Even when told not to, Windows 10 just can't stop talking to Microsoft
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/
Unfortunately for privacy advocates, these controls don't
appear to be sufficient to completely prevent the operating system
from going online and communicating with Microsoft's servers. For
example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start
menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to
www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which
appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is
disabled. The request for this file appears to contain a random
machine ID that persists across reboots ... Some of the traffic
looks harmless but feels like it shouldn't be happening. For
example, even with no Live tiles pinned to Start (and hence no
obvious need to poll for new tile data), Windows 10 seems to
download new tile info from MSN's network from time to time, using
unencrypted HTTP to do so. While again the requests contain no
identifying information, it's not clear why they're occurring at
all, given that they have no corresponding tile. Other traffic
looks a little more troublesome. Windows 10 will periodically send
data to a Microsoft server named ssw.live.com. This server seems to
be used for OneDrive and some other Microsoft services. Windows 10
seems to transmit information to the server even when OneDrive is
disabled and log-ins are using a local account that isn't connected
to a Microsoft Account. The exact nature of the information being
sent isn't clear--it appears to be referencing telemetry
settings--and again, it's not clear why any data is being sent at
all.
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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