Baked-in telemetry, for one.
Windows 10 added some additional telemetry for Windows Store Apps and a few built in services to see if anyone is utilizing them, but overall if you set Diagnostic Data to "Basic" your privacy is in a similar state to previous versions of Windows.
Here's documentation on it:
- Basic diagnostic data: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...
- Full diagnostic data: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/windo...
- How Microsoft handles the data, common questions, more info on what is collected, etc: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/confi...
Please tell me what built-in telemetry you think we have on our Windows 7 machines (where we typically don't deploy any non-security updates without a good reason).
Even worse for people that are forever locked to Windows because of their line of work, clients or something else. They have no option, they can't even pay more to stop the data collection. Not to mention HIPAA and other problems that may affect small business owners.
In regards to trust, you can actually view the diagnostic data since the insider build half a month ago using windows diagnostic data viewer.
Regarding businesses: I do think you can disable all of that using group policy in Windows Enterprise
Once again a matter of trust (or not wanting ANY data to be sent, a radio silent OS aside from updates and features that actually require internet access and you opt-in on using them). Would be trivial to lie about the data in the UI. I don't know if it's possible to intercept the data for analysis, so people can verify that it matches the UI.
> Regarding businesses: I do think you can disable all of that using group policy in Windows Enterprise
Nope, even the Security setting still collects data.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/con...
Since everybody else does it now MS, from a competitive standpoint, also has to be a creep with your data. But they own the OS and I don't want that bullshit there.
You can go with the "it was a bug" narrative about all the privacy settings getting reset, saying that the tool showing what they collect is enough, that not being able to pay to stop the data collection is ok (if they "really" have to collect data to be competitive), well for me it's shady business and I don't want my OS doing that. Just tired of this subject to be honest, here's more info if you want to dig deeper https://google.com/#q=Windows+Restricted+Traffic+Limited+Fun...
You can disable it in 7 by memorizing the KB #'s of the updates that install them and refusing them, but it's just as much work as installing Spybot Anti-beacon on 10.
If you adopted the policy of only installing security updates, which plenty of people did after GWX if not before, you didn't get that other junk anyway.
The way Microsoft have actively made it more difficult to install only security updates on older versions of Windows recently is yet another reason not to trust them with updates you can't control at all on newer versions. They brought this mistrust upon themselves by abusing their position deliberately and repeatedly, so I don't think anyone can blame the sceptics.
The really sad thing is the number of people, even here on HN where you'd expect to find relatively well-informed discussion, who completely miss the distinction between security updates and updates more generally when debating this issue. I mean, we are literally talking about an organisation that pushed out an entire new operating system via the update process, and they deliberately did so in such a way that many people now have that new OS and didn't necessarily want it or actively did not want it.
>it's just as much work as installing Spybot Anti-beacon on 10
Most apps automate the process. In 7 you have to memorize the 8-digit code associated with the updates you don't want.