EU data privacy investigation finds Microsoft guilty of "large scale and covert" harvesting and "unlawful" storage of MS Office user data

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Tenelia said:

Can the bois and gals on Ubuntu Linux stuff tell me how the situation is like for office work?

Has weird graphical glitches on my linux setup, I don't know why... Even on Windows has similar issues

Other than that, it supports doc and docx decently with an office 2003 like UI

But still is a whole better than openoffice

Edited February 6, 2019 by Guest

[RejZoR]

55 minutes ago, Sauron said:

So you lose trust in two megacorporations consecutively, then side with another megacorporation? There are "degoogled" open source android ROMs out there.

I may just as well buy a feature phone then because there is no point in using a smartphone without app ecosystem which is the reason to even own a smartphone. Wanna know why Microsoft phones died? It was because of garbage app support, not because of any other reason.

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Wanna know why Microsoft phones died? It was because of garbage app support, not because of any other reason.

And the OS is surprisingly light weight and fast/responsive. My Nokia (only a Lumia 635) boots up faster than all the high end phones I've compared it too, plus once it's booted it's actually is completely done not sorta but dw it's in the background (total opposite of regular Windows). Problem is as you said no app support, none of my banks in my country had apps for it, and now that it's unsupported more and more websites crash the browser and you can't get a different one because again no app support.

 

I actually really like the Windows Phone UI, the literal once place the tiles work.

[Sauron]

37 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I may just as well buy a feature phone then because there is no point in using a smartphone without app ecosystem which is the reason to even own a smartphone.

There are alternative app stores with most of what you would need without the google dependencies, like F-Droid. It works a bit like Linux distro repositories. You can even watch youtube without sending any information to Google using Skytube. You'd be surprised.

38 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Wanna know why Microsoft phones died? It was because of garbage app support, not because of any other reason.

You're sending a mixed message here - do you want privacy and control, or convenient apps that are after your soul?

 

Windows phone offered neither, with Android you get the choice, with Apple you get the latter.

[RejZoR]

No. Apple's primary income is from selling products. Google is selling you. That's a huge difference. Apple's main incentive isn't selling your data. And their push for privacy is at least seemingly reassuring that. If it turns out otherwise, that would be catastrophic to them. And that's when I'll ditch them too.

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It's a two factor authenticator. It's designed to run on a phone specifically.

Well in Hungary my bank use SMS for that. And in Germany they gave me a bankey..... (BTW devs making their apps throw in the towel when they see root is annoying like hell. There is no efing reason to do it...)

[Mihle]

6 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Well in Hungary my bank use SMS for that. And in Germany they gave me a bankey..... (BTW devs making their apps throw in the towel when they see root is annoying like hell. There is no efing reason to do it...)

Using SMS for 2 factor isnt secure at all btw. Well, it's better than nothing, but still.

 

In Norway with  banks and official state things, you can either get a small thing with one button that gives you code, or you can have a sim card that does it, both is much more secure than SMS.....

[jagdtigger]

24 minutes ago, Mihle said:

Using SMS for 2 factor isnt secure at all btw

If it is so insecure why banks use it instead of these things?

[LAwLz]

4 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

If it is so insecure why banks use it instead of these things?

Because it's an easy system to implement and costs next to nothing to do (compared to their own authentication app or one of those things you linked). 

 

SMS is one of the weakest single sign-in code methods you can have. It's still pretty safe, but sniffing sms traffic or obtaining a SIM with an identical phone number is far easier than cracking an authentication code using for example proper encryption over 4G.

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Because it's an easy system to implement and costs next to nothing to do (compared to their own authentication app or one of those things you linked). 

 

SMS is one of the weakest single sign-in code methods you can have. It's still pretty safe, but sniffing sms traffic or obtaining a SIM with an identical phone number is far easier than cracking an authentication code using for example proper encryption over 4G.

Even if they manage to get it somehow they still cannot get the credentials to sign in.... (dedicated PC just for these kind of important stuff, no casual browsing so there is no infection on it and usually unplugged from AC and network)

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

That's still recent for such a big story that affects so many people and which hasn't yet been reported here or that I've seen at other tech news places. And the aftermath of this report is currently ongoing as the investigators work with Microsoft to address the issues.

 

Microsoft's documentation of the data they harvest, which includes mention of over 3,500 individual data fields, is only for the core Windows 10 OS and doesn't include documentation of data that's harvested through additional Microsoft products and services.

 

This new Dutch report mentions that Microsoft doesn't declare or document any of the data that's harvested through MS Office software:

 

Microsoft's documentation for Windows 10 is also not complete and hasn't been updated since Windows 10 1803. Even before that, I think since any document was first published by Microsoft, the documentation was incomplete and the Microsoft Diagnostic Data Viewer tool would show data containers being harvested that are not mentioned in Microsoft's documentation.

The MS privacy policy applies to all MS product including office. Their privacy policy back in 2016 explained the inking data and auto correction improvement data.  I dare say the DPIA report just means that the data MS accumulates from office isn't reported to users when they buy or install office.

 

 

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-ca/privacystatement#

 

 

 

 

[Ashleyyyy]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

No. Apple's primary income is from selling products. 

and services. don't forget that. google does that too kinda but not as successfully. like who uses google play music? everyone uses either Apple music or Spotify.... 

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, firelighter487 said:

and services. don't forget that. google does that too kinda but not as successfully. like who uses google play music? everyone uses either Apple music or Spotify.... 

PAID services. How many things are payable under Google? Sure, users want free shit, but Apple doesn't really give anything away. You have to pay for everything. With Google, they give out nearly everything and have very little as payable. And even that is suspiciously cheap if we put it that way.