Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[NoelC]

the Authors of the quoted sentence (and of the rest of the article) are presumably serious at it.

 

And presumably you believe that the things you read are written to convey information.

 

Welcome to 2016.  Things are different.

 

-Noel

[NoelC]

IIRC, the way it's said to work is that if you're in the Insiders program, then you remain activated so long as you keep accepting (i.e., do not disable) new updates and builds; but if you drop out, then your copy does eventually expire and you'll need to buy a license to keep using Win10.

 

Perhaps (in my haze of expecting words to mean things) I assumed they meant "keep accepting new insider builds", which I have not been doing since the day of release of build 10240.  I *have* been accepting whatever Microsoft chums the "outsider" waters with.

 

 

-Noel

Edited January 6, 2016 by NoelC

[JorgeA]

 

IIRC, the way it's said to work is that if you're in the Insiders program, then you remain activated so long as you keep accepting (i.e., do not disable) new updates and builds; but if you drop out, then your copy does eventually expire and you'll need to buy a license to keep using Win10.

 

Perhaps (in my haze of expecting words to mean things) I assumed they meant "keep accepting new insider builds", which I have not been doing.  I *have* been accepting whatever Microsoft chums the "outsider" waters with.

 

-Noel

 

 

I guess only time will tell what will actually happen.

 

One thing is for certain, and that is that Microsoft has managed to create an immense amount of confusion and uncertainty among the public with regard to its policies. As to whether the confusion is intended or unintended, I'm not sure which one would be worse.

 

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

I am fond of saying - and this is yet another case - that Microsoft is absolutely adept at managing mediocrity!

 

-Noel

[helpdesk98]

My VM is activated and valid It has remained good since the first Insider Preview, but I noticed I have an expiration date. I will have to snag a screen grab after work.

got a shot both the same VM just one is updated 

[dencorso]

And presumably you believe that the things you read are written to convey information.

Not necessarily, and absolutely not always:

 

A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but [of] its persistence.

Thanks are due to jaclaz for bringing the above study to my attention. MS is becoming very adept at doing just that...

[JorgeA]

Microsoft may be collecting more data than initially thought

 

The same article revealed data that may be of concern to privacy conscious users. If you read it carefully, you will notice that Microsoft provides aggregate usage statistics not only for the operating system's uptime, but also information about individual programs running on it.

 

In particular, it listed the following information to demonstrate the popularity of Windows 10:

1. People spent more than 11 billion hours on Windows 10 in December 2015.
2. 44.5 billion minutes were spent in Microsoft Edge across Windows 10 devices in December 2015 (0.71 billion hours).
3. Users asked Cortana more than 2.5 billion questions since launch.
4. More than 82 billion photos were viewed in the Windows 10 Photo application.
5. Windows 10 gamers spent over 4 billion hours playing PC games.
6. Gamers have streamed more than 6.6 million hours of Xbox One games to Windows 10 PCs.
7. About 30% more Bing search queries from Windows devices compared to previous versions of Windows.

The statistics indicate that Microsoft may be collecting more data than initially thought. While it is unclear what data is exactly collected, it is clear that the company is collecting information about the use of individual applications and programs on Windows at the very least.

 

The real question is how fine grained the data collecting actually is. For instance, is Windows 10 recording what users do in Edge or the actual questions that individual users ask Cortana?

 

A couple of intriguing (maybe alarming) observations in the comments section (areas of concern in boldface):

 

...truthfully there's no way to know how much data is still being shared with Microsoft even with all data sharing options switched off, most data that's sent to Microsoft from a system with all options disabled is encrypted so ultimately there's no way to know what gets sent.

 

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/

 

For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to http://www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.

 

and:

 

Good work Martin. I tried to define that here (I think or another forum) some time back that when you launch ANY program on your PC a call is made to a website the name of which escapes me at the moment, but it is something like "OneStart.com" or maybe "OnRun.com," or "OnLaunch.com." Canadian based from memory when I tracked it back by IP.

 

I immediately blocked the entire IP-range assigned to them in my dd-wrt router.

 

Anybody have insight as to whether these claims are true?

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

[351837]

People spent more than 11 billion hours on Windows 10 in December 2015.

 

 

Pure math

11.000.000.000 hours / 200.000.000 instaled WinX = 55 hours / 31 days in December = 1,77 hours (about one hour and 46 min.)

IMHO not something you can brag about other than "Yes we collect even more data than you think"

[NoelC]

 

My VM is activated and valid It has remained good since the first Insider Preview, but I noticed I have an expiration date. I will have to snag a screen grab after work.

got a shot both the same VM just one is updated 

 

 

Those are both insider builds.  If you were to stop on 10240 or 10586 I suspect you'll see no expiration notice.

 

-Noel

[NoelC]

 

 even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to http://www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random machine ID that persists across reboots.

 

and:

 

Good work Martin. I tried to define that here (I think or another forum) some time back that when you launch ANY program on your PC a call is made to a website the name of which escapes me at the moment, but it is something like "OneStart.com" or maybe "OnRun.com," or "OnLaunch.com." Canadian based from memory when I tracked it back by IP.

 

I immediately blocked the entire IP-range assigned to them in my dd-wrt router.

 

Anybody have insight as to whether these claims are true?

 

--JorgeA

 

As one who watches what Windows is doing quite closely, I can tell you (from memory) that normally (typically?) there ARE requests sent for every keystroke you type into the address bar of your browser.  Whether a specific site is contacted at browser start, that's possible too.

 

There are "features" that demand that these things be done. 

 

For example, if you have not deconfigured the "Smartscreen Filter", then every site you visit (including presumably your home page) is sent to a web server in order that it may be checked to determine whether someone (Microsoft?) feels you ought to be visiting that site.

 

If you have not disabled "Search suggestions", a web server is sent every keystroke you type into the "everything bar", in order to pop up "helpful" suggestions, just in case you're typing random things hoping for your computer to try to relieve your boredom.

 

These things can (and IMO should) be de-configured by people who actually THINK and CARE about their privacy. 

 

None of *MY* systems send anything as a result of my browsing, nor do they irritatingly pop things up while I'm typing!

 

I searched my system for the file threshold.appcache and found none.  Since I haven't deleted this file, specifically, since I first installed Windows (having only heard about it just now), I presume it must never have been delivered.  Note that I do not run "Edge" as I deleted that POS as quickly as I could.  I do think that I ran it once, some time last year during early Win 10 preview build testing.  I can't honestly remember whether I managed to delete it before running it even once after the 10586 in-place "up"grade.  Of course, with my settings (turning off the above "features" that interact with online servers as I type and browse), if it's related to them the explanation could simply be that the "features" are not running.

 

My advice:  Run O&O ShutUp10 and W10Privacy to control all the overt and secret settings, and you'll get most of the way there to having a very private Windows 10 system.  If you really want to know how things work, research what each setting does.

 

The next step, if you really, REALLY don't want Win 10 to connect to ANYTHING online without your knowledge, is to implement a deny-by-default firewall setup.  I'm running such a setup, based on 3rd party Sphinx software, on Win 7, 8.1, and 10 systems right now, and while the initial setup takes some doing (and gains you some real insight into how things work), it's actually not difficult at all to run with from day to day.

 

-Noel

Edited January 7, 2016 by dencorso
Added links to the homepages of the recommended programs...

[helpdesk98]

 

 

My VM is activated and valid It has remained good since the first Insider Preview, but I noticed I have an expiration date. I will have to snag a screen grab after work.

got a shot both the same VM just one is updated 

 

 

Those are both insider builds.  If you were to stop on 10240 or 10586 I suspect you'll see no expiration notice.

 

-Noel

 

10240 gives you a notification that it is no longer usable and that you need to upgrade (2hr run-time before it reboots). It also got real buggy anything I tried to open crashed with the exception of Windows Setup ran fine. 

[NoelC]

That's interesting.  Does it do that if you activate the 3 month update deferral?

 

If that really is happening on all 10240 systems, it seems to me this is a confirmation that Windows 10 will no longer be viable without staying on the update train.  That seems pretty significant!

 

-Noel

[helpdesk98]

I have restored my VM back to 10130 and checked the update settings mine was set to Slow. (I let the VM go did not have much time to play with it. Eventually to get back on the insider builds path I had to upgrade using physical media for 10565) I will play with it some more see what happens.

[JorgeA]

"200 million" Win10 installs? Apparently not -- at least, not yet:

 

Windows 10 powered 164 million PCs at the end of 2015

 

Net Applications' user share represented almost 164 million Windows 10 PCs worldwide, assuming a total of 1.5 billion Windows systems in use. Microsoft has frequently cited the latter figure when it has touted revenue opportunities for developers of Windows software.

 

Here's an interesting distinction:

 

However, another data source -- Ireland's StatCounter -- showed that Windows 10's growth increased in December. StatCounter, which tracks global usage share -- a proxy for activity rather than users -- pegged Windows 10 at more than 11.8% for December, a 1.7-point gain. That was higher than the gains StatCounter recorded in November (1.2 points) and October (1.4 points), but below those of September (2.3 points) and August (5 points).

 

The interesting part is that bit about "usage share, a proxy for activity rather than users." If Windows 10 is sending searches for stuff on your own PC to Bing, then could that account for at least some of this apparent increased activity for Win10?

 

--JorgeA

Edited January 9, 2016 by JorgeA

[helpdesk98]

alright like I said I restored my snapshot and then rebooted this is what I got. Take it as you will:

 

Edit: when I restored back to the VM's original state it is 6-22-15 everything functions normally until I restart then I get the screen above

Edited January 9, 2016 by helpdesk98