relax knowing my OS is just doing what it's supposed to, not covertely spying on me or installing some crud I didn't ask for.

I disagree. I, and millions of others, participate in the regular Steam survey which sips up quite a lot of my information. I do this because I don't mind and want to help steam and video game devs understand the PC gaming world. All MS has to do is replicate this system. Ask me to do this. Tell me what you collect. Done. That's it.

Nadella has a lot to learn from Newell and his crew. The "fuck consumers" attitude MS had during the Gates years, unfortunately, continues with Nadella's management. He never become the reformer we thought he would and the depressing part is that it would be very easy to implement these consumer friendly features and as I wrote, have already proven to be a success.

Respect your customers and we'll respect you. Treat us like children and we'll push back or just switch to OSX/Linux/Mobile.

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