Do you mind if I paraphrase your comment and add it to the article? Thanks for checking the privacy guide, it establishes what Microsoft officially has to say about their data collection methods. And, I should have checked it before writing the article.
I am cynical of any company that is trying to impede user's ability to turn privacy related settings off. They go out of their way to make it difficult. There are no more than 2 dozen privacy related switches in Control Panel. Everything is checked on by default. This whole thing reeks of insiduous tracking, spying and surveillance, despite of what the privacy guide says. I am very, very cynical.
Also, there is no assurance that government agencies have access to a wealth of information that's collected as part of "user experience improvement". Furthermore, all this data collection, even if it is not used for advertisement currently has potential to be used in the future for ad tracking. Microsoft has full control over changing their privacy policy next day. I lost the count of emails that I get every other day that eBay, or YouTube or Twitter has changed their privacy policy.
Assuming benevolent actions from the company collecting data, whether it is for "telemetry" purposes or for ad tracking, has the risk of being hacked. I presume Microsoft has taken enough steps to anonymize personally identifiable information or as they call it PII in the circles.
The plug needs to be pulled from the point of origin of the data, if it is not collected, it is not going to be misused.
Questions that I would like to ask Microsoft:
- Why make it difficult for user to opt-out of privacy related settings?
- Why employ dark patterns to trick users into submitting their data?
- Why push Cortana across the board from "Home" to "Enterprise" editions, where no one has asked for it, no one uses it and it is impossible to get rid of?
- Why not make it an opt-in process as opposed to opting out?
> There are no more than 2 dozen privacy related switches in Control Panel.
There's a lot of different settings because that's what people asked for. When W10 released, a lot of privacy options were bundled under a handful of toggles and it wasn't very clear what each of them did. Now it's explicit and far easier to understand for people that actually go looking for them.
> This whole thing reeks of insiduous tracking, spying and surveillance, despite of what the privacy guide says.
I'd honestly suggest spending some time on the Microsoft Privacy portal and related pages. They go into quite a lot of detail of what each individual setting does and what the data is used for, as well as Microsoft's internal policies for data management.
Your theory also doesn't make sense considering Microsoft's current market strategy as a cloud services company. Its advertisement business is barely a blip on the radar.
> ...has the risk of being hacked. I presume Microsoft has taken enough steps to anonymize personally identifiable information or as they call it PII in the circles.
Per the above link: "The principle of least privileged access guides access to diagnostic data. [...] We strive to gather only the info we need and to store it only for as long as it’s needed to provide a service or for analysis. Much of the info about how Windows and apps are functioning is deleted within 30 days"
PII might be contained within full crash dumps, however access to potentially PII-containing telemetry requires internal approval:
"If a device experiences problems that are difficult to identify or repeat using Microsoft’s internal testing, additional data becomes necessary. This data can include any user content that might have triggered the problem and is gathered from a small sample of devices that have both opted into the Full diagnostic data level and have exhibited the problem.
However, before more data is gathered, Microsoft’s privacy governance team, including privacy and other subject matter experts, must approve the diagnostics request made by a Microsoft engineer."
> Why make it difficult for user to opt-out of privacy related settings?
Given the privacy dialog shown on install, and the ability to opt-out of personalised targeting globally via a single page, what part is difficult?
> Why push Cortana across the board from "Home" to "Enterprise" editions, where no one has asked for it, no one uses it and it is impossible to get rid of?
Search was actually separated from Cortana in a recent update. It was completely integrated at some point in an effort to compete with Apple/Google but is slowly being pulled apart and hidden away in the OS as, like you said, barely anyone uses it. Fun fact, if you never pick a language for Cortana it never enables. I just have a plain search box.
> Why employ dark patterns to trick users into submitting their data? Why not make it an opt-in process as opposed to opting out?
Both of these questions are effectively asking the same thing. Because nobody would go out of their way to enable it. The data Microsoft would receive would just be a mix of "Technically competent people that would like to send Microsoft diagnostic & usage data" and "People who enabled it accidentally". Your average joe isn't going to read the descriptions of 10 toggle boxes and go to enable them. Not a great dataset when you're looking for a niche driver problems affecting 0.005% of users.
Sorry to hijack this thread but am I the only who suspect a pretty strong astroturfing effort from MS on HN since a few years? I’m glad more people are now seeing behind the developer friendly PR and maybe it was just a fad and I’m overthinking, but MS news and some related comments on HN always have a strange tone to me.
I am cynical of any company that is trying to impede user's ability to turn privacy related settings off. They go out of their way to make it difficult. There are no more than 2 dozen privacy related switches in Control Panel. Everything is checked on by default. This whole thing reeks of insiduous tracking, spying and surveillance, despite of what the privacy guide says. I am very, very cynical.
Also, there is no assurance that government agencies have access to a wealth of information that's collected as part of "user experience improvement". Furthermore, all this data collection, even if it is not used for advertisement currently has potential to be used in the future for ad tracking. Microsoft has full control over changing their privacy policy next day. I lost the count of emails that I get every other day that eBay, or YouTube or Twitter has changed their privacy policy.
Assuming benevolent actions from the company collecting data, whether it is for "telemetry" purposes or for ad tracking, has the risk of being hacked. I presume Microsoft has taken enough steps to anonymize personally identifiable information or as they call it PII in the circles.
The plug needs to be pulled from the point of origin of the data, if it is not collected, it is not going to be misused.
Questions that I would like to ask Microsoft:
- Why make it difficult for user to opt-out of privacy related settings?
- Why employ dark patterns to trick users into submitting their data?
- Why push Cortana across the board from "Home" to "Enterprise" editions, where no one has asked for it, no one uses it and it is impossible to get rid of?
- Why not make it an opt-in process as opposed to opting out?