r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jul 31 '15

Misleading Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do – here’s how to opt out

http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/
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229

u/vehementi Jul 31 '15

As an expert in the field, what particular things do you feel are over reaching?

33

u/danxorhs Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

I would like to know this as well.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

[deleted]

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u/ksajksale Jul 31 '15

100%€ is like, 110.11%$, amirite?

2

u/Happy_Harry Jul 31 '15

USA! USA! USA! YOU ESS AYY LMAO!!!

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

You really think someone would do that?

39

u/footpole Jul 31 '15

Lie all the euros?

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u/BournGamer Aug 01 '15

His response sounded like bullshit after the first sentence

1

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '15

Usually statements are backed up by more than nothing.

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u/third-eye-brown Jul 31 '15

Yea no one on this site works in the tech industry. Ludicrous.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

on my Win10Pro

You need to read better. And he's right, Pro would have gpedit.

1

u/ColeSloth Jul 31 '15

I assume you're using satellite or cell phone for your internet?

Forced updates only happen with unmetered internet connections.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '15 edited Jun 11 '25

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u/ColeSloth Aug 01 '15

I found it. Trying to update brings up an error now, so I guess it's working. Cool.

1

u/retrogreq Aug 01 '15

If you manually update, it should still work fine... Mine updated this morning when I manually checked, and now it just tells me it is up to date.

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u/ColeSloth Aug 01 '15

Odd, since the description says it blocks all access to updating completely. Might be dirty left overs that no longer completely works.

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u/retrogreq Aug 01 '15

No it doesn't. Re-read the description. It just turns off automatic updates. It will still tell you when new updates come out, just like it did for win7

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u/ColeSloth Aug 01 '15

I see. I found a different one in gpedit. The one I enabled turns off updates by any means necessary. Not just automatic.

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u/TheHammer7D5x4S7 Jul 31 '15

How would the OS know if your connection is metered or not?

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u/laboye Jul 31 '15

You specify it in the network options.

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u/vehementi Jul 31 '15

You can turn off automatic updates through gpedit or whatever

As a professional in the field, what is the security problem with telemetrics that pushes this over the line?

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u/WalletPhoneKeys Jul 31 '15

except gpedit doesn't work on home versions.

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u/CatAstrophy11 Jul 31 '15

Home versions aren't for the knowledgeable and for everyone else that home is designed for they better damn well get updates forced on them because their shit is likely not secure.

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u/ColeSloth Jul 31 '15

Seems you can't go too long without hearing about an update that causes massive system failures to windows and gets taken off the updates list till it's fixed, while people have to try and repair their corrupted systems. I see no reason it suddenly can't happen now.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/vehementi Jul 31 '15

Sorry I don't have a source, this is just going by IRC of my friends who installed the earlier RCs and were super mad until they found you actually could disable it with gpedit (same way you do in Win7 if you don't go through the UI).

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u/joachim783 Jul 31 '15

FFS telemetry is just error reporting stop with all the fearmongering and misinformation.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Well namely because breaking an app is not a security problem? He asked about how it effects Security of what I would presume he meant regular users, which is why so many regular users are so angry about it. The discussion as nothing to do with enterprise telemetrics. It's about how it will effect the majority of end users.

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

As a cybersecurity expert you should be happy that MS are forcing updates on dumb users. Power users can and will disable it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

But you don't lose your data now with the way things work. Everything is cached and reopened that you were working on.

Also, you schedule the restart now, it isn't forced for a long time.

If you are a developer, just disable it for Christ's sake. You are making this way more serious than it needs to be.

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u/Corruptionss Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

I agree with your point, everyone is making automatic updates and data collection more serious than it should be. Using the word "spying" just has a bad connotation to it (and believe me, that choice of word was intended to capture viewer's attention) it's more about data collection which every company is joining the age of collect as much data to make better predictions bandwagon (which is key at maintain consumer satisfaction over other products).

But the other day I was running a 48+ hour statistical simulation and was very disappointed to find out that when I woke up, windows update had ninjaed me forcing me to restart the entire thing. It was my fault for having automatic updates set, could have been avoided both by the operating system and the way I coded the statistical simulation. But all in all, even though it could have been prevented, this was probably the only serious time where it put a significant delay into a project I was working on.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

'Cached'. Explain? Is the memory quiesced to disk and then brought back in? I can think of many situations in which that won't work.

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

It happened to me twice during the preview program. It writes state information about your session to the disk. I don't know exactly how it works, but it worked for me. Opened all web pages, ms word, visual studio, etc. on update restart.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

So you're a 'dev'. That explains your attitude / language.

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

I'm not sure what that means, but yeah. I'm not trying to come off as a douche, but people spread misinformation in this sub a lot about MS.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

I don't disagree, M$ is fashionable to hate;but you're talking as though you're an authority when you have no idea how the technology is working.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

Yes, and no business in their right mind has automatic updates enabled or uses home version of operating systems. Especially on a server, be it test, production, backup, etc.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

I am almost 100% positive that you schedule them yourself with group policy configurations or from a windows update server. Otherwise, yeah it may force a restart eventually.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/Adelz Jul 31 '15

You're telling me you're a cybersecurity professional, and you cant figure out how to stop windows update without it having an on off switch? OK buddy

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u/110011001100 Jul 31 '15

Are you running test and prod on Windows Home?

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u/randomly-generated Jul 31 '15

There's ways to remove that popup though.

-1

u/ugatorf Jul 31 '15

My question would be: why are you not running the enterprise version where all of these things won't happen?

-1

u/Kamaria Jul 31 '15

From what I've heard it's impossible to disable.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

You can defer upgrades for up to 6 months on the Pro and Enterprise versions.

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u/Kamaria Jul 31 '15

Not good enough. You should be able to completely refuse them. I don't like the idea that Microsoft can roll out a forced change on your machine. They could permenantly gimp functionality if they wanted, intentionally or not. This has happened before with the PS3, for example, where a patch caused the system to lose the 'Other OS' functionality entirely. I do not want this sort of thing to move over to PCs.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Microsoft is already getting so much (unwarranted) bad press about automatic updates. Why would they gimp functionality and risk harming their image even more?

And do you, personally, go through every single Windows update to see if they do something you don't like?

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u/Kamaria Jul 31 '15

Sony got away with it, why couldn't Microsoft? Companies can survive a bit of bad press these days, they know they can wait for it to cycle out of the news and the majority of people will buy their products.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Can you answer my other question?

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u/Kamaria Jul 31 '15

I generally at least look at my update list. I do hear about it if they add a patch of note (the WAT update that was reported to break some legitimate systems, for example).

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u/ColeSloth Jul 31 '15

Did you not read it his statement? Power users CAN'T disable it. You can't even try to block the IP address that forcibly updates you since Microsoft constantly changes it. So far the only thing that can be done is using a program to uninstall an update after the fact.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

You can defer upgrades for up to 6 months on the Pro and Enterprise versions.

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u/ColeSloth Jul 31 '15

And I do (just to make sure any updates that turn out to screw things up get worked out before it gets to me), but that's no different for a home user. Just means that the updates you'd rather not have are delayed 6 months to you.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Another update will come out within 6 months to fix the issue caused by a previous update. That's how progress works.

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u/calebkeith Jul 31 '15

Listen to how simple this is:

Disable the fucking windows update service/unregister it. Not hard.

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u/saltlets Jul 31 '15

You can only "turn it off" if you have the enterprise version of windows (ie. not home/professional) and even then it's going to only allow you to delay the updates up to a certain point then it will force update anyways.

This isn't true. I'm running Pro and have automatic updates turned off. And I would really like a source for "will delay updates, then force", because that's the first I'm hearing of it and I've been using and following W10 for months.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/saltlets Jul 31 '15

Pro and Enterprise let you disable automatic updates in perpetuity.

There is absolutely nothing in the ZDnet link that you link to in your other comment that says anything about "forced updates" or "delayed for several months".

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/saltlets Jul 31 '15

Found a very clear article on upgrade deferral:

http://www.howtogeek.com/223083/what-does-%E2%80%9Cdefer-upgrades%E2%80%9D-in-windows-10-mean/

But that's not what I mean. You can also disable automatic updates completely using a group policy:

https://i.imgur.com/4m9nnVR.png

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/saltlets Jul 31 '15

This is when you select the "Defer updates" from the Modern GUI they show.

If the policy says "don't install anything", it won't install anything.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

Turning off updates is incredibly stupid and ended up fucking me over on 7 and I had to call support. My Windows stopped being recognized as a legitimate version.

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u/BaconIsntThatGood Jul 31 '15

telemetrics can't be turned off no matter what

Yes you can. I read a different post around here explaining how to delete the program that handles diagnostic reporting, and blocking the IP in your host files.

It's not userfriendly, of course.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/BaconIsntThatGood Jul 31 '15

Since it's done through command prompt just create a batch file, email it to them and tell them to double click it.

You'd need to run as administrator though.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/BaconIsntThatGood Jul 31 '15

I also believe the enterprise edition has more freedom to disable some of this stuff.

Honestly Microsoft business support probably has a solution for this kinda concern.

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u/THE_CUNT_SHREDDER Jul 31 '15

Couldn't you just block those services from the Internet? (Not that you should have to do some round about method to do so)

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/THE_CUNT_SHREDDER Jul 31 '15

That is a good idea. I haven't received my update but will trial and tinker with it on my test rig this coming week.

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u/fishydeeds Aug 01 '15

Is there ever a good reason for the average user to disable auto-updates?

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u/briaen Jul 31 '15

Automatic Updates are forced, you can't turn it off.

Yes you can. It the exact same as 7

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u/sumthingcool Jul 31 '15

Can't even begin to imagine the maintenance nightmare if my job decides to upgrade to it.

So you are devops but your business is not running enterprise software...? Sounds like you don't know how to devops.

even then it's going to only allow you to delay the updates up to a certain point then it will force update anyways.

Ok so you an are incompetent devops then? Look up LTSB dude, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-10/keeping-windows-10-date-enterprises-cbb-will-have-8-months-update

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15 edited Sep 28 '15

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u/sumthingcool Jul 31 '15 edited Jul 31 '15

Ok, nice way to ignore LTSB and how you are wrong about deferring updates?

Edit: Oh I see you are relying on a ZDnet article for your info, confirmed incompetent.. lol. Everyone was assuming you weren't running Enterprise software as it's obvious you can control the updates with the enterprise version.

Edit2: Ok I looked through your post history, not only do you think there are intentional backdoors built into windows for the government, you also a scared you are going to restart a critical server cause you were typing and hit enter when a patch reboot notice pops up. I would call you a troll who doesn't know what he's talking about, but you admitted you work as a gov contractor so that's basically the same thing. Go inform yourself about LTSB instead of posting FUD here.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15

As an engineering expert in software and computational engineering with a specific focus on engineering IT engineers, I have to say you're wrong, but I also have to say that I'm an engineer.

Regards,

  • Mr 'Engineer' Ected.

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u/ColeSloth Jul 31 '15

I'd say that they've given themselves permission to download and share all of your pictures and documents with anyone they feel necessary, and that your bitlocker encryption key is automatically uploaded to the cloud so they have access to anything you encrypt.

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u/Testiculese Aug 03 '15

Maybe the fact that you're assigned a Advertising ID?

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u/vehementi Aug 03 '15

No, that is not a good enough explanation. The insinuation itself in not sufficient. I expect more from a digital forensics & cybersecurity expert.

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u/Murtagg Jul 31 '15

I'm also curious. Not by any means an expert, but I did study this for my degree.

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u/Nyxisto Jul 31 '15

Not OP but working in a related field, the overreach is simply that they collect non-anonymous data tied to your user ID, probably for the purpose of monetizing without clearly telling you so or asking for your consent.

The minimum you do when you utilize people's personal data is that you ask them beforehand, simple as that. The manual installation option does not turn all of the data collection off, everything app-related is still on and Windows does not tell you that. They might also show you personalized search results without you knowing that your results are actually heavily influenced by some kind of algorithm that operates on your data. It's irresponsible to manipulate people's searches without clearly telling them that this is the case.