Privacy concerns about Windows 10

Privacy concerns about Windows 10

By | 2015-08-01T22:49:20-04:00 August 1st, 2015|Categories: Safety & Privacy|0 Comments

If you are considering installing Windows 10, you may want to read this first, and wait. Windows 10’s default settings collect more data about you than you may be comfortable with.

Users are given the option to opt out of most of the data collection, but critics say that that isn’t enough. Alec Meer, of gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun, says: “Microsoft simply aren’t making it clear enough that they’re doing this, how it might affect you and how to opt out – despite chest-thumping, we’re-all-chums-here talk about how ‘real transparency starts with straightforward terms and policies that people can clearly understand’.

“There is no world in which 45 pages of policy documents and opt-out settings split across 13 different Settings screens and an external website constitutes ‘real transparency’.”

From what I can tell without having tried to install it myself, it is really difficult to figure out how to opt out of all this data-collection. It seems to be deliberately obscured.

The European digital rights organisation (EDRi) sums up the company’s 45 pages of terms and conditions by saying: “Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties.”

If anyone has additional links to share that may be of use, please do!

About the Author:

Elizabeth is a 30-something asexual woman who is often mistaken for a lesbian, due to the fact that she is partnered to a lady. She is actually bi (but not biromantic) and somewhere on the aromantic spectrum. She is formally trained in creative writing with a focus on non-fiction and poetry. She writes for The Asexual Agenda and maintains a personal blog called Prismatic Entanglements. In her spare time, she enjoys being cat furniture, coming up with new Pokemon strategies and never going to church.

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