Many years ago my father used to complain about powered car windows. They were ‘more crap to break.’ Go to a junkyard today and you can still roll down the windows in a car built in 1955. Now, you can’t even buy a car with window cranks. That’s fine until the switch breaks, the motor burns out or you’re trapped under water in an accident. It’s interesting to even unlock some cars with a dead battery.
Windows 10 has been in the news lately because of fears that it transmits a lot of personal information from the computers, tablets and phones it runs on.
That’s concern enough, but the deeper problem is a lot more like power windows and door locks. In an effort to be ‘convenient,’ even helpful, modern computing devices bring along a lot of baggage and risks that consumers really don’t understand. Windows is just one of the latest, but 10 takes it to a new level.
While Microsoft and others really do want to data mine your activity to make money, there is a more fundamental shift. They are trying to improve the computing experience, to make it more integrated, and to be more helpful to the consumer. It isn’t necessarily malicious, but there are implications way beyond privacy.
Windows 10 is fundamentally different from earlier technology products in several ways
- it tracks your activity and personal information (if you let it)
- it is designed to be ‘live linked’ to online resources
- it constantly tries to modify itself to stay ‘current’
- it tries to anticipate your needs and do things automatically to be helpful
- it ‘assumes’ that you want all of this as a default
Windows and other computing platforms used to connect to online services as needed. As a consumer, you were generally aware that you were accessing remote resources. 10 changes all that. It integrates online resources into its basic operations. Its default settings include options to track your behavior, suggest content, target advertising and provide answers predicted by your behavior. It also continually updates itself at regular intervals.
The platform connects you to available open hot spots, and it shares resources with computers identified by your contacts list. It allows ‘friends’ devices to share your network access when they visit your home. It even goes so far as to have program updates get shared by other computers in your local network.
All this gets done without any effort on your part. That may all sound wonderful, but it has drawbacks. With all the activity you may find that 10 is taxing your network. According to The Hacker News, even with all the privacy options enabled, 10 will contact external servers 5,500 times per day! Add three computers to your home LAN; they all start chattering; and, you suddenly have a lot of network traffic.
With all this ‘activity’ 10 will
- use a lot of network bandwidth with endless communication
- potentially disrupt your work or apps with automatic updates
- create a greater opportunity to be hacked with all the communication
- expose your device(s) by connecting to open hot spots
- risk your device(s) by allowing other computers to use your network
- obscure when you are connecting to outside resources
- transport your personal information around putting it at risk
- freely update guest computers with your network via peer to peer distribution
Perhaps worst of all, the platform does all this automatically. Some of the options can be turned off, but a basic installation turns these features on by default. If hackers break into the inter-system communications, any corruption or malware would be spread like wildfire.
Assuming that no one would or will hack into this infrastructure seems foolhardy. Forcing this risk on consumers without their understanding is unfair and irresponsible.
For more understanding check out:
PCWorld: How to reclaim your privacy in Windows 10, piece by piece
The Hacker News: Windows 10 Sends Your Data 5500 Times Every Day After Tweaking Settings
ars technica: Even when told not to, Windows 10 just can’t stop talking to Microsoft
isleaked.com: fix windows 10 (see settings screens)
As Always, Happy Computing!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.