Share This article

When Windows 10 launched, we walked through some of the problematic privacy and default settings, with information on how to control them. Microsoft’s data-hoovering strategy with Windows 10 has raised concerns across the market, particularly given that the company set new aggressive policies for doing so in Windows 10 that weren’t present in previous versions of Windows.

Ars Technica has been testing how the new operating system behaves when various monitoring functions are enabled or disabled, and what they’ve found is that the operating system can’t resist phoning home, even when ordered not to do so. Even if you turn off Cortana and searching the web with the built-in search box, the OS reaches out to connect with MS via a machine ID code that persists across reboots. Windows 10 downloads new tile information from the web even when Live Tiles are turned off, and it transmits data to a Microsoft Skydrive server even if no Microsoft account is present on the device and OneDrive has been uninstalled.

Windows 10’s privacy settings

There’s no sign of anything like a smoking gun that would indicate user privacy has been catastrophically breached, but the inclusion of such capabilities when an option has already been deactivated will rub certain privacy advocates the wrong way. It’s a subtle attack on the meaning of turning a feature off. If a user deactivates Cortana and the ability to search the web from the new embedded search bar, that person has every reason to expect that the computer will not query Bing or any other Microsoft server when they perform a search. These queries don’t contain personally identifying information or data on what was searched for, but why do they exist in the first place?

I like Windows 10 in many ways, but I’m holding off on upgrading until workarounds are available that will deal with some of these issues. It’s not that I think Microsoft wants to be able to spy on everyone, or that Windows 10 is designed to upload all our secret documents and IM conversations — but I generally expect software to behave the way I want it to, not tell me one thing and do another. Microsoft has spun these kinds of “services” by claiming that they’re required to deliver an optimal Windows 10 experience, but that doesn’t really square with the entire history of the company. It wasn’t mandatory to deliver an optimal Windows 7 or Windows 8 experience, so why is it suddenly important to phone home now, even after the user has chosen options that ostensibly disable such communication?

Some people will argue that it doesn’t matter if Microsoft sends some unidentifiable data back to HQ, and as far as actual violations of privacy are concerned, I agree. At the same time, however, options to disable services should be presented in a clear and concise manner, and they should always perform the stated tasks. Microsoft may claim that running Windows 10 offline may result in a “degraded” OS experience, but we’ve seen no indication that’s the case — and therefore no objective reason why the OS should be connecting to online servers when it’s been configured not to do so.

Read more http://www.extremetech.com/computing/212160-windows-10-still-phones-home-even-when-ordered-not-to-do-so