Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped
Well non-Americans need to worry about both about the great Satan AND their own country to boot. However, the suspicion is that that Microsoft possibly offers backdoor access preference to USA, but likely not to Russia (many here are Russians) and not to the majority of European countries, or Asia/South America/Asia) You assume that Microsofts privacy is respected by 1) Microsoft themselves and 2) Everyone else. Grave mistake! Firstly, we have no idea what secret deals M$ has with various security agencies, primarily NSA. Secondly; Hackers, spammers do not even acknowledge Microsoft's privacy agreements. No telling when Microsoft's data is compromised by somebody like this. Then we have other corporations, and also any future dictatorship, Skynet or whoever gets their hand on the data that MS collects, 10 - 30 years from now.
Well after all, it is not different from what happen with your smart phone at home... They follow you anywhere you go even with GPS. They can read and change anything on your phone they want to. But this many people does not think about it and find it normal... But now microsoft does this, the whole world is upside down... Windows 10 is not for free, you pay with your privacy. Same as most apps on your smart phone.
Apple Boss Argues with US Government over Encryption Added: Friday, January 15th, 2016 Tim Cook has challenged the American government to adopt a policy of “no backdoors” in regard to the encryption technology used by Apple and other tech giants. Apple CEO announced his point of view at a recent meeting between the US administration officials and tech firms including Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and others. Tim Cook harshly criticized suggestions that the encryption technology being used by tech firms might have “back doors” built in in order to fight terrorist use of encrypted communications. According to the media reports, there was a spirited exchange between Apple CEO and US attorney general Loretta Lynch, who allegedly responded to Cook’s comments with a warning about the required “balance” between privacy and national security. Of course, clashes between Apple and the American agencies over encryption occurred before. Just a few months ago, Apple refused to comply with a court order that requested the company to hand over texts sent using iMessage between two iPhones due to iMessage’s encryption. A year before that, the FBI director James Comey criticized the company for the inclusion of end-to-end encryption in its iMessage system. He claimed that he sees no point in marketing a “closet that could never be opened”, even if it is about a child kidnapper and a court order. Comey then also voiced similar views about the encryption used in Google’s Android platform. So, Apple CEO’s stance on privacy came as no surprise to the American government. A year ago, Cook warned of the “dire consequences” of sacrificing the right to privacy. Then, in June 2015, he defended strong-encryption technology, saying that undermining the ability of ordinary citizens to encrypt their data is incredibly dangerous. The problem is that if any back doors for the government are left, hackers can find and use them as well. Indeed, everyone knows the extent of the hacking problem today. Criminals are using every technology tool to hack into someone else’s accounts, and if they know there’s a back door somewhere, they won’t stop until they find it. So, weakening encryption would only hurt law-abiding citizens who rely on the tech firms to protect their information. After the Paris attacks late last year, Apple teamed up with 60+ other tech giants to reject calls for weakening encryption. __________________________ At least Tim Cook has it right! Let's hope that common sense prevails... The US attorney general Loretta Lynch is dead WRONG on this, and would bring data tyranny and chaos across the globe with her stance...
Which begs the question - is it possible for us Windows 10 users to encrypt ALL of our outgoing data, thereby sticking it to Microsoft and their evil plans? Does such a thing exist? A program or something that doesn't allow any data to be sent without first being encrypted? That would be an awesome piece of kit. Then it wouldn't matter what Microsoft got, they wouldn't be able to read it. Possible???
Not possible. To Encrypt any data the receiver needs to know how to decrypt it. If you encrypt without agreement you effectively completely disable your internet connection for everything.
Microsoft Spying Been a bit out of the loop for the holidays so maybe the data referred to in this video is already known, but posting anyway very interesting ...
