Hi. After the recent release of Windows 10 and along with the excitement and praise came the now-usual complaining, some warranted I believe and some probably not so much. However, one concern that I find resonates with me is about privacy. Some people are talking about outright keylogging, the right to download and activate updates that can collect data at any time without notice, the collection of all sorts of personal information that one might not want to share, including browsing history, calendar events, contacts information, and files... etc. Especially concerning is "files" since that seems to apply to ALL files on the computer and not just those on the cloud!

The section of the EULA that is considered most troubling is this:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.

A related article on rockpapershotgun is here:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/windows-10-privacy-settings/

Do you think changing the right preferences is enough to guarantee your privacy to a satisfactory degree? What are your thoughts about this?

I'm still waiting for somebody to do the research to indicate how many of these new Windows 10 privacy switches are new switches (or old switches in new places). For example, has anybody looked at what Windows 8 did/collected/et cetera with privacy switches scattered all over and compared it to what Windows 10 does?

Like, the wireless network password sharing thing seems new, but are the bits about collecting browse information?

Phones have been doing this for years. So have search engines. Windows 8 sent your start menu searches out to Bing by default so you could search the web from your desktop.

I do think there should be a little bit more control in the Privacy settings then there is right now - some of the groupings are a little vague about what kind of information they cover.

The only difference is with Modern apps MS is giving you far more control over what those programs can and cannot access on your machine (something you can't do with standard desktop apps - nothing prevents Steam from scraping your email box and logging all your key presses except Valve's promise that they won't)

I find the hysteria rather overblown, myself. Sure, pointing people at the privacy settings is always a good idea, and MS could do a little more to make the options more visible during setup, but if you want to be able to ask Cortana if it's going to rain today she's kind of going to need to know your location...

The section of the EULA that is considered most troubling is this:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.

Sure "good faith belief" just translates to "government agency with a warrant"?

In which case, they are just making explicit how things already work today (if you thought Microsoft ever went out on a limb to protect your data from the NSA, think again).

I am just worried about code itself i write, i dont want any other person to review it. That should be a private thing.

The section of the EULA that is considered most troubling is this:

Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.

Sure "good faith belief" just translates to "government agency with a warrant"?

In which case, they are just making explicit how things already work today (if you thought Microsoft ever went out on a limb to protect your data from the NSA, think again).

Warrant? When did government agencies ever bother with warrants. NSA certainly hasn't.

Personally I think that even private files in private folders are subject to being collected and disclosed is beyond the red line. Source code of important software projects, the nudes of your significant other, accounting information, footage of high political importance, or stuff that the government (here it could mean a tyrant in the middle east) may inflict real harm on people for. That opens the door to a future where we will have to exchange flash drives and view the contained government-disapproved content after restarting the computer and booting to linux. Heh, I'm half-kidding.

I'm still waiting for somebody to do the research to indicate how many of these new Windows 10 privacy switches are new switches (or old switches in new places). For example, has anybody looked at what Windows 8 did/collected/et cetera with privacy switches scattered all over and compared it to what Windows 10 does?

Like, the wireless network password sharing thing seems new, but are the bits about collecting browse information?

They are just better organised. They also introduced a privacy tab to select which store applications allow to do background downloads..

I had a look at the background connection and used traceroute, and I only found every single piece of software and service I deliberate allowed (and I only allowed onedrive, meteo and mail apps). I also confess to use hosts file to block annoying built-in store applications ads.

Where I don't have much control about privacy and background connection are obviously "classic" win32 applications (Adobe anyone?). Actually, the only piece of software scanning my entire hard drives without explicit permission I remember was EA Origin...

Apparently Windows 10 = NS-5 in that case. Seems will stick to Win 8.1 for a while (assuming its better)

but are the bits about collecting browse information?

And is the collecting browse information only via Microsoft Edge (the new browser) and Cortana, or does Windows 10 also collect browse information even when I use Google Chrome with Google search engine? (I doubt it, but still would like to know)

And if so, while that would suck and I dislike it, does it really matter if I add Microsoft to the list of the twenty other companies already tracking me?

Google Search, my ISP, the Tier1 network the ISP connects to, the CIA tapping into the Tier1, twenty-odd cookie-and-advert networks (including Google and Facebook), the Google Analytics built into most sites, Facebook via the Like button even when I don't use Facebook, Google via the G+ button, and etc...

At this point, we almost have to recognize that the internet is more public that going for a walk down a crowded New York street - when walking in the crowd, nobody is paying attention, but when on the internet, each individual is being personally tracked and their movements recorded.

Win8.1 also tracked your search queries doing a desktop search (it'd integrate internet results when doing a 'search everywhere' with Win+S).