A New Window Of Exploitation

[Mike Soda]

I couldn't tell if this for sure belonged here, in general discussion or tech news & with LTT loading so unusually slowly lately too I had to settle. Anyway, it seems Microsoft is now forcing unwanted apps & potentially bloatware down our throats too. I'm so happy I don't have Windows 10 right now although I probably will on my first build ever early next year so I am very concerned. As if the excessive telemetry data farming wasn't enough, now we've gotta guard ourselves against this.

P.S: Yes I always clear my browser cookies, history, offline data & my 1.5Mbps down connection is normally more than enough for these forums. So it must just be my ISP's connection to Canada or a problem with the forum itself, maybe via Firefox who knows.

[Guest]

I know my laptop Win 10 preinstalled with Asphalt 8 and Candy Crush Saga which is ridiculous but now they are getting more? WTF...

[1Reshiram12]

5 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

I know my laptop Win 10 preinstalled with Asphalt 8 and Candy Crush Saga which is ridiculous but now they are getting more? WTF...

Asphalt 8 great game.

[SCHISCHKA]

people need to support Steam OS

[GoodBytes]

20 hours ago, Mike Soda said:

I couldn't tell if this for sure belonged here, in general discussion or tech news & with LTT loading so unusually slowly lately too I had to settle. Anyway, it seems Microsoft is now forcing unwanted apps & potentially bloatware down our throats too. I'm so happy I don't have Windows 10 right now although I probably will on my first build ever early next year so I am very concerned. As if the excessive telemetry data farming wasn't enough, now we've gotta guard ourselves against this.
 

P.S: Yes I always clear my browser cookies, history, offline data & my 1.5Mbps down connection is normally more than enough for these forums. So it must just be my ISP's connection to Canada or a problem with the forum itself, maybe via Firefox who knows.

Sad to say, but Barnacules is still bitter and can't move on from his lost of position at Microsoft. Many who got laid off at Microsoft, including Barnacules himself, was given a new position within the company. He is an idiot. He refused in order to focus on his YouTube channel. He has given up a high paying job, and the best health care insurance you can possibly get. Not to mention, that once you work at a big company like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc. you have all your doors open at other companies, as they know that these jobs, where the candidature comes from, are: actually very difficult, that these companies have very difficult interview process, and is very challenging to get a position there due to the high competition level (everyone applies to those companies).

 

As a result, he pushes false ideas of spying and garbage against Windows 10, like Microsoft ruined him, despite having the ability to get a better position. He has like 3 videos now on this. He can't let it go. And sadly, he is fueled by the high viewership that these videos brings from not knowledgeable people which pushes him to do more, instead of properly educating them.

 

Windows is not forcing unwanted apps. Just because of an issue in the Anniversary Update (which has been solved if you are an Insider soon after the Anniversary Update was released) the OS built-in apps you uninstalled where installed back. So now, "OMG, Windows forces me to these apps!". Come on. Default reset issue was also fixed, if you wonder.

 

Windows DOES NOT install random apps from the Store... This is complete BS. I never seen or heard such behavior. The only thing that I can think off, is that when you first install Windows 10, it checks for updates, including apps. If you uninstall an app while it is installing the update of said app, it is normal that it will re-appear. You install back the app as you remove it... obviously it will back! Just wait for the updates to be done, then remove them.

 

Also, he complains about spying and all this, and suggests things to disable it "Because Microsoft is EVIL!!!!", but then he uses Bing and Edge web browser, and says how great they are... What?! And also use Chrome and an Android phone... which are filled with telemetry data tracking, and Chrome is designed to make money on you (nothing is free. Firefox lives off donations, and search done using Yahoo search engine by the user, as it promotes that search engine, much like it was Google in the past. Chrome lives off collecting information on you, which it ties with your Google account that you link to and selling this information). Riiiiiight. Total hypocrite to the next level.

 

Oh, and Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8... are all fine.... despite having a lot of telemetry data collecting as well. But NOW with Windows 10 it is an issue? Did you do anything before to disable it? Guess not. And it wasn't an "unknown" thing... Microsoft did share many times some stats from its users from the telemetry data collection in presenting why they change things or remove/add a feature on the built-in software.

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

... aaaaand there's the resident MS shill coming to Microsoft's rescue with nonsensical arguments.

 

For starters Barna was a senior software dev on the Windows team when he got fired, and the new positions they offered him were in the office team, the Xbox team, the Hololens team, which are much smaller teams with barely any option to climb up the corporate ladder.

He had just set up a new office, had just been promoted and awarded, and all of a sudden they fired his entire division.  You can't blame the guy for realizing that there is no job security at that company anymore and that it doesn't matter how good you are at your job.  Once bitten, twice shy. 

