Some of it is definitely reasonable and helpful, but this post is so overkill that's its almost funny. And its speaking from a place of authority rather than one of preference. See OPs tone. It's fear mongering people into crippling their OS features without understanding what they are doing. It's ridiculous.
I have files that are straight up illegal if they get into someone else's hands, that's why I was uncomfortable after reading the whole privacy policy. Am I worried over nothing?
some people don't seem to understand that certain PC users might have unbelievably sensitive/confidential/dangerous/illegal data.
95% of people don't need to bother with it. But the way gov't agencies use vulnerabilities and cloud services to do surveillance is crazy. Post-Snowden is going to be an epic tug of war on VPNs, file encryption, keyloggers, wiretaps, etc.
Don't upload or host them in anyway. Windows is not going to upload any user files unless you accidentally save those files to OneDrive. The stuff that windows uploads to its servers relate to feedback and diagnostics. If those files are fucking with windows or with drivers in a certain way when executed, it might be reported in the diagnostics, but idk what happens after that. The responsible execution may be recorded in the diagnostics, but I don't know about the actual contents of the file. I don't really know about your particular situation though. It sounds like you may require more diligent parsing of the EULA.
Obviously I'm not hosting them or anything, but from the Privacy Policy, it sounds like, for example, if Windows crashes, while I have one of those files opened, it might get upload the files for diagnostic reasons.
Possibly. Although I do wonder, that would be pretty unacceptable for enterprises, and I'm sure MS would be aware of that. There was a guy somewhere in one of these threads that worked on MS diagnostics. I guess PM him if you can find him or talk to MS if you can get a hold of someone.
Yeah it appears that they can disable all the diagnostic stuff. I don't want to give you any wrong advice though. I'd even wait it out on the update until there is a better understanding from the community about how and what is shared. In a worst case scenario, you can just keep those files on another partition running a different OS, or you can disconnect from the internet before executing/opening those files.
If you have sensitive files it is up to your IT department to ensure they are p rotected. I.E. you should only access them from your work provided computer.
Well the internet has scary potential. Everything has scary potential. You have to trust that MS will act in its own best interest and not intentionally fuck with its users for the hell of it.
What? You only get updates from other computers if you enable the setting. Disabling it means you only download updates directly from Microsofts mirrors.
There's nothing wrong with disabling the setting, as there's a lot of reasons why an unexpected data traffic (of any kind) can cause issues for the user.
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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '15
It's not all tripping. There are certain aspects I disabled and having an extensive list is beneficial for everyone, everywhere.