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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I fully agree with the complaints, but I never understood why this outrage doesn't happen about e.g. Gmail (or all of ChromeOS for that matter). Lots of people virtually live in Google Apps, which certainly does a lot more tracking than Windows 10 does.

The argument that "it's OK because it's on the web" just doesn't cut it anymore guys. An application is an application.

We should just be as angry about browsers that do tracking and web apps that do tracking as we are about OS'es that do tracking.

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When you started using Gmail or ChromeOS, you started with understanding, that you are using a browser and everything happens pretty much on Google servers.

When you started using Windows, it was pretty much offline affair. Many people were connected to internet only occasionally, if at all.

So basically, Gmail/ChromeOS was adding something to your options - you have a new service, you can decide whether you can start using it - or not. Windows is taking away from you - you were using it for years, maybe decades, most of the world is dependent on it, and suddenly, the rules of the game change and you cannot do anything about it.

Yea, they didn't call it "Windows as a service" for nothing.

I'm not happy about Gmail tracking, but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account. An OS's access is potentially everything on the computer.

To me, privacy is about control (deciding who gets to see what) and having an OS that phones home with who knows what information means I have no control once information touches my PC.

Anyone who cares to look it up knows.

Of course, there's always the chance that Microsoft is lying in their documentation, but if you mistrust them that much, you probably shouldn't use their software even if they claim to not collect any information.

> Anyone who cares to look it up knows.

Last I looked Microsoft's privacy policy was vague enough that it could include almost anything and everything on a PC as well as whatever Windows can infer about your local network.

> Of course, there's always the chance that Microsoft is lying in their documentation, but if you mistrust them that much, you probably shouldn't use their software even if they claim to not collect any information.

You're right, at the end of the day it comes down to trust. Microsoft's behaviour in this case - making it hard to disable telemetry, being vague about collection details and unresponsive to questions - means that it's hard to trust them. In a hypothetical world where they were upfront with what was collected, responsive to questions, and allowed users to disable all data gathering easily the same feature set might be easier to swallow.

Edit: I forgot to mention how aggressively Microsoft has been shoving Windows 10 down user's throat. I've had several non-technical friends end up with Windows 10 by mistake (and against their wishes) - another sign that Microsoft doesn't give a shit about users' wishes.

I'm talking about MSDN, not their privacy policy.

TechNet not MSDN.

Thanks, I don't actually know whether that's a subset but it's certainly more specific.

MSDN and TechNet are different things.

> An OS's access is potentially everything on the computer.

And that's an understating.

An OS can know all your passwords, can look everywhere around on your network, can sign documents legally impersonating you.

> but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account.

Which is often enough to completely divorce you from your identity legally, steal all your money, and possibly incriminate you.

That's all. But hey! My porn browsing habits are SAFE ON MY OS.

Rational or not, it's somehow creepier when an OS is doing it, as opposed to most of the crunching being done on Google's servers.

If you have any feeling at all for how an OS operates, Windows 10 with default settings has the air of someone creepily muttering to themselves and fidgeting with something under the table (half the time some component is eating 20% of the CPU). Then the second you walk away they spring up and maniacally run into a closet and commence making mysterious banging noises (walk away and some component spins up to 100% CPU and stays there, fans commence howling). You walk back into the room and there they are - sitting, red, panting, comically failing at looking nonchalant. It's a unique combination of creepy and comical, all in all.

Whereas with Google docs, you really have to know what you're looking for to see manifestations of all the tracking, though of course that doesn't make it better.

The "its on the web argument" has a technical backing to it. Google own's their own servers, and understands what their own hardware and software is doing. Collecting metrics on all that makes sense.

It is when you change it to an individual level that it becomes problematic. Instead of talking about what is happening with a product across all users, you are now talking about what a specific person is doing. And that is why tracking at the OS level is more problematic than at a web server level - by definition, my OS is personal usage.

I'm actually more annoyed by gmail tracking than windows tracking.

It seems I can disable the windows tracking. Microsoft can spy on others, but if can opt out I don't care that much, it is just one more annoying default to change when I use a new machine like unchecking the "hide known extensions".

I run my own mail server. But gmail, yahoo and hotmail represent like 99% of my personal contacts. That means that these three companies have pretty much access to all of my personal emails, with personally identifiable information (my first name, last name, email address) and I have no way to opt out, other than convincing my contacts to stop using these services (good luck with that!). I didn't ask for that tracking. I do not agree with google having access to my emails, I did not agree to google's terms and conditions. I am not a gmail customer. But my private correspondence is still recorded by gmail.

It's expected with gmail (although I don't like it) because every interaction I have with gmail is sent over the wire to google's servers. That isn't the case with my operating system.

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