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Comment by EasyTiger_ | Hacker News Reader

- They are presenting ad 'experiences' on the Start menu, lock-screen, notification area, taskbar and now the File Manager, too. This is happening even on Enterprise.

- Windows 10 will automatically install games from the Windows Store which are not wanted such as Candy Crush

- Extensive and opaque 'telemetry' being sent back to MS which cannot be completely turned off

- Lack of control over windows updates

These are my own personal reasons why I will never be installing such an anti-consumer OS.

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- they are showing "suggested apps" in the start menu, which can be turned off. The others are OneDrive and Edge suggestions and can also be turned off.

- those apps are installed at the time of installation and can be removed. If so, they are not reinstalled ever again.

- telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.

- MS found (via telemetry) that users don't like installing updates, and thus left themselves open to many vulnerabilities that antivirus systems don't even look for. So, MS has chosen to force users into a more secure paradigm.

These are my personal responses why I don't mind windows 10 at all, and don't feel it to be anti-consumer at all.

- they are showing "suggested apps" in the start menu, which can be turned off. The others are OneDrive and Edge suggestions and can also be turned off.

How about they ask users first if it is okay to do this? That is a better approach, opt in.

- those apps are installed at the time of installation and can be removed. If so, they are not reinstalled ever again.

That wasn't true for the first few years and even Microsoft admitted it in one of the release notes that they weren't retaining option to never reinstall the apps. AU update reinstalled these apps for me.

- telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.

Again, they should be opt-in, not forced and found out later that they were collecting more data than they should.

If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.

>If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.

If there is any single thing that I've learned during my time on Earth, it is that people, collectively, "know" a lot of things that aren't actually true. Everyone knows that pouring sugar in a car gas tank will kill the carb or fuel injectors. (This is false.) Everyone knows that you taste sweet with a different part of the tongue as sour. (This is False.) Everyone knows that waking a sleepwalker is dangerous. (It isn't.) Everyone knows that Napoleon was short. (He wasn't.) ad infinitum... I will not fault MS for taking the time to actually prove a suspicion true or false, to themselves or to anyone else. This happens far too rarely, and a lot of people believe a lot of things that aren't true as a result.

The people MS are aiming for with the ads are not the type of people who would ever opt-in to these things. Microsoft know (again, via telemetry it is proven) that clueful users will either know how to opt-out of thing they do not like, or will know how to find out how to opt-out. An opt-in preference would be preferred to myself and probably a large portion of users, of course, and would probably result in approximately 0% participation, which is very likely not what Microsoft are aiming for.

With the Creator's Update, pre-installed applications, once uninstalled, will not be reinstalled when the OS is upgraded. I, personally can attest to this one. I've been installing the fast-ring builds since the Anniversary Update, and I uninstalled Candy Crush Saga exactly once. It has not returned.

removing Freedom from users is definitely anti-consumer no matter how you look at it.

>telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.

I'm really quite sure the applications on my machine don't. Then again I only run things I have some way to compile myself.

You have audited code for everything you run?

You don't need to audit the code to know if something sends telemetry. For many things (such as your kernel) you can rely on reputation/quickly searching through github issues. For others you can rely on packet sniffing.

I'm pretty confident that the only things I use regularly on my computer (not counting my phone here) that send telemetry are

- Firefox (opt out, but prompts you)

- Visual Studio Code (opt out, doesn't prompt you, requires re-opting out on updates)

- rustup (not sure if opt in or out, don't mind if it's recording telemetry)

I don't remember if we turned rustup's on, but we must not have, because everyone felt very strongly it should be opt-in.

My applications sure dont. If my word processor was phoning hone with encrypted data, ANY data, id be in serious trouble with many people (clients, professional associations, my insurer, a bunch of different police types). Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.

> Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.

Unfortunately, "that would be bad for me" does not imply "that is not happening"

Telemetry is awesome for devs but totally opaque to end users. It's very difficult to know what your applications are really doing on the backend. You have to start packet sniffing, and that's a pretty deep rabbit hole.

Not opaque to me. I (and others) audit my machines. Unussual network activity from my secure work-only desktop will be detected and eventually traced to whatever process triggered it. That's basic network security imho that shouldnt go unnoticed on any regulated/secure network.

I find that very hard to believe. Also, telemetry comes in many forms, many of which are not visible as unwanted network activity.

An application could:

* send telemetry in URL parameters when it checks for updates

* send telemetry data exactly one time after, say, an hour of use.

* send telemetry data during a time when you are already sending a lot of traffic, and send it to an amazon web service endpoint (good luck plucking that out of normal network activity based on IP data alone, when so much software communicates with most likely the same AWS endpoints.)

My point is that there is probably < 5 people on the planet who scrutinize every scheduled task, every Wireshark trace, and everything else well enough to know for certain that nothing is going on. The only people who know for sure that no telemetry is going on are those who airgap their PC from any network at all.

Yep, and if that wasn’t enough, they have the gall to charge consumers for the OS too!

I mean, monetizing users by tracking their behaviour and showing them custom ads is bad enough (although somewhat understandable when the OS is free), but charging users for the privilege too (Windows 10 costs money¹)? Disgusting.

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¹ — https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-windows-10

> Extensive and opaque 'telemetry' being sent back to MS which cannot be completely turned off

How do you turn off the telemetry of your smartphone apps or web sites that you use?

I use smart phone apps from fdroid and noscript configured to deny js from telemetry sites.

That doesn't remove the telemetry the web sites are able to do via web clicks, or everything else associated with your profile.

Do you create a fake profile every time you buy something?

How does not being able to maintain 100% privacy elsewhere matter in this discussion? The fact that there are thousands of abuses happening every minute doesn't justify abuse in any way.

Because the majority of people that appear offended by Microsoft usually don't have any issue with any SV darling doing the same to their data.

No, only occasionally.

Are you familiar with a type of hardware or software called firewall?

This being the most upvoted argument against Windows 10 only shows how good of an OS it actually is. I personally think they are complete non-issues I haven't even noticed. Windows 7 is a nightmare in comparison.

Every single one of those things can be fixed with a few minutes of Googling. Is it a shame that some of them (I'm looking at you, updates) took a while to have a good solution? Yes, welcome to software. Should the defaults be different? Maybe, but realize that most Microsoft customers don't exactly read HN...

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