Windows upping their SPY game

[Alexander Nicholi]

Mostly 'cause I'm pressed for time this morning. Anyway, I had some particular files on my computer that I could locally host as to exploit my Wii U by exploiting flaws in the webkit that it uses. However, Windows detects them as viruses unless you create an exception for them, which I didn't at the time. I copied those particular files to my computer, and the computer ended up automatically quarantining them. When I attempted to restore them, they weren't the same - the parts of the files where the exploit actually was ended up being scrubbed. Nothing else in the file was changed, just where the overflow code was. It also, at the time asked me if I wanted to send the information in, I simply clicked No and went on my way.

Besides, you have to be realistic here. If you have a cracked application (For the sake of argument, let's say it's a large application, 300MB) that has a virus inside of it that you aren't aware of, would it be wise to upload that entire 300MB, and waste bandwidth, or just upload what was relevant - say, a checksum of the file and a snippet of the actual virus?

I'm not going to pretend I know what Microsoft is up to, but at the same time neither do you. You only evaluated one possible course of action that could be taken with your file, and there are many many possibilities besides that. It's a stretch of an argument. You should see below, where I've outlined the control aspects of software.

Anyway, it's not hyperbole. This is true because if you look at users vs age, there's less and less information as you get into older ages because they don't use the internet as much - they didn't grow up with it and never saw the need for it. Granted there are a few exceptions, but for the most part, most of people 55 and older don't use the internet as regularly as people younger than that do. Inherently, there's less information about them that companies can make use of, and that's because they aren't using the internet.

Heck, look at the Ashley Madison hack. Most of the people on there are young, not old. This correlation confirms my point.

I'm sorry, but it's still a massive exaggeration of my defense. It's a mimicking of my points in an effort to discredit them through absurdity, is it not?

Now this is hyperbole. You're comparing people that are pointing out the flaws in the arguments of people wearing those "tin foil hats" to, essentially, fascists. Besides, it's not just Microsoft that's doing this. Facebook is doing it, Google probably, Yahoo, Samsung, the list goes on. I don't get why you're exclusively targeting Microsoft when tons of other companies are doing the exact same thing. You're looking at just one front of an entire issue. While I don't agree with what these companies are doing, the fact that many companies are doing it without backlash means that it's something you're eventually going to have to live with, whether you like it or not.

This is a thread about Microsoft. Why on Earth would I bring up Samsung in a debate about Microsoft's privacy practices?

So yeah, let's all just passively take it lying down from a lot of corporations we don't care enough to combat! Right? There's no point in fighting, might as well just give up. Isn't that a bit weak-minded? That isn't hyperbole, is it?

No one is being an apologist when they're merely stating facts that you have glossed over.

Nowhere have you, Team Fail, or anyone defending Microsoft's practices cited anything that contributes to your general rebuttal whatsoever. That is a fact. What is also fact is that because you completely lack citations for your claims, your arguments are therefore baseless, which means it is completely logical and reasonable to "gloss over them," as you put it.

I think you're reading way too much into things lately, and unfortunately you seem to have believed all the FUD out there on Windows 10.

Thanks for the judgment God, but I don't think throwing around buzzwords does anything but add to the confusion.

No, really, a lot of them aren't even remotely true - at least after you consider what's going on, and the fact that pretty much every single one of them is controllable.

Source

Both non-free software and SaaSS can spy on the user, shackle the user, and even attack the user. Malware is common in services and proprietary software products because the users don't have control over them. That's the fundamental issue: while non-free software and SaaSS are controlled by some other entity (typically a corporation or a state), free software is controlled by its users.

Based on that excerpt, none of whatever Windows settings you mentioned are "controllable." Free software is controlled by its users; proprietary software is controlled by its owners. Ergo, Microsoft is the one truly controlling those dials you fool around with – you haven't the slightest clue what the infinite layers of code beneath are made up of and neither do I. Control is out, for you.

I'm done arguing.

