<story><title>Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251484</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikegerwitz</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s more concerning about these data aren&amp;#x27;t these specific numbers, but what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and what they can infer about you from it.  Privacy and anonymity aren&amp;#x27;t (reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system.&lt;p&gt;Any entity knowing that I have even turned on my PC---without explicit action to notify someone of such, such as posting this message or sending e-mail---is a privacy violation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>petke</author><text>Such statistics would be very useful to society. Tracking people as a group to figure out how they behave. Its only when the tracking targets individuals that it get creepy.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;New York&amp;#x27;ers goes to the toilet x times a day&amp;quot; is fine vs &amp;quot;John Doe goes to the toilet x times a day&amp;quot; is not.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35251484</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikegerwitz</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s more concerning about these data aren&amp;#x27;t these specific numbers, but what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and what they can infer about you from it.  Privacy and anonymity aren&amp;#x27;t (reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system.&lt;p&gt;Any entity knowing that I have even turned on my PC---without explicit action to notify someone of such, such as posting this message or sending e-mail---is a privacy violation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cm2187</author><text>What I would like to know if how much of this tracking is not blocked by installing something like Spybot&amp;#x27;s Anti-Beacon (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.safer-networking.org&amp;#x2F;spybot-anti-beacon&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.safer-networking.org&amp;#x2F;spybot-anti-beacon&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) and using a Local Account. If all it takes is to install a similar tool when I buy a new machine, it&amp;#x27;s not a big deal. There are many other tools I need to install anyway (winrar, etc).</text></comment>