Hacker News Reader

Comment by rubidium | Hacker News Reader

Headline is misleading. They do have consent. This is one reason I don't allow automatic updates.

MS statement: "For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade."

View on HN

First, default settings are never "consent".

Second, even if they did consent to automatic updates, that obviously applies to updating the current product they purchased. Upgrading to a different model is obviously not what people expect. Most people expect that their car will receive necessary updates (recall notices), which obviously doesn't include exchanging the car for next years model without some sort of additional contract.

Besides, it's obvious why Microsoft is forcing out the download - they are using download numbers in their their marketing strategy. (i.e. the astroturf headlines claiming "{N} Million User Download Windows 10 in {TimePeriod}")

Every update is a different model. Whether they call it 8.1 with KB 1498028 or Windows 10 is simply marketing.

That is true in a sense. But I think this is very from from how the average user sees things, and the way the average user sees things is crucial here since we are talking about user consent. In the mind of the average user, there is a very large difference between KB 1498028 and Windows 10.

This also glosses over the rather enormous difference in sheer size between this "update" and others, which is, as far as I understand it, the focus of people's concern here.

> First, default settings are never "consent".

First, I'm confused about how this is considered a default setting. Anytime I've installed a version of Windows that has automatic updates it asks me during the install what my update preferences are. Just because a select menu has something as the default doesn't mean that I'm not consenting when I review that select menu and hit "Next" in the installer.

Windows 8: http://www.eightforums.com/attachments/tutorials/7868d134523...

Windows 7: http://cdn1.alphr.com/sites/alphr/files/styles/insert_main_i...

Windows XP: http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/computers/xp_automatic_updat...

Secondly, this is a commercial product that I am choosing to install. By necessity it has a lot of configuration options that are set to various different values. Is it not implied consent that when I install an operating system that I am agreeing/consenting to all of the different default settings?

Your Win7 screenshot shows just a nice green shield next to the preselected default setting, and a scary red "X" next to the one that would prevent Win10 from being downloaded. The 3rd option also says that you will be vulnerable if you select it.

Finally, nothing on those screens says anything about automatically downloading a different OS. There's zero consent to that.

It's not a different OS it is an upgrade, and the scary red "X" is valid and not a scare tactic. I deal with people on a regular basis that are still running XP, which leaves them vulnerable to attack and infection.

In the always connected world that we live in, automatic updates are a very necessary fact of life.

What consent is that if people don't understands the facts, implications, and future consequences of the action. Worse, updates has an common perception to be small security fixes.

Should we call it uninformed consent? tricked consent? non-binding consent?

If we want to use legal terms, is 6G download ordinarily and reasonably to be contemplated by the user?

Unfortunately I think in the computing world the idea that it is even possible to understand the facts, implications and consequences of an action is increasingly a fantasy.

It's hard enough for the seasoned geek to acquire enough knowledge actually understand how a computer works. But then you throw in cloud services where the source of truth becomes blurred, and the services are constantly changing under your nose. Even assuming the best of intentions from companies building these systems, it's impossible to keep up.

Users don't understand anything. This is not new.

Well take your pick, then. You can have automatic updates and get security/functionality updates, or you can not and not, and an OS upgrade can be reasonably considered under the aegis of system updates.

Y'all have been campaigning for users to be automatically updated, often whether they want to or not (c.f. Windows rebooting overnight causing the loss of any open documents) because having them not be makes everyone demonstrably less safe and users will never update if you ask them to.

You can't have it both ways. Which will it be?

You and a lot of other people in this thread seem to be going out of your way to conflate automatic updates (such as security patches), and upgrading to another product (such as Win [78] -> Win 10).

You're trying to tie the concepts together to create false dichotomy, which you use as a rhetorical tactic. This usually involves specifically ignoring the people you're replying to and many other posts in the thread that already answered this subject.

The "different product" differentiation is more a marketing one than an objective one. The notable changes between 8/10 are a lot less than, say. 3.1/95.

I think this is a stretch. While they may have users' consent in the broadest, legalistic sense, I think it is doubtful that users who chose to receive automatic updates would expect that this would extend to a 6 GB download of an entirely new version of the OS. This is not your usual Windows update, and is probably not the sort of thing users have in mind when they opt in for automatic updates.

OS X keeps harassing me to update to the latest version because I have automatic updates on and haven't turned the notifications off, but it hasn't gone and downloaded the new OS pre-emptively without my consent.

Asking first wouldn't hurt, you know!

Then it's not really "automatic updates". If it was truly automatic, it would download and even install without asking because you already said yes.

Instead, you just get a pop up, daily, to upgrade to Yosemite. There's no way to remove it, hiding the update in the app store does nothing and there's no way, even after months of clicking "Close" to have it figure out that "No, I don't want to upgrade to it."

Is that a better design? Especially considering Apple routinely automatically downloads updates that are also in the gigabyte range.

So if people don't want gigabytes of data downloaded they have no use for, they have to turn off an option that gives them timely security updates.

Not saying I agree with MS's decision of what constitutes an update, but if a user grants a company the option to automatically download and install stuff to their computer, they're kindof writing a blank check.

If I pay Microsoft for an OS, I expect them to use good judgment when applying updates. Downloading 6GB without warning me and giving me a chance to do it on my schedule is not using good judgment.

Windows 10 Home edition doesn't allow you to turn off automatic updates (or at least I haven't seen an option to do so).

I did manage to turn off automatically seeding the updates to others, which I also find to be egregious.

This article is referring to Windows 7 and 8, not 10.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com