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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Looking forward to similar articles about Siri and Google Now.

I don't know about Siri, but you can disable Google Now (actually, you have to enable it, if you want it).

There seems to be news, that since Anniversary Edition you cannot disable Cortana anymore.

Plus, I have to agree with hughw above, that there is a difference between phone and computer, what kind of data you have loaded on each. Windows 10, as it is currently, is simply unacceptable.

Good to know it is still possible to disable them, but until when?

I disagree with the difference between phone and computer, for many people a smartphone or tablet is the only computer they own.

The Cortana features analogous to Google Now are still opt-in after the update (i.e., you have to enable them if you want them). However, web search through the search box can no longer be disabled through a supported method AFAIK.

You opt-in to "Hey Siri" on first boot. I can't speak for Google Now.

Yep, when you set up your phone you get a notification to enable it, as well as it's features. It's pretty upfront about what it does and what it collects too.

Hey Cortana (and microphone access) is still opt-in, along with features that require data collection. The article is somewhat unclear/misleading on this point.

What's not opt-in, or even able to be disabled through any supported method, is web search through the taskbar/start menu search box. This means that search box keystrokes will be sent to Microsoft servers, though there are (opt-out) options for disabling or clearing storage of search history.

That's smart phone stuff, for some reason they've always behaved that way and people have mostly accepted it. Cortana and other Windows 10 software is turning an OS that you used to be able to call your own into something completely controlled by Microsoft. It's infuriating. I was a happy windows user until they pulled these stunts. This whole year I've been working towards getting all my personal computing off of it (I'm still stuck with it for work and I work from home). Last week I finally lost it when, after a forced Windows Update, Windows Defender was re-enabled against my will (along with a few other services I went out of my way to kill) and caused %100 disk usage for over an hour. This week I'm finally booting directly into Linux and Windows 10 is running in a VM with nothing but development tools on it... and Candy Crush and some racing game because the ISO from the MS download page includes them for some reason (the "Professional" version).

When I saw how privacy hostile and generally manipulative the whole mobile revolution was, I knew it was coming to other platforms too.

There is just too much money to be made in surveillance and targeted advertising, especially since margins are collapsing elsewhere and people want everything to be 'free.' Surveillance is the business model of the Internet, at least in the B2C space.

I'm not optimistic about it changing because frankly nobody cares. The only people who care are a small fraction of "cryppie" types and coincidentally these tend to also be the people who use FOSS and/or pirate everything. Not paying money is like not voting. Vendors have absolutely no incentive to give a damn about what you want. I am not aware of a single case where a product has been significantly harmed in the market or failed due to privacy invasion. In fact, even major security problems (also related to privacy) generally do not harm products in the long term.

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