Even With Telemetry Disabled, Windows 10 Talks To Dozens of Microsoft Servers

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Venustus

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We knew this already:mad::rolleyes:, but a nice read nevertheless!!:)

Like many of you, I am concerned about the telemetry, spying and other surveillance features, known or unknown, of Windows 10. It has concerned me enough to push me to Linux Mint as my main operating system. Even so, I wanted to better understand Windows 10, but internet search results for a decent windows 10 traffic analysis leave a lot to be desired. As such, I decided to do my own investigating on what, exactly, Windows 10 is doing traffic-wise, and post the results. For this analysis, I wanted to simply analyse the network traffic of Windows 10 on a clean install, and just let it sit and run without using it.

What I have done for this analysis:

  1. I have installed DD-WRT on a router connected to the internet and configured remote logging to the Linux Mint laptop in #2.
  2. I have installed Linux Mint on a laptop, and setup rsyslog to accept remote logging from the DD-WRT router.
  3. I have installed Virtualbox on the Linux Mint laptop, and installed Windows 10 EnterprisePNG on Virtualbox. I have chosen the customized installation option where I disabled three pages of tracking options.
  4. I have configured the DD-WRT router to drop and log all connection attempts via iptables through the DD-WRT router by Windows 10 Enterprise.
  5. Aside from installing Windows 10 Enterprise, and verifying the internet connