Windows 10: A Potential Privacy Mess, and Worse
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001115.html
I had originally been considering accepting Microsoft's offer of a free
upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. After all, reports have suggested
that it's a much more usable system than Windows 8/8.1 -- but of course
in keeping with the "every other MS release of Windows is a dog"
history, that's a pretty low bar.
However, it appears that MS has significantly botched their deployment
of Windows 10. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, even though hope
springs eternal.
Since there are so many issues involved, and MS is very aggressively
pushing this upgrade, I'm going to run through key points here quickly,
and reference other sites' pages that can give you more information
right now.
But here's my executive summary: You may want to think twice, or three
times, or many more times, about whether or not you wish to accept the
Windows 10 free upgrade on your existing Windows 7 or 8/8.1 system.
Microsoft is thrusting out this update via a little white Windows icon
that you will probably see soon (if you haven't already) on your task
bar. There are some users in some situations who will not receive this
notification, but most of us will. This icon leads to MS' colorful spiel
for why you want to install the free Win10 upgrade.
First things first. It's obvious from my email today that this icon and
MS pitch alone are confusing many users. They've never seen anything
like this appear before and many think it's a virus or that their system
has been otherwise compromised.
In fact, this notification is triggered by a Windows Update that MS
slipped into their update stream some time ago, which the vast majority
of users probably accepted without realizing what it was.
If you decide you do not wish to upgrade to Win10 now, you may want to
get rid of that notification. MS doesn't tell you how (surprise!) and
the procedure can range from relatively simple to "a real mess"
depending on your situation, but a good discussion of the procedures and
provisos is at:
http://www.howtogeek.com/218856/how-do-you-disable-the-get-windows-10-icon-shown-in-the-notification-tray/
Many users -- especially on somewhat under-powered systems -- may find
Win10 to be a painfully slow experience compared with Win7, irrespective
of MS' claims.
Worse, some functionalities important to many users are missing. If you
use Windows Media Center -- that's gone from Win10. DVD playback is
currently problematic.
And here's a biggy. If you don't want Microsoft installing updates
automatically -- if you're a user who has chosen to take control of this
process up to now -- you probably will hate Win10.
Users with Home versions of Win10 will be required to accept automatic
updates, including drivers.
In some environments, this is unacceptable from a support and security
standpoint, and reports are already coming in regarding driver related
issues.
It's fair to say that in the general case, automatic updates are usually
a win from a security and reliability standpoint. But Windows is
significantly unique. Because Windows runs on such an enormously wide
range of hardware and configurations (compared for example to Chrome OS
on Chromebooks) the ways for automatic updates to cause problems for
Windows users are dramatically numerous as well. Definitely an important
issue to consider.
You may have heard concerns about the sharing of Wi-Fi passwords by
Win10. This is largely not a problem in practice, given the details of
the implementation.
But Win10 still looks like it could be a privacy quagmire.
The details are buried down in the new Win10 privacy policy/user
agreement, but the bottom line is that by default Win10 will be sending
a lot of your data from your computer to Microsoft that they never had
access to before.
You can read an analysis of this here:
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/
As is the case with automatic updates, there is nothing inherently wrong
with cloud data syncing, and it can bring significant service and
reliability enhancements to users (keeping in mind how infrequently most
people properly backup their systems).
But if you're going to avail yourself of such cloud data services, you
really need to trust the firm you're dealing with, across the scope of
possible data-related aspects.
And to be completely honest about this, I personally simply do not trust
Microsoft to the degree that would seem necessary to use the default
data sharing settings that Microsoft really, really, really wants you to
use -- and of course that the vast majority of users will blithely
accept. To put it another way, in this context I trust Microsoft about
as far as I could throw a heavy old steel-cased 1980s PC.
Being careful with your data isn't just a Microsoft thing. My views of
Microsoft and Google are pretty much diametrically opposed -- I have
enormous faith in Google and Googlers doing the right thing with respect
to protecting the data I share with them, but even in the case of
Google -- with whom I share a great deal of data -- I'm selective about what I
do share.
That's just common sense no matter whom you're dealing with, whether
individuals, corporations, or other organizations.
The upshot of all this is that while we can all agree that "free" is
often good, there's a lot to think about before accepting Microsoft's
heavily promoted upgrade to Windows 10, and we all need to approach this
decision with our eyes very wide open, indeed.
Be seeing you.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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