Absolutely. It's certainly not a singularity; a standalone point that is either "there" or "not there", either/or, on or off, yes or not, black or white. And to prove the point I can limit my point just two dimensions, i.e. a line with two endpoints. At one end is absolute privacy, where no one, not even you, knows what you are attempting to communicate, with a point further along the spectrum where YOU know, but no one else does. Or can. Absolute privacy is called "secrecy", where no one outside of yourself has the information (or knowledge) that you do. At the other end of the spectrum is something that could be called "publicity" where the most sensitive, most protected information, that which you most desire to keep hidden from public view is put on display for anyone and everyone to experience and understand completely. For example your most intimate and significant sexual moment, put into a YouTube video and made available for download. It's just gone viral, and has 25 million hits. Your name, address, phone number, SSN, Drivers License, parent's names, education, work history, income, every single detail is made publically available. The complete and total absence of privacy, as well as any claim to any government-transcendent and supernatural "rights" to privacy. You are a cog in a giant machine, and completely owned an operated by something you you don't even know exists. Between these two points is an infinite number of permutations and options. We know your hair color, but not your blood type. We know your sexual orientation, but not the names of the people you've ever had sex with. We know how much money you've made, but we don't know how you spent it. We know you vote democrat, but don't know you secretly want to assasinate Donald Trump. Where the lines are drawn, who draws those lines and whether or not you know they exist, whether or not you agree with those lines and how they are applied (or not); it's all HIGHLY subjective, relative, negotiable and also it's fluid. A moving target, and there's no reliable way to "pin down" anything relevant to the subject, particularly in a hostile conversational environment where (for example) one person can use their ignorance of another person's language (and the connotational "loads" of the words being used) as a "spring-board" and lever to "accidentally" (delibarately) reframe a person's statements in order to post the illusion of it's refutation, to an audience of mindless borgs craving a dab of electronic entertainment.
Of course it's not only MS that does "interesting things". See here: https://twitter.com/snowden/status/700823383961792512 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-became-a-bulwark-for-digital-privacy.html
I just had a novel idea...Microsoft has given out Windows 10 for free and to make up for the cost deficit they now collect your information and sell it to third parties and target you with ads and such; this we already know. So it stands to reason that buying Windows 10 outright for the full price of $119.99 USD or whatever it costs should make sure that Microsoft gets paid for their "hard work", no? If Microsoft were worth a crap, they would draw a distinct line right down the middle of the two versions where the free version collects data and sells it to other companies and tracks you for advertisements and such, and give complete autonomy to the people that actually pay for their license for Windows 10. In a perfect world, this is how it should be...even though we like to, um..."circumvent" activation methods around these parts I still believe that Microsoft does contribute a great deal to the growth of desktop and mobile computing as a whole so they deserve to be compensated. Instead of spying on me though, how about let me purchase a legitimate license so that Microsoft can get paid and I can have my freedom? Also, I have to wonder how much information they've collected so far, and how much money they've made selling all of that data to other mining companies around the world by now, especially broken down into how much money Microsoft has earned per single Windows 10 user since it was released. Somehow I'm not sure that they've made "that" much money just data mining from a single person, so why not offer us the ability to purchase a full license instead of a free upgrade and give us our freedom back? Hell, at least Apple knows how to stick to their guns and refuse to create a version of iOS that can circumvent their own encryption methods so that they can protect all of their iPhone customers in the world.
I simply hope Windows maker and software maker can respect our privacy. And I believe when it's strictly kept in mind by them and obey by them, we can really get safe protection by surfing the Internet.
Sure, trust the Corporations with our interests - of course that our interest are always at the top of their agenda... Sociopaths Galore Inc. Beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!! Wake up!
My personal conclusions from what I have read around so far. I’m not claiming there’s anything new here, I’ve just summarized the various findings in one place. •MS has been monitoring users all along, also with previous OS versions. •We’ve come to realize how bad the situation is because Windows 10: (a) increased the monitoring (b) gave options for disabling it, from which we realized that it existed •MS is also introducing additional monitoring to previous versions by means of updates. •Even if all possible disabling thru the options is carried out, there still remains some monitoring we can’t get rid of. •You can possibly reduce monitoring further by avoiding the use of MS apps built into Windows 10, such as Cortana (certainly), Edge, Mail, People (contacts), Films & TV / WMP, Groove Music, etc. •Even if MS claims that the info gathered is for its own use, we all know that once gathered it can be accessed by anybody who wants it, one way or another. •Though Windows 10 does more monitoring, it also offers more possibilities to disable it. The end result may thus be actually better than in the case of previous versions (speculative).
