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Comment by mhurron | Hacker News Reader

> like sharing of Windows updates with other computers to speed up downloads

American internet speeds suck enough without Microsoft grabbing some for itself.

> Windows Defender

They seemed to be able to improve their services before. In fact, I think that's what a Security Researchers job is. MS has several of them.

> handwriting and voice recognition

Neither of which apply to my desktop, so why do I have to give them any information.

Microsoft could have saved a lot of face simply by making all this opt in and off by default.

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>American internet speeds suck enough without Microsoft grabbing some for itself.

Which is why you should only have to download updates once for your entire network and not per device and why you shouldn't waste bandwidth on failed partial updates. This feature fixes both of these issues.

>They seemed to be able to improve their services before. In fact, I think that's what a Security Researchers job is. MS has several of them

I'm a software developer. My job is to write bug free code. My job would be a lot harder if I couldn't get any debug information from my testers or users. Just because it is possible to do a job without certain information, doesn't mean it is a good idea to intentionally withhold that information.

>Neither of which apply to my desktop, so why do I have to give them any information.

If you don't use voice or ink, why are you worried about sharing your voice and ink data with Microsoft?

>Microsoft could have saved a lot of face simply by making all this opt in and off by default.

Because most of these features would have never been turned on by the user. What good is a security setting that is supposed to protect unskilled computer users if it requires in depth knowledge of the OS to turn on in the first place?

> If you don't use voice or ink, why are you worried about sharing your voice and ink data with Microsoft?

For what it's worth, I don't think this is a fair assessment. Sure, with ink data, you actually need a tablet or some kind of input device in order for Microsoft to collect and send data. But almost every laptop or off-the-shelf computer nowadays comes with a microphone, and they will be more ubiquitous now that voice recognition and input is becoming more accepted by the general populace.

The problem then, is that the microphone is _always_ on, and could potentially send _everything_ you say, or could listen in at any given moment. The problem is that with voice data, the feature 1) can't be inspected and 2) will send data, even if you never use the service. Most important here is the latter point: I shouldn't be subject to the terms and conditions of using a service if I am not using a service. By not agreeing to the terms and conditions, I don't get to use the service (Cortana). If I'm fine with that, and don't want to use that service, then the terms and conditions of my data being sent to Microsoft should not apply to me (i.e. my data should not be sent).

Doing otherwise is shady behaviour, regardless of your opinion on the usefulness or nefariousness of the feature in question.

The idea that Microsoft would capture all audio depends on the company being simultaneously malicious enough to bug your computer while being honest enough not to lie about it. The truth is that they would have had the ability to do this type of thing for years. If Microsoft had an intention to do evil things, why would the bring attention to the fact by spelling out the possibility of them doing evil things during installation of their software?

> Which is why you should only have to download updates once for your entire network and not per device and why you shouldn't waste bandwidth on failed partial updates. This feature fixes both of these issues.

There is ONE Windows machine on my network, so there are no other Windows machines to share updates with. There are a tonne on the internet though, I don't care about sharing with them.

> My job would be a lot harder

It's too bad it was impossible to do before Microsoft was spying on its users. Oh wait, it wasn't.

> If you don't use voice or ink, why are you worried about sharing your voice and ink data with Microsoft?

I don't want to send anything to Microsoft.

> Because most of these features would have never been turned on by the user.

There is a reason for that, people don't want it.

> What good is a security setting ...

These are not security settings. The security comes from turning them off.

> If you don't use voice or ink, why are you worried about sharing your voice and ink data with Microsoft?

This sounds uncomfortably like "if you don't have anything to hide …".

>They seemed to be able to improve their services before.

Before what? These are no new features.

Yes, they are not new features, so how did they improve them before they spied on everything your system does?

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