Dutch privacy regulator says Windows 10 breaks the law - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE]Regulator says Microsoft doesn't offer enough information to enable informed consent. The lack of clear information about what Microsoft does with the data that Windows 10 collects prevents consumers from giving their informed consent, says the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA). As such, the regulator says that the operating system is breaking the law. To comply with the law, the DPA says that Microsoft needs to get valid user consent: this means the company must be clearer about what data is collected and how that data is processed. The regulator also complains that the Windows 10 Creators Update doesn't always respect previously chosen settings about data collection. In the Creators Update, Microsoft introduced new, clearer wording about the data collection—though this language still wasn't explicit about what was collected and why—and it forced everyone to re-assert their privacy choices through a new settings page. In some situations, though, that page defaulted to the standard Windows options rather than defaulting to the settings previously chosen. [/QUOTE] [URL="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/dutch-privacy-regulator-says-that-windows-10-breaks-the-law/"]Source[/URL]

Good. People should know what data is being gathered about them.

As much as I think there has been an overreaction to the whole thing (its crash and usage info), it is still a conversation that needs to be had, because of how badly MS handled this.

[QUOTE=Demache;52810274]As much as I think there has been an overreaction to the whole thing (its crash and usage info), it is still a conversation that needs to be had, because of how badly MS handled this.[/QUOTE] It's the usage info most people are going to object to. I don't care what rationale Microsoft wants to present for collecting it, they have no business knowing what I do on my computer and I should have no problem whatsoever preventing my OS from telling them a single thing. Good on the Dutch courts, I say, and here's hoping the ruling forces 'off means off' to these settings. As well as an 'off' button to begin with for things that don't have one at all.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52810292]It's the usage info most people are going to object to. I don't care what rationale Microsoft wants to present for collecting it, they have no business knowing what I do on my computer and I should have no problem whatsoever preventing my OS from telling them a single thing. Good on the Dutch courts, I say, and here's hoping the ruling forces 'off means off' to these settings. As well as an 'off' button to begin with for things that don't have one at all.[/QUOTE] Good data collection is usually anonymized and not really traceable back to you, and it's immensely helpful to companies. I usually turn it on if they're pretty clear about what it is and what they do with it e.g. Firefox. That's really the key thing, go right the hell ahead and collect some data, just be open with what you're taking, and make it opt-outable.

[QUOTE=TestECull;52810292]It's the usage info most people are going to object to. I don't care what rationale Microsoft wants to present for collecting it, they have no business knowing what I do on my computer and I should have no problem whatsoever preventing my OS from telling them a single thing. Good on the Dutch courts, I say, and here's hoping the ruling forces 'off means off' to these settings. As well as an 'off' button to begin with for things that don't have one at all.[/QUOTE] Which is absolutely fair, I'm not going to argue that. Like I said, MS has done a horrendous job managing the issue. I guess my question is what documentation are they looking for and what level of detail? They have several articles about what data is collected in the IT Pro docs. Granted, its all geared toward System Administrators for gathering that same data within their organizations and isn't going to be easily understood. But people will [i]definitely[/i] have issues with the Full level, which is the default, and that's a problem.

[QUOTE=thelurker1234;52810304]Good data collection is usually anonymized and not really traceable back to you, and it's immensely helpful to companies. I usually turn it on if they're pretty clear about what it is and what they do with it e.g. Firefox. That's really the key thing, go right the hell ahead and collect some data, just be open with what you're taking, and make it opt-outable.[/QUOTE] Even if it's anonymized it definitely still needs to be handled properly. Firefox, as you said, does it very well. Things are enabled by default but that's fine because they're super easy to disable and they actually stay disabled. On top of that you're perfectly capable of checking what data they'd be taking with them enabled. And after having gone over that data myself I was perfectly fine with leaving their telemetry and data collection options enabled. about:telemetry about:crashes They're out of the way and you would need to look them up in order to check the information but it's not difficult. (They [I]could[/I] do with making it easier to review, however.) As opposed to Windows where I've forced everything that I can to be disabled because I have literally zero information about what they're trying to collect. It's none of their business unless I choose to make it their business. And they're not doing a great job, or even a mediocre one, at convincing me to make it their business. They're not being transparent so I feel the need to oppose them. I can't make an informed decision.

Fuck Windows 10, I have to use a ton of very restrictive firewall rules just to get peace of mind that sensitive data isn't being sent to Microsoft, and it is sensitive data at least to me, there is a [url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic-level-windows-diagnostic-events-and-fields-1709]list[/url] of what is sent at the basic level. You can disable it with registry tweaks but frankly I don't trust that, there are a lot of applications that try send data to Microsoft so I just block the lot even if it causes a number of things to break.