Then there's the fact that he disagrees with the direction the company has taken ever since Ballmer and Satya started to ruin it.  He did say he'd go back in a heartbeat if Gates took the reigns again.  

Furthermore, he did mention that during the MS days he was earning well but barely got to spend any time with his wife and son.  That could also be a contributing factor to his decision to stick to his YT channel. 

 

"Windows is not forcing unwanted apps", "The default settings change was a mistake", etc etc.  are you really dumb enough to believe that those are all accidents?  It's been one "oopsie" after another for over a year now, and coincidentally those so-called mistakes are always in Microsoft's favor. 

They only get fixed long after MS gets caught and called out for it, never by means of a quick update the day after it gets discovered (which would be perfectly possible, after all they can update your PC how and when they please).

Those are not accidents, that's a consistent pattern of suspicious behavior.  If those were really accidents, they would have taken steps to prevent those accidents from happening, for instance by hiring some testers.

 

As for Windows not installing random apps and you never having seen or heard it, I assume you haven't watched the above video then.  He "got swamped" with replies when he asked if people had random apps on their PC that they never installed.  Both his twitter feed and the comments on the YT vid show it.  If you really haven't seen or heard about such behavior, you obviously have your eyes closed and your ears covered.

 

There's a hell of a lot of difference between XP/VIsta and later telemetry.  XP and Vista's telemetry was pretty much limited to error reports, which the user had to give explicit permission for.  It used to be the same for Win7 and the early 8.1, but MS has gone and upgraded that to Win10 levels of telemetry which are either hard or impossible to disable. 

An OS has no business with how often users use which feature, or what they type.  All it needs to do is give a user access to the files on his PC and to run the programs that he wants to run. (and print files, and scan etc, but you get the basic idea).   It has absolutely no valid excuse to tell Microsoft that user 15663486 has been viewing photos with app X for Y amount of time. 

Besides, that kind of info tells nothing about how the user values said app, or what he/she would like to see differently.  If they want to know what apps and features need to be changed, all they need to do is look at their own forums where people willingly provide proper feedback. 

 

As for viewership on those videos, people wouldn't be watching them if the whole Win10 thing wasn't an issue to begin with.  People are obviously looking for ways to stop Microsoft's malicious behavior and regain control of their own PC.

[stationvsbox]

I think it's ass

[RS2007GOD]

This is why I refuse to use Microsoft store. Forza how ever good it is isn't worth it. I simply wouldn't use windows if I had a decent alternative. 

[Curious Pineapple]

This is why I trashed my Windows 10 install and went back to 8.1, none of this shite and a stable system that I can leave running for weeks with no worries that it will suddenly lock up in the middle of something.

[Curious Pineapple]

1 minute ago, Secondmineboy said:

Windows 7 and 8.1 received the data mining stuff too recently. Get to Linux, its free

Windows is free too

 

Can't use Linux, blame NCR for that one.

[BuckGup]

3 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Windows is free too

 

Can't use Linux, blame NCR for that one.

Ehhh no it's not. 

[Wolther]

5 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Windows is free too

 

Can't use Linux, blame NCR for that one.

Windows isn't free bub

[Keg Ops]

"If something is free, you are probably the product."

 

Excluding open source alternatives, I guess that's truer than ever now. 

 

I really like Windows 10, but the constant spying has me wanting to jump ships, at the very least on my laptop where I don't do much gaming on.

 

I really want to jump ships, but I got Office for free at college and my account associated no longer exists, so in other words if I install another OS I'll never be able to get it  back.

[Curious Pineapple]

3 minutes ago, Wolther said:

Windows isn't free bub

It is when you have a pile of machines with valid license keys on the cases

 

Besides, you don't need a licensed copy to use it if you can put up with the nagging messages and restricted mode after the 30 day grace period is up.

[The Belgian Waffle]

2 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

It is when you have a pile of machines with valid license keys on the cases

Mind sending me a key for W7 Home premium 64?

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, The Belgian Waffle said:

Mind sending me a key for W7 Home premium 64?

The only W7 key I have is an OEM Acer key on my tablet I think, most of them are XP.

[ThinkWithPortals]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, every day I get gladder and gladder that I didn't "upgrade" to Windows 10.

[The Belgian Waffle]

2 minutes ago, Secondmineboy said:

 

 

Sorry but this is off-topic stuff and can be discussed in a PM.

Sorry, it was only meant to be funny

[TetraSky]

The anniversary update came out a while ago though... and it was already well known that the update resetted your settings, since some settings may interfere with the install process. I believe Microsoft did say they will try to do it better next time.

As for apps that get installed without your consent... Well candy crush and farmville are actually apps that are on the windows 10 ISO since it first came out. Not new to the anniversary update. It replaces the old shitty built-in games that were in windows before.

And I'm pretty sure Netflix isn't bundled with it, there's no money for microsoft in there. So you probably downloaded it on the store yourself or you had it before, formatted and since you didn't manually uninstalled it, it reinstalled itself.