My conclusion: * Spying not exist in MS Windows, since spying is not feedback and feedback opt-out is possible since the beginning. Of course you can whine that it's not opt-out by default. * I do agree that even after opt-out there was 'telemetry' but it could be fixed in meantime (since we getting changes very very fast). * No one ever provide an whireshark log (decrypted) to show that MS spy, which means all discussions without any proof are ridiculous. There was ONE old article, which are useless anyway it not showed any detail in deep look, was on astech page or so (whatever). * MS OS is constantly monitored, not like other low OS such as Linux distros which only getting here and there updates - switching to an OS which not regularly getting updates makes you in fact more insecure. * Linux is not more secure, there exist also malware for it, switching to it is not an answer. Most 'spying' is still due malware. * NSA leaks showed us that spying not needs to be integrated in any MS product, they got direct access, which means not even MS knows what they get and what not, there are separate cables, they can't even block this - this is why people wrongly saying MS 'helping' them, it's not correct, they are forced to do this due laws. And if you not cooperate with them they broach the undersea cables. Overall you can't escape, work with them or not but I prefer working with them so that you get a minimum on control and metadata aren't that dangerous. The mass on data is important, your name alone without ip and and and doesn't matter. What matters if how they can reveal your real data and this is still protocol issue. * Rumors like NSA key aren't confirmed, it's fud - you can name your variables as you want, NSA is also an acronym for other things. * Traffic is encrypted which makes it hard to decrypt, as long no one ever did this, the entire 'is spying on you' argument is just trolling. Provide proof, always or gtfo. * MS uses IPSec and other protocols which are over 20 years old, like e.g. FTP. You complain that an outdated protocol leaks your ip? Then simply use secure alternatives like sftp and that's it. It's common issue that the protocols aren't designed for security. The ones which are designed for it not preventing that you get infected by malware, so is this overall an OS issue? I doubt, an fully secured OS not exist. Security not starts with the OS, the OS not prevents that you connect to unsecure webpages or downloading poop from pirate-poopy-bay. * 'fake' experts over and over writing articles that the OS is leaking xyz without going in details or explaining how to stop this. On MDL a lot of people recommend to 'remove' packages or delete services for maintenance, this not really helps anyway, because according to the 'wrong mass' logic there exist backdoors you can't remove, you think ms is that stupid do allow you to remove the packages? And what if you do updates, you get same packages again on your system?! Removing xyz is pretty pointless, the security aspect has nothing to do with it, you can get malware on your HDD it doesn't matter as long it isn't running or getting executed. The real suggestion would be to allow only whitelist processes, which can be done via gpedit/regedit since years. * Win 10 is in fact more secure. latest driver signature changes preventing a lot of malware, since it can't get access and are been blocked, of course if you disable it because you want to work with modded drivers ... it's your fault, not OS. Disabling these security mechanism is always on your own risk. Other security mechanism are well explained ober here, here and here. * Activating your Windows leaks more information, means including MAC address, IP and more. This is known since years, no one ever complained about this. * Cortana and such 'new' features are .. as said, new and are designed to 'improve' Windows experience, this is also cloud based which means, of course there are connections, but collecting single words or sentences doesn't matter, it not collects your cedit card number or other important and unique things. * According to wrong rumours MS sends every xyz minutes stuff back, this is BS, you can test this via your router, reset your traffic stats, run windows one month and you see most traffic is causing by Windows update, not cortana, not any background process, simply WUS. Of course tinfoil people saying it's implemented in svchost.exe .. okay! Show proof! * Every search engine, every page you login and your AV collect a lot of more then you think, the pages you visit, the timestamp, ip and and more. No one ever complained about this before the leaks. Changing this would require a new kind of internet, and how does it help AV industries if they not getting data back?! You see ... * There exist no opt-out of cyber war, and we are in a cyber war, right now, there is the question between human right and what can we do to stop hackers/terrorists. As long this isn't solved and the gov. no changed anything we have bigger issue as OS FUD talk. * Monitoring is an result of laziness from people in past, they want secure OS without doing anything, okay! You got it now, this is our compromise we did. It's same like google, no one or only few wan to search 2/3 page, you only search first page and if you not find something you try to change your keywords, what you don't get is that this destroys the entire market, since only paid people getting on the first page, which has to do with marketing, money and more. MS now just did the same with the OS. Deal with it. I not want to protect MS or it's os here, but if we want to talk on serious ground only fact matters. And to over and over re-spell lies makes it less helpful to reveal the truth. I not say everything is fine (of course there is always room for improvements) but you can't get everything, the OS should be for both professional users and noobs and we have to make some compromises.
NSA etc. have the keys and/or capability to read the encrypted traffic, period! So, almost all of this is fud, period! Period!
We all need remember that we use software which is not ours. It is Microsoft's. We only have a license to use their property. Also, there really is no evidence of spying. Spying implies bad intent. You only need ask yourself what reason would MS have to spy on you? The only thing it would gain is tons of lawsuits. Follow the money, follow the lawsuits. I don't see any. Paranoid people see internet traffic between MS, and the computer as spying, but it is not. It never was.