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No, Microsoft is not spying on you with Windows 10


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Okay,

I'm a privacy advocate, no doubt. But an informed one. I dislike the Googlesphere because they do take your content and turn them into advertising dollars by reading mail content and listening in by machine to calls to find content they can sell for targeted advertising. I say you because I avoid all things Google. I even got rid of my old favorite Picasa when Google announced their new EULA and Privacy statement. I do not use Earth, GMail, Voice or Search. I use Bing, Fotor, Here+ (Navigation) etc.

 

Why? Because in my world, Microsoft IS safe. Microsoft sells their software and hardware today, not advertising. They ask and offer opting out. Try to opt out of anything Google or FaceBook, or Twitter. See how easy they make it to remove your online content in their servers. Can you say NYET?

 

Microsoft has opt outs from the moment you start a new or factory restored system. If you can't understand the settings Ed has articles galore explaining them. But let's face it, there are a lot of folks that don't want to learn, and want to have someone reassure them. OK consider yourselves reassured. I can't help the conspiracy theorists or the grudge bearers who can't stop having flashbacks to the mid 1990s despite using other services today that are worse, much worse.

 

Here's Ed Bott, one of ZDNet's tech writers who specializes in Windows reviews and how-to's, and one of the best online rumor busters.

 

Excerpt:

 

"The Windows 10 privacy agreement doesn't mean Microsoft is secretly stealing the data from your hard disk. Where do people come up with these crazy ideas?

 

Buy tinfoil futures.

 

I'm dead serious. There is apparently a growing and very vocal population of people who believe that Windows 10 is basically a 1984 telescreen come to life. They are convinced that with Windows 10 Microsoft has built a spying apparatus not seen since the height of the Cold War, scraping up every detail of your life and feeding it back to Redmond for who knows what nefarious purposes.

 

They're going to need lots of tinfoil.

 

They're also either wildly misinformed or deliberately agitating. Unless, of course, they're just crazy, which is entirely possible based on some of what I've read.

 

But most importantly, they are wrong, terribly wrong. And they're being whipped into a frenzy, or at least passively aided by the tech press. That group unfortunately includes ZDNet, which earlier this week unquestioningly repeated this incendiary allegation, posted on Reddit by someone who claims to be affiliated with an obscure torrent tracker, iTS:

 

Microsoft decided to revoke any kind of data protection and submit whatever they can gather to not only themselves but also others. One of those is one of the largest anti-piracy company [sic] called MarkMonitor. Amongst other things Windows 10 sends the contents of your local disks directly to one of their servers.

 

That's not true. It's wildly at odds with the facts, even. I keep tabs on a handful of well-established torrent sites, orders of magnitude larger than the ones complaining here, and none of them seem to have a problem with Windows 10.

 

There's literally no basis for that statement in fact. And yet you read it here. And on dozens of other sites, unfortunately, where a single lie gets repeated often enough to seep into the collective unconscious.

 

The bizarre belief that Windows 10 is a spying tool keeps popping up among conspiracy theorists. Via email, a reader sent me a link to this rant by an alternative medical practitioner who apparently is also an expert on the law and IT:

 

Windows 10's new license agreement ... gives Microsoft permission to Hoover up every particle of data on a doctor's hard drive. This will include any confidential patient-doctor emails that are stored there, any reports, any bills, and any short notes to staff through intra-network messaging (for example: "Spoke to Tom Mypatient today re gender dysphoria and desire to transition to female. Pls follow up with referral.")

No, it doesn't, doc. Here, take a sip of this calming tea and let's talk, OK? And let's get that torrent dude in here, too, because he needs someone to explain what's really going on."

 

He goes on to explain what is going on in the full article you can find here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-microsoft-is-not-spying-on-you-with-windows-10/?tag=nl.e539&s_cid=e539&ttag=e539&ftag=TRE17cfd61

 

RV/Derek
http://www.rvroadie.com Email on the bottom of my website page.
Retired AF 1971-1998


When you see a worthy man, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy man, look inside yourself. - Confucius

 

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ... Voltaire

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I don't know how often W10 checks for updates. I shut my PC off at 10PM and back on at 7AM every day.

 

I went to update page today and last check it did was the 23rd today the 28th.

I ran a check for updates and one for the Defender and 2 other W10 ones. I had it do a download and install of them.

When done it ran another update check and 2 more of 374.53 MB showed up.

 

W10 had them set to run/download at 3:30AM. I have updates set for metered Data.

So I had to do a manual run and then had to do a restart.

 

This PC is running W10 Home. So doesn't look so far that any auto updates are being done.

But I don't know if any of the updates today were critical ones or not.

Full Time since Oct. 1999
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