Windows 10 logs your keystrokes (and you can't turn it off)

http://i.imgur.com/kNw1k3a.png

And it's available as an update for Windows 7 & 8, just in case you want to be tracked by Microsoft without buying a new computer!
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3068708

 

[chimpburgers]

It was bound to happen and they probably were already doing it before, just like how many corporations will record your phone calls to them under the guise of "quality assurance." Microsoft also most likely wants to record your keystrokes so they can sell specifically targeted ads to you and they can know how you respond to certain things and then keeping that information in their database. Just something to think about.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Blame the success of internet in general. Even if we stay on an older OS (not a -bad thing-, Win7 still has years to go), we're being traced in so many ways you can't possibly accept connecting your basic cellphone through USB or bluetooth to PC. You might as well cut the phone calls and texts to five a month because you're the revenue and open diary regardless. Security countermeasures are being constantly and consistently outsmarted -- it will only be a matter of time until a black hat, whether or not they are in America or China, makes you their example.

No doubt people are going to act like Apple aren't guilty of this, but that's besides the point. Even if you tick that 'Do Not Track/Send User Feedback' to the off-position, you've already given the company an asset to trace.

 

[Too Many Crooks]

Shit. If keystroke logging is applicable to Windows 7 as well, How can I stop the update?? Worse, what if it's already installed without my knowledge and I cannot uninstall it?

 

[An Ounce of Vagina]

I happened to find a thread about Windows 10 on a music forum; one regular forum member (incidentally also a Microsoft employee) showed up to address some issues people were having with upgrades, and also wrote a really nice post addressing some of the "privacy concerns". Predictably, the thread continued to get derailed by off-topic tinfoil hat autism and mods ended up deleting a bunch of posts.

TL;DR: Microsoft isn't actually compiling a dossier based on your clop searches; it's really just so that Cortana can do what it's supposed to do, so that advertising is better targeted, diagnostics are sent back to the vendor when shit crashes, etc. Autocorrect, handwriting and voice recognition are performed in the cloud using anonymized data. Apple and Google do the exact same shit. If you're too paranoid for this, consider switching to TempleOS.

Okay, that does sound more reasonable than Microsoft always watching us for thoughtcrime, ready at a moments notice to send us to a CIA black site. Still, skepticism towards a large corporation is healthy within reason.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Blame the success of internet in general. Even if we stay on an older OS (not a -bad thing-, Win7 still has years to go), we're being traced in so many ways you can't possibly accept connecting your basic cellphone through USB or bluetooth to PC. You might as well cut the phone calls and texts to five a month because you're the revenue and open diary regardless. Security countermeasures are being constantly and consistently outsmarted -- it will only be a matter of time until a black hat, whether or not they are in America or China, makes you their example.

[philosophical sperging]
i am of the opinion that the perfect society has no secrets
everyone knows everything about everyone else
and if something is a problem it gets fixed and not shunned (and yet i'm here)

it's not being watched that bugs me
it's that it's a one way street
the one thing that scares me the most is that i have a huge government looming over my head
and it knows what i do, but i have no clue what it does

in some way i like having people know me
when i was a child i was told there was a future waiting
with custom made advertisements
and shit like that. i'm still waiting
i am disappoint

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Yeah, and nobody talks about the electric companies and their schemes, it's kind of foreboding that no one talks about what TXU or Reliant does the first moment we plug anything into the wall outlet in a brand new house, or with a house you've lived in for years but switched providers. TXU was problematic earlier in the summer for me because they claim to have 'delayed payments' rolling out. I don't believe this excuse, I refuse to submit to justification of flipping switches on a dime in the year 2015.

We pay the fucking bill, we keep our energy, it should be fair and simple like that but to them they feel they can afford to forget a line or two.

 

[AnOminous]

Ubuntu has (or had) spyware in it, too, and would even send your searches of the files on your own drives to Canonical, which would then use them to generate paid content on Amazon, and would get a cut of revenue if you bought. Supposedly, they took this out in the latest version, but nobody who ever puts spyware in their products should ever be trusted again.

This is why in general it's a good idea to know what is in software before you install it. I'd never install a version of Windows without waiting at least a few months. Microsoft is certainly not a company like IBM, where they said of it "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Instead, they're notorious for breaking fucking everything in a new version (hello Windows , and I'm sure plenty of people got fired for wrecking their companies systems by "upgrading" to 8.

Incidentally, if you think privacy concerns are for nerds, if you work in banking, there are strict legal requirements for the security of any systems that face financial networks, with serious penalties. Using Microsoft products for these applications could easily put a bank out of compliance with the law (one reason IBM and others still have a foothold in the server market).

 

[VLAD]

Rock Paper Shotgun has a good article on how to circumvent a good portion of Win10's targeted advertising.

If you're too paranoid for this, consider switching to TempleOS.

Thank you for helping me see the light. Praise the Lord.

 

[Marvin]

Ubuntu has (or had) spyware in it, too, and would even send your searches of the files on your own drives to Canonical, which would then use them to generate paid content on Amazon, and would get a cut of revenue if you bought. Supposedly, they took this out in the latest version, but nobody who ever puts spyware in their products should ever be trusted again.

Nonono, that's spyware by Stallman's definition, which is very different from actual spyware.

Incidentally, if you think privacy concerns are for nerds, if you work in banking, there are strict legal requirements for the security of any systems that face financial networks, with serious penalties. Using Microsoft products for these applications could easily put a bank out of compliance with the law (one reason IBM and others still have a foothold in the server market).

It's not that privacy concerns are for nerds. It's that most of the time, people flipping out about shit like this rarely know much about the technology.

I'm very concerned about privacy issues. But only when they're actual issues, not people sperging about shit they don't know anything about.

 

[AnOminous]

Nonono, that's spyware by Stallman's definition, which is very different from actual spyware.

PC World described it like this:

Ubuntu 12.04 added an extremely controversial feature—searches you perform in Unity’s dash are sent over the web and you’re presented with results to buy products on Amazon. So, for example, when you search for a terminal application, you’re shown the 2004 movie “The Terminal” on DVD and Blu-ray for purchase.

I'm not sure what to call that but spyware. It's sending (or used to send) searches I make of private files on my own computer, transmitting the strings I'm searching for over the Internet, and then feeding them to Amazon, so they can present advertisements to me based on that search, then getting a cut of the purchase price if someone buys after going there.

Sounds like spyware to me, and if not, then what kind of malware is it?

I certainly don't think something I type believing it to be searching only local files should be being transmitted over the Internet without my knowledge.

Just because Stallman says it doesn't make it wrong. Actually, quite often, he's entirely correct.

 

[Marvin]

PC World described it like this:



I'm not sure what to call that but spyware. It's sending (or used to send) searches I make of private files on my own computer, transmitting the strings I'm searching for over the Internet, and then feeding them to Amazon, so they can present advertisements to me based on that search, then getting a cut of the purchase price if someone buys after going there.

Sounds like spyware to me, and if not, then what kind of malware is it?

I certainly don't think something I type believing it to be searching only local files should be being transmitted over the Internet without my knowledge.

It's not without your knowledge. When you type things into that search bar, you see the amazon results below. Obviously that doesn't come out of nowhere. If you don't like that, turn it off.

The search data Canonical stored isn't personally identifiable. (Well, except for the content of your search.) From amazon's perspective, Canonical sends them a string to search for, amazon responds with some URLs, and Canonical shows them to you. Canonical doesn't keep any personally identifiable data documenting that you searched for that information. And Amazon doesn't receive any personally identifiable information on you.

Edit: Of course, not to say that this wasn't a really dumb idea on Canonical's part, considering their primary customers might lean towards the more security conscious side of things. It just wasn't the huge privacy fuckup people seem to think it was.

Just because Stallman says it doesn't make it wrong. Actually, quite often, he's entirely correct.

Not that it's wrong, but Stallman's priorities on things aren't very useful to normal people.

 

[Trilby]

Blame the success of internet in general. Even if we stay on an older OS (not a -bad thing-, Win7 still has years to go), we're being traced in so many ways you can't possibly accept connecting your basic cellphone through USB or bluetooth to PC. You might as well cut the phone calls and texts to five a month because you're the revenue and open diary regardless. Security countermeasures are being constantly and consistently outsmarted -- it will only be a matter of time until a black hat, whether or not they are in America or China, makes you their example.

No doubt people are going to act like Apple aren't guilty of this, but that's besides the point. Even if you tick that 'Do Not Track/Send User Feedback' to the off-position, you've already given the company an asset to trace.

I knew this was going to happen the moment I left school.

 

[An Ounce of Vagina]

From another site:

* They have some kind of child monitoring thingy which is on by default. A friend of mine got very surprised when he had installed Windows 10 on his kids computer and a few days later got a report in the mail, detailing such things as when the kid had used the computer, which programs had been used, which sites had been visited and so on. This wasn't something he had activiated, somehow MS had worked out that he was the parent from the log in which is connected to some social platform. So very much not OK.

* The use some kind of swarming protocol, kind of like bittorrent, to distribute updates. This means that they use your bandwidth to deliver their updates to other users. What makes it worse, the people who cares the most about updates are organizations, and they will block that function, so they will not take their part of the load.

* If you run an earlier Windows, it downloads the Windows 10 update to your hard disk, just in case you'd want to install it. This uses a lot of disk space and bandwidth. I suspect the real reason is to provide more sources for the swarming protocol, as a described above.

* Among the leaks released by Wikileaks was that all the major operating system vendors has been approached by the NSA and more or less been ordered to install a back door. This is also confirmed by Linux, who was also approached and went public instead (and telling them that not only is it impossible to hide something in open source, they still wouldn't do it anyway). Neither MS nor Apple has commented on it, which makes it likely that they caved in to the pressure.

* It has a feature (which is on by default) which shares your wifi password with everybody who is your friend on social media. This is supposed to make it easier for your friends to connect to your wifi when they visit. However, it also means that your wifi password is stored somewhere else, outside your control. It also means that a lot of people who you may have as Facebook friends but not really want on your network have it. Your ex? Your neighbor? Some friend of a friend who plays Farmville?
It also messes up any organized strategy for safe friend access. I have a private network with a password only known to me, which goes to my internal network and servers. Guests connect to another network, which only connects to the internet. Which password will MS share?
We also have the entire issue with BOYD. Will they share your work wifi password as well?

* Unique ad ID. You get a unique ID on installation which is then shown to web sites, allowing them to use personalized ads. However, it also allows you to be tracked across sites, so it is possible to see that it's the same person on Facebook or GMail as on f*cked.raw.in.the.pig.sty.com. This is a huge integrity problem.

* They have a feature which allows them to stop certain programs from running if they don't like them, and even remove them. Cloaked under the disguise as anti-piracy, it is bound to harm legitimate use as well (such as using a cracked version of a game to make it work because they've effed up so the originals no longer work). Also, it would be trivial for them to say "We don't like LibreOffice and OpenOffice, they compete with MS Office. Let's block them.".

* They seem to have removed the option of "Don't install updates", only providing "Download and install" and "Download and install later". This is a huge risk, as it allows them to, at will, replace just about Everything in the operating system or on your disk.

* It has tools to redirect "unsuitable" internet sites to other sites. It would, for example, be perfectly possible to use this to block, say, Wikileaks, and redirect to, say, NSA.

Now, all these integrity issues has slowed down adaption of Windows 10, so in a recent press release, MS said that they are going to put these "features" in Windows 7 and 8 as well. Let that sink in. Basically, they say "OK, you won't get Windows 10, because you don't like what we do with it. Well, ha ha, we are going to do the Windows you run as well, so it will be as bad as Windows 10, so you won't have any reason to update!". That stunt is insulting enough to make sure I never update (and leave automatic updates in Windows 7 off...).

Then, of course, there are several other problems, especially for gamers:

* They have removed support for some copy protection mechanism, which means that hundreds of old games no longer works. I'm not talking archeologically old, just a few years.

* Performance. While Windows 10 on an average gives about the same frame rate as Windows 7, it's not smooth. It has a slightly higher framerate, but then it stutters and freezes for a short moment, making it next to unusable in gaming (especially competitive gaming).

I'm shutting off my updates, but does anyone know how to disable that swarm thing?

 

[Roast Chicken]

I suspected there'd be a catch to this update. But eh, I've nothing to hide.

 

[Le Bateleur]

Install Gentoo.

 

[sugoi-chan]

I think the most annoying part about this whole thing is I do plan to upgrade to Windows 10 eventually. I have a year to do it so I'm going to let the platform mature (a service pack or two) before making the switch. But because I reserved a copy already, it downloads the upgrade files for me...to my really small SSD. Every couple of days I find myself having to go in and delete the preloaded files to recover that space. I've uninstalled all of the update-related hotfixes and it still does it.

 

[TowinKarz]

The analog method of blowing your privacy is still going to do you much more harm, even in the 21st Century.

The other day I found a guy's court papers lying on the sidewalk.... showing that he had to report to court on thus-and-such date for sentencing on his conviction for selling drugs.... and I'll be he's more concerned about people hacking his facebook than what I just learned about him by doing nothing more than stopping to pick up what I thought was common litter.

We as a society have had enough interconnected information webs for the last 15 years at least that it should be accepted at this point that nothing you do electronically isn't going to leave some kind of footprint a determined person can use to track you with.

Or maybe it's just lost it's sting, with everyone always yelling "BIG BROTHER OMG!!!" every time a new vulnerability or unwanted keylogger is found in someone's OS or cellphone, it no longer holds any meaning even if true.

 

[lolwut]

Meh, I've been running Windows 10 on one of my computers for a while now and it doesn't really seem that bad. There haven't been any issues with my bandwidth besides the usual screwing over from my ISP, no compatibility or framerate problems for any of my games, most of these controversial features can be turned off right at installation if you're not retarded and I've seen no evidence of the ones that can't. It would be impractical for me to run Linux on everything, and the other windows OSs will not be supported forever. Whatever you might think of Windows 10, it's still more secure than using a dead OS.

The only issue I've had so far is that all my browers now use a light gray-on-white scroll bar (and if I ever find the man responsible for this I will kill him). Also, Cortana randomly activating during a Skype call once and googled part of what I was saying. Now the NSA thinks I'm "200% nigga."

 

[sugoi-chan]

Also, Cortana randomly activating during a Skype call once and googled part of what I was saying. Now the NSA thinks I'm "200% nigga."

Can you turn Cortana off? I like the voice search functionality of some things (Google Now on my phone), but I'd rather it not be "always-on, always listening".

 

[lolwut]

Can you turn Cortana off? I like the voice search functionality of some things (Google Now on my phone), but I'd rather it not be "always-on, always listening".

Yeah, the key logger everyone is worried about is for Cortana to become more acquainted with your typing patterns. Turning it off turns Cortana off as well; just go to Settings>Privacy>Speech, Inking and Typing.