That's a real disappointment Twiggy. You take this so seriously that you're going to cop out of the debate here before it's finished! Why? Is debating not fun? Is it because we're winning?

 

[shadowmoon522]

That's a real disappointment Twiggy. You take this so seriously that you're going to cop out of the debate here before it's finished! Why? Is debating not fun? Is it because we're winning?

i think you forgot to use twiggy's irl pic

 

[Tsutarja]

Alright guys, let's not get too far into this thread please.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Ah, PC. The good old "like" train – proving pretty much everyone could give less than a flying fuck about the Art of Debate, and are simply here to push the narrow, simple-minded opinions they hold so dear. Oh well.

If I were personally honest about the matter I'd tell you I really don't care one way or the other! None of you really took that into account, though. Shame.

i think you forgot to use twiggy's irl pic

No, I was genuinely disappointed that he decided to cop out; that wasn't a taunt of some sort.

I'm the victor of a match I was the only one really sparring in. Besides being worn out from it I'm also kind of robbed of my satisfaction. You guys should not take this to heart so much, really! I mean it! We could have fun you know!

 

[shadowmoon522]

No, I was genuinely disappointed that he decided to cop out; that wasn't a taunt of some sort.

I'm the victor of a match I was the only one really sparring in. Besides being worn out from it I'm also kind of robbed of my satisfaction. You guys should not take this to heart so much, really! I mean it! We could have fun you know!

i was joking, not indicating taunting.

 

[Shirona]

A debate isn't fun when you're not doing the research js

 

[Aeroblast]

it looks like I'm late to the party, and some here may have already echoed my sentiments. nevertheless here's my stance on technological privacy as I had the time to brood this subject over last semester in my CS ethics course.

big brother is watching? microsoft has upped their "spy game"?

this is nothing new. governments have always watched over us from the beginning to see if their citizens were doing anything wrong. introduction of technology only facilitates government's "spy game," but it's not as if governments didn't or couldn't spy before introduction of computers. and before the inevitable comparison with north korea, no. united states will not send you to a labor camp for life if you talk bad about obama.

why would big companies like microsoft collect user data? do you think they will steal from your bank account? they won't. are you afraid they'll catch you doing something embarrassing and send you an email about how silly you are? of course not. companies want to make better products for customers that they wouldn't even consider but would be beneficial to their interests.

bottom line, your privacy will be compromised as long as you use services from people who provide them. if you don't like your precious "privacy" being compromised then the solution is simple as zach wonderfully put it: don't use the internet, move away from civilization into the nature, and don't come back.

 

[Touched]

bottom line, your privacy will be compromised as long as you use services from people who provide them. if you don't like your precious "privacy" being compromised then the solution is simple as zach wonderfully put it: don't use the internet, move away from civilization into the nature, and don't come back.

Lol

You really don't need to stop using the internet. All you need is free software, a VPN and block a couple of hosts and you get relative privacy. There are only a few areas where it is difficult to remain private, but this is mainly due to the lack of free software options available. This wouldn't be the case if people like you didn't take this shit lying down, but apparently the Micro$oft kewlaid is too tasty to give up. Online privacy would be relatively easy to maintain if it weren't so fashionable to give it up in exchange for software/services. You've been duped into thinking that it is a necessary trade off.

You claim that your data is safe because a company has it. Let's just make the (rather large) assumption that they, the company, do what they say they do with it. What about disgruntled employees? Hackers? Or (shocker) the government surveillance programs that they share this data with? Maybe they won't silence you for talking shit about your president now, but it becomes that much easier to "remove" political opponents when you have a global spy network in place.

Also, I don't really want a government of a country I don't live in collecting data about me.

 

[Megan]

People should really start caring about what software they're using. The times, when you could just treat anything technology related as some kind of blackbox, that just does what you want it to do, is long over. It is sad, that most people don't really care about reading and especially understanding what the EULA of the software they're using, actually wants them to tell. That way, the only resource those people most likely come across, is some random guy on the internet, who tells them something, that might not even be true, or only to a certain degree. Combined with the fact, that those users don't really understand much about technology, anyway, it's highly likely, that the end result ends up being more drama, than anything else.

