http://news.softpedia.com/news/visual-studio-2015-secretly-inserts-telemetry-code-into-c-plus-plus-binaries-505113.shtml

...to remove any telemetry calls added automatically to any compiled C++ binaries, developers should add the notelemetry.obj to their linker command line.

Yeah, that's really not a good look. Especially after how spyware-y win 10 is...

So they added an ETW event that has nothing to do with telemetry or privacy. What's the issue here? Illiteracy?

So they added an ETW event that has nothing to do with telemetry or privacy. What's the issue here? Illiteracy?

Ignoring the climate that this occurred in, it's really tactless for a compiler vendor to make your code do things that you no way remotely asked for. Yes, it's just logging... but what part of int main() { return 0; } should generate a call to a logging function? This doesn't matter to most people, but could matter to someone.

One commenter put it this way:

You are correct, ETW by itself just logs events. That in itself is not a problem. Here are the problems:

• ETW can and is sometimes used as part of solutions for remote telemetry.
• These events are coming from the program itself whenever the CRT is statically linked into the program.
• It's called telemetry.

You are correct, ETW by itself just logs events. That in itself is not a problem. Here are the problems:

• ETW can and is sometimes used as part of solutions for remote telemetry.
• These events are coming from the program itself whenever the CRT is statically linked into the program.
• It's called telemetry.

I wonder, will such a software overforce telemetry disabling in the registers? Telemetry hangs the to-report proccesses, instead of exeptional exitting. It is a dangerous thing in certain usages for sure (server etc.)

What do those functions do? Because the OS itself does not need anything to track a lot of your executable. Indeed, events logging is enable by default in every Windows systems, and it is used to track a lot of informations. And no-one will track your personal information with module loading timestamps.

EDIT: more interesting, what is the performance impact? I guess pretty low, but I may be wrong..

So should I not get the VS 2015 update 2? Wait till 3? Or is it still lurking around in update 1?

EDIT: more interesting, what is the performance impact? I guess pretty low, but I may be wrong..

From what I understand, those events are only called on certain actions like starting the application, loading a module, etc... so it should be pretty low.

I recently received a ton of reports of anti-virus software rejecting my application as a virus since I compiled with Update 2. While I haven't tested it out, I suspect that this telemetry-thingy might be responsible. I tried to disable it by linking with notelemetry.obj, so will see if this still happenes.

So should I not get the VS 2015 update 2? Wait till 3? Or is it still lurking around in update 1?

Actually it might be better to wait for 3 for multiple reasons, telemetry being just one of them. Update 2 is actually pretty buggy (at least for some people), so unless you need some specific features or require certain bugfixes that Update 2 brought, you better skip it and wait for the next one.

EDIT: more interesting, what is the performance impact? I guess pretty low, but I may be wrong..

From what I understand, those events are only called on certain actions like starting the application, loading a module, etc... so it should be pretty low.

I recently received a ton of reports of anti-virus software rejecting my application as a virus since I compiled with Update 2. While I haven't tested it out, I suspect that this telemetry-thingy might be responsible. I tried to disable it by linking with notelemetry.obj, so will see if this still happenes.

So should I not get the VS 2015 update 2? Wait till 3? Or is it still lurking around in update 1?

Actually it might be better to wait for 3 for multiple reasons, telemetry being just one of them. Update 2 is actually pretty buggy (at least for some people), so unless you need some specific features or require certain bugfixes that Update 2 brought, you better skip it and wait for the next one.

Well, anti-malwares are 95% scam, so it could be potentially be an issue for the final user only... But thank you for the information.

As for U2 being buggy, MS released multiple times the vs14-kb3151378 update (an update for update 2!).

So should I not get the VS 2015 update 2? Wait till 3? Or is it still lurking around in update 1?

If you are worried about it, just add the notelemetry.obj. Anyway, final version of Update 3 is near, few days ago they released the Update 3 RC...

Breaking news, Windows libc runtime emits diagnostic events only useful to someone who has the debug symbols for the program?

I don't really see a big problem here?...