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Comment by gruturo | Hacker News Reader

True for Apple, not for Microsoft. Windows 10 is stuffed with tracking and telemetry and puts ads in front of you (screen saver, start menu, etc). They are absolutely NOT famous for respecting your privacy or wishes.

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Does it collect personally-identifiable Information? Suppose, for sake of discussion, they collect something inoocuous, like whether you prefer to maximise windows. Say a single bit of information. True or false. Would you still be opposed to the telemetry? I’m trying to understand if the objection is about specific data being collected, or to the idea at all.

The problem is _not_ collecting telemetry on users is a business disadvantage, in todays world. Whether you're a webapp or an OS.

I would be willing to send MS that information, but only as an opt-in.

Right, no one would care about telemetry if you could turn it off. MS could have it turned on by default, even. I'm sure the amount of data they would miss would be minuscule in comparison to the amount of negative press they've received about this topic.

Why do you feel that way? Do you feel tracking whether you prefer to maximise windows is a privacy violation? Or is the objection that your IP address is included when the telemetry is uploaded to Microsoft?

I'm not opposed to it because its MS or because I fear for my privacy. As a purchaser of a product, I don't want to enlist my compute resources to collect information that is of value to the seller - for free. I have already paid my dues, so to speak. Of course, in theory,I could benefit from the telemetry. But that should be my choice, and at the bare minimum, I should have some assurance that any telemetry information I provide, isn't used to simply make me purchase a new product, but to improve the existing product.

You know you can turn those ads off, right?

Why should you have to?

The default exists because not everyone has the same reaction to the telemetry as you. For those who do, they have some means of bypassing that (for now).

Because Microsoft paid a lot of people to develop and maintain a software they gave away for free to users?

If Microsoft let me buy Windows without that, I would have paid for it. Alas, If I spend $200 on Windows 10, I get the same tracking landmines than the person who spent 0 a few years ago.

That they have given an ad ridden OS away for free is their problem, not something they were forced to.

A free version with ads and telemetry isn't free, it's just monetized differently. And the vast majority of the cost of developing it is either sunk or defrayed by the paid versions.

But not the telemetry or tracking.

Yes you can.

Anyway, how many UWP apps are you running? Do you think every Win32 desktop app is now magically tracking you? Nope.

So, let's compare how many UWP apps that you actually want to run (I don't use any of them) and see if they're tracking you as much as all the mobile apps you're running. There's no contest here.

The problem with Windows tracking is not that apps track you (here the solution would be easy: just don't use the apps), but that the system itself snitches on you.

Are you starting an app or search for document, using the windows shell? Your phrase goes to Bing. That's much harder to avoid than just not using an app.

None of that happens if you only use Basic telemetry and if you disable Cortana or the Cortana option to "Search online and include web results".

So, the only tracking you're left with is the kind that comes packaged in UWP apps.

I did disable Cortana (it doesn't even work in the language version I want to use), but according to the firewall, it still tries to connects to bing.com.

So much for "disabling".

They can track network connections or system calls for Win32. Also which DLLs the apps use. Any DLLs provided by MS can be instrumented and track any information that goes through them.

It actually turns out that you can't. [0]

You are able to turn it down to "Basic" using the GUI, and if you are using the enterprise edition thru corporate volume licensing you can turn it down further to "Security" with admin tools.

There is no way to turn it off completely, and since its cranked up by default, that is where it will stay for the majority of installations.

As an anecdote, even Microsoft employees I've spoken with think it's overreaching and underhanded.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/confi...

edit : clarification on corporate option

Incorrect. There are in fact three ways to completely disable it. You can get the Enterprise edition [0] or modify your registry configuration [1] or by a third party tool [2].

Even if you don't want to do any of those for some reason, reading about the Basic level of telemetry - it's nothing. At least it's nothing that I care about.

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsforbusiness/try

[1] https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-c...

[2] http://www.thewindowsclub.com/tools-tweak-privacy-settings-w...

Enterprise edition is not available to non-volume accounts. I.e. not for home machines, not for small businesses.

The registry edit is specifically not honored for non-enteprise SKUs.

I’m a single-person sole proprietorship, and I have two seats of Windows Enterprise with Software Assurance as part of an Open Business agreement; “volume” doesn’t imply “high-volume”.

Bringing this back to the the story, one is assigned to a Mac Pro, where, per Microsoft’s bizarre licensing terms, it qualifies as an “upgrade” to the bundled copy of OS X (upon which I run it under VMware, permissible via further licensing gyrations).

Last time I asked, Enterprise SKUs were only available if I took 50+ licenses. Being a single person sole proprietor like yourself, that was obviously non-starter.

Another option was Action Pack, where I would get 10 licenses for a very nice price, with a bunch of other products, but that would be only usable for development or testing, not for production (i.e. not for daily use while running the company).

> Enterprise edition is not available to non-volume accounts.

Yes it is. I have multiple copies of it available to me with my MSDN subscription which only costs me about $800 per year.

That’s the problem—you have to turn them off.

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