 

[Touched]

The only real issue you'll have with using free software is that you're severely handicapping yourself when it comes to proprietary formats that many people already use from day to day. However, most of the time one spends on a computer is either for productivity or for leisure on the internet, which pretty much any operating system can accomplish. There are free alternatives to paid programs (OpenOffice comes to mind) but they tend to be sub-par to their paid counterparts which have, essentially, full support.

While this may be true of a few programs, it certainly isn't true of everything. I can't speak about Open/LibreOffice, since I've never seen the use of office suites, but I can speak of other programs that are light years ahead of the competition. Linux and other free *nix systems come to mind. Comparatively, Windows is a buggy and bloated piece of crap. The only real reason Windows is used is for a few "user-friendly" programs and a familiar interface. Anywhere where this doesn't matter so much, (Development, Servers, Super computers), it has been all but destroyed.
Also, where development is concerned, free software is again victorious. There is literally no proprietary software on par with things like emacs, vim and git.

I won't bash anyone for using another OS (Although if you have a Mac I'll probably bash it because it's expensive hardware that you can get better of from Windows), as they all serve essentially the same purpose at the end of the day: To provide a user an interface in which they can communicate and accomplish tasks on a computer. If you don't like Windows, so be it. But people that exaggerate what they're hearing without factual evidence I don't like. It's understandable that the telemetery is an issue for people, and it is for me too. I've made the decision to simply disable it, and with that I feel that I am more secured now.

At least OSX is BSD based and POSIX compliant; so it actually has a sane design, but lets just go with what you've said. The main problem with these "disabled" things is that half of the settings that you disable (Windows Update, Windows Defender) turn themselves on after a time. I wouldn't really feel safe disabling telemetry because of this - I don't know if it has actually listened. I will be sniffing a Windows 10 network soon to test my suspicions, so I can't say I have any evidence against this. But I will say that there is no way to be sure what's happening until you've seen the physical data being sent and that goes for both sides of the argument. That being said, I make no special allowances for invasions of privacy. I don't want a company knowing what I do any more than I want some random creepy old guy looking through my window.

As for the argument that if you don't want data collected that you should just not use the internet, it's kinda true. Cookies are always going to be online, and even if you nuke them at the end of a browsing session, who knows what information it picked up in that session. You're never completely safe when using the internet. It's probably logged somewhere, possibly even your ISP has logs of something. As I previously mentioned, when you look at the older demographic, there's less information of them on the internet because they inherently use the internet less than someone half or a quarter of their age. This correlation therefore implies that less internet use means that less information of you, if not none, is available online. It's a valid argument, however, it's an extreme measure for something that doesn't really have any other solution.

Cookies can be blocked as can random connections to Google analytics and other similar services. I block all ads. I log all the connections made by websites as well as their cookies (although this is mainly a side project of mine not related to privacy). The logs my ISP has of my traffic probably only consist of the various IPs of my VPN. You don't have to stop using the internet to be old to stop spying. It's just a side effect of proprietary software and is what tends to be fashionable these days. If we weren't so meek about it probably wouldn't be as much of a problem.

 

[shadowmoon522]

People should really start caring about what software they're using. The times, when you could just treat anything technology related as some kind of blackbox, that just does what you want it to do, is long over. It is sad, that most people don't really care about reading and especially understanding what the EULA of the software they're using, actually wants them to tell. That way, the only resource those people most likely come across, is some random guy on the internet, who tells them something, that might not even be true, or only to a certain degree. Combined with the fact, that those users don't really understand much about technology, anyway, it's highly likely, that the end result ends up being more drama, than anything else.

everything can eventually lead to drama.
everything.

 

[Tsutarja]

Ah yes, it doesn't surprise me that VPNs were mentioned in here. Sure, a VPN could protect your ISP from tracking you, but what's not to stop the VPN provider from doing the same? Surely, it's unethical for a VPN provider to explicitly track traffic from their users and collect the data they're using, but who's to say it's not happening? No matter where you go on the internet, data is being collected, whether you realize it or not. Your IP address is pooled by every website you visit—even if it's a VPN's IP address, and can be traced back to an end user regardless. 90%+ of the internet also requires cookie usage in some way, shape and/or form as well, so there's no way to get around that unless you flat out stop using the internet.

What Microsoft is doing now is no different than what other companies have done. The only difference is that it's being explicitly stated, because Microsoft knows that there are end users who do not want to have certain pieces of data collected. So for those that think Microsoft wants to collect data, think again. If they wanted to collect data, they wouldn't explicitly state that data would be collected from their services/features.

And to those that are worried about data collection, whether it'd be from companies like Google or Microsoft, or your ISP, or even the National Security Agency, then I seriously suggest you change your browsing habits. There is nothing to be worried about unless you are doing something illegal, really.

 

[Touched]

Ah yes, it doesn't surprise me that VPNs were mentioned in here. Sure, a VPN could protect your ISP from tracking you, but what's not to stop the VPN provider from doing the same? Surely, it's unethical for a VPN provider to explicitly track traffic from their users and collect the data they're using, but who's to say it's not happening? No matter where you go on the internet, data is being collected, whether you realize it or not. Your IP address is pooled by every website you visit—even if it's a VPN's IP address, and can be traced back to an end user regardless. 90%+ of the internet also requires cookie usage in some way, shape and/or form as well, so there's no way to get around that unless you flat out stop using the internet.

Except reputable VPN providers such as AirVPN have proved that they will not give up logs because they simply do not have them. Since they do not log, you cannot be traced. It's as simple as that. Their software is also free so you don't have to take their word for it. There's also the fact that since privacy services are their bread and butter they're pretty much bound to ensure this.

Cookies can be cleared, most of the time you can see what's in the cookie. Saying that 90% of the internet relies on cookies is a gross overestimation. Many applications are using API keys instead of cookie session IDs. With the prevalence of SPAs we don't really need cookies so much these days. Also if you're not logged in you shouldn't need cookies for a site and you can safely block them. And yes, you can block them. You don't need to stop using the internet.

What Microsoft is doing now is no different than what other companies have done. The only difference is that it's being explicitly stated, because Microsoft knows that there are end users who do not want to have certain pieces of data collected. So for those that think Microsoft wants to collect data, think again. If they wanted to collect data, they wouldn't explicitly state that data would be collected from their services/features.

I'm not so sure I understand what's being said here. You're saying that if Microsoft wanted to collect data they wouldn't tell you about the fact that the collect data so therefore they're collecting data because they ... yeah. I don't know if you think they have to collect data or something? They're only disclosing what they collect because they have to; they wouldn't do it otherwise.

Also, please note that this is not some anti-Microsoft vendetta. While I do dislike Microsoft and their products (for reasons other than privacy issues), I hold all other companies to the exact same standard. As I've said before, I don't think special allowances should be made for any company and that we should take a more (for want of a better word) militant stance on the issue.

And to those that are worried about data collection, whether it'd be from companies like Google or Microsoft, or your ISP, or even the National Security Agency, then I seriously suggest you change your browsing habits. There is nothing to be worried about unless you are doing something illegal, really.

Aaaaaand there's that fallacy again. Not gonna go too deep into this since it's been discussed ad nauseum, but basically the law != morals. Often the law is wrong, corrupt and caters more to the needs of corporations than to those of people.

Here is a choice quote from that article: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged". The sentiment is that although you may feel you're doing nothing wrong, guilt by association and things taken out of context can be used to blackmail you.

 

[Quto]

I leave my topic alone for 3 months while dealing with college classes, an A.I. to respond to RolePlaying boards and it turns into contradiction vs. argument.

@_@

Anyway, though I'm late to check back on this, I want to thank Para-Dox for the software list; it has helped me a bundle.