 

As for me,I never did that registry thing and I sure don't have any unwanted apps installed. I've run things like "Anti-Beacon" by Spybot and manually changed the privacy settings off.

[ivan134]

How come I never have these problems? Do people on this forum not know how to PC?

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, Captain Chaos said:

For starters Barna was a senior software dev on the Windows team when he got fired, and the new positions they offered him were in the office team, the Xbox team, the Hololens team, which are much smaller teams with barely any option to climb up the corporate ladder.

 

Incorrect. He was a Software Developer in Test. His job was testing Windows. This role has be removed from Microsoft. Turning most employees to Software Developers (from what we can see from the number employee the company has, it didn't shrink by the amount of actually reported layoffs, excluding Nokia joined staff.. of course).

The idea is to have more devs working on features and improvements, to accelerate OS releases, and not have to put everything on hold once a feature is made for the Tester to test everything, including building software to test functions coded. Most companies, don't have this Developer Testers team, they just have normal testers which report bugs, and the basic testing is made by the dev team themselves, allowing them to be faster and agile to changes.

 

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He had just set up a new office, had just been promoted and awarded, and all of a sudden they fired his entire division.  You can't blame the guy for realizing that there is no job security at that company anymore and that it doesn't matter how good you are at your job.  Once bitten, twice shy. 

There are no job security anywhere (beside governmental jobs). The MacBook Pro could have not sold well, and, as usual, because of the few executive at the top bad decisions, mass lay-off happens to cut operation cost to show good numbers to their investors and shareholders. Many banks do this when their investments aren't good, and not many new clients joins the bank to show good profit numbers. That is the reality of things. You always need to work on other things beside your job to expand your knowledge and have your resume always updated so that you are ready to apply elsewhere. Every recruiter expert and head hunter will tell you this. Every book on job searching will have a note on this. There is no job security. Remember the Zune? Microsoft made a separate deviation, new building apart from Microsoft's, with its own managers and everything, creating more delays to the late players release, and by the time it was out, it was too late, and it didn't sale well, and everything was demolished, and employees where moved to other departments (mostly Windows Media Player team (forming Windows Media Player 12) and XBox team, if I recall correctly..., probably was lay-offs as well.. I am going by memory)

 

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Then there's the fact that he disagrees with the direction the company has taken ever since Ballmer and Satya started to ruin it.  He did say he'd go back in a heartbeat if Gates took the reigns again.  

Perhaps, but by ruining it, does that mean:

• Actual focus on developers this time, and not just talk.
• Actual focus on gamers, and not just talk.
• Fixing the mobile OS that, while late and other issues, is actually not only usable, solid, and feature rich, but making it actually competitive to Android and iOS.
• Surface line been booming, bringing in revenue in the billions to the company, re-energize the OEM PC market to actually bring effort to their systems, resulting in them stopping selling with the overpriced garbage. That is systems with shitty TN panels, cheap build-quality, crappy cooling systems, world worst touchpad, and the current Windows minimum screen resolution.
• Company stock which was a flat line, actual going up.
• Services that better fit consumers and enterprises like Office 365, Azure and more, bringing a lot of revenue to the company.
• Azure finally taking off, and being a serious competitor to Amazon's
• Opening the XBox from the otherwise completely locked down system (remember the leak controversy before the console was revealed), to now trying to fix the wrong direction that they were going, and having updated controllers using standard Bluetooth, and an adapter, where if you have the old controller, supports 4 of them, and not be like the 360 one where it was 1 adapter per controller, costing a fortune if you wanted just 2 in the end.
• Opening up their software to other platforms (Office on Android and iOS (not to mention finally update the Mac version), Linux sub-system under Windows, Visual Studio on Mac, Visual Studio Code on Windows, Mac and Linux, Skype for Linux, etc).

While I don't agree with Satya every decision made, say what you will, but the company has been very successful recently compared to before.

 

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Furthermore, he did mention that during the MS days he was earning well but barely got to spend any time with his wife and son.  That could also be a contributing factor to his decision to stick to his YT channel. 

That is true. Working in a company in the US (most of them), especially as an engineer, the company expects you to dedicate yourself to the company. Much like the gaming industry, where while many days you do 40h weeks, you do have to do a lot of 50h weeks (without extra pay), and in the gaming world, you can even need to do all nighters. Software Engineering is a difficult job.

 

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"Windows is not forcing unwanted apps", "The default settings change was a mistake", etc etc.  are you really dumb enough to believe that those are all accidents?  It's been one "oopsie" after another for over a year now, and coincidentally those so-called mistakes are always in Microsoft's favor. 

Say what you will, but it is all fixed. Join the Insider program and you can see for yourself.

 

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They only get fixed long after MS gets caught and called out for it, never by means of a quick update the day after it gets discovered (which would be perfectly possible, after all they can update your PC how and when they please).

Looking at the feedback hub, not many complained... and it was fixed.

 

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Those are not accidents, that's a consistent pattern of suspicious behavior.  If those were really accidents, they would have taken steps to prevent those accidents from happening, for instance by hiring some testers.

To my understanding, aside from the Insider program, the company hire testers. Testers are usually done through contracted work to other companies (a way to cut costs, as they don't have to offer the same benefits, let alone offer room within the company to have these employees).

 

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As for Windows not installing random apps and you never having seen or heard it, I assume you haven't watched the above video then.  He "got swamped" with replies when he asked if people had random apps on their PC that they never installed.  Both his twitter feed and the comments on the YT vid show it.  If you really haven't seen or heard about such behavior, you obviously have your eyes closed and your ears covered.

Well I don't know what people do with their system. Looking at this forum, which I like to think is filled with many tech enthusiasts, shows no such complaints. The only thing I can agree, is that when you first install Windows 10, depending on where you are, you have a few third party apps. But those don't came pack once you uninstall them, and even if you update Windows, they don't come back.

 

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There's a hell of a lot of difference between XP/VIsta and later telemetry.  XP and Vista's telemetry was pretty much limited to error reports, which the user had to give explicit permission for.

No. Microsoft had way more data then this. They knew system specs, what programs was used the most, how much time within a program that program was used, the number of times the disk drive was used, which options were used and how Windows was setup, and more.

 

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  It used to be the same for Win7 and the early 8.1, but MS has gone and upgraded that to Win10 levels of telemetry which are either hard or impossible to disable. 

Incorrect. It was the same. All that changed, is that in Windows 10 you can't fully disable it, you can only send the basic info, and that the privacy policy has been written in plain English, and put at the for front, not hidden. Most people never did steps to disable telemetry data in Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8.

 

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An OS has no business with how often users use which feature, or what they type.  All it needs to do is give a user access to the files on his PC and to run the programs that he wants to run. (and print files, and scan etc, but you get the basic idea).   It has absolutely no valid excuse to tell Microsoft that user 15663486 has been viewing photos with app X for Y amount of time. 

Incorrect. The OS has every business in knowing what people do. The WHOLE point of the OS is to hide the back-end, and give you the tools you need to be productive. There are reason why Linux based OS goes no where, and apps and gaming support isn't really the reason. Telemetry data collection allows Android to pass from this:

 

 

To what we have now. Developers can only guess what my mom wants and expects from a computer device (whatever it is: laptop, desktop, phone, etc). Devs can only excel at doing things that best benefits them, as they are in the field. It is very difficult to think about a user just like this. Studies, research and telemetry data is used to get this... else we have.

(what a great way to interact with a PC.)

 

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Besides, that kind of info tells nothing about how the user values said app, or what he/she would like to see differently.  If they want to know what apps and features need to be changed, all they need to do is look at their own forums where people willingly provide proper feedback. 

Yes, because my mom goes there daily to post feedback.

 

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As for viewership on those videos, people wouldn't be watching them if the whole Win10 thing wasn't an issue to begin with.  People are obviously looking for ways to stop Microsoft's malicious behavior and regain control of their own PC.

They have control of their PC, if they didn't, they could do what they are trying to do (which all these apps are garbage, they make you think it does more than you can do within Windows itself). Until they actually modifies system files, now we will talk.

 

I have no problem him showing these tools, saying what they do. But be accurate about it, and explain how to go in the options of Windows if you want to do it manually. Be an actual privacy focused.. not "Windows 10 is spying!!!!! Chrome, Facebook, Google... yea, those are great! Maximum privacy right there. But Microsoft? NEVER! SPY SPY SPY, NSA ultimate spying edition! With live camera feed.. and each users has a Microsoft employee watching your every move, and logging everything to make mass money! Just don't look at their financial statement which will contract me". This type of hypocrite  behavior is not OK. It is only miss informing people. If you want privacy.. GO ALL IN. If you are leaking left and right, there is not point.

 

Educate properly, and then I'll have 0 problem. They are great information online on privacy. They are great, high-quality software available and open source.

 

 

 

[klh2000]

35 minutes ago, Secondmineboy said:

Many telemetry stuff is on Windows 7 and 8.1 by now too. Best option is Linux.

The telemetry is easy enough to get rid of on windows 8.1 though, you just have to do a truck-load of registry mods, and that spying is gone for good!

[Misanthrope]

5 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

How come I never have these problems? Do people on this forum not know how to PC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

[LAwLz]

14 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

How come I never have these problems? Do people on this forum not know how to PC?

Or maybe you don't notice things getting changed behind your back but others do?

[WereCat]

Spybot Anti-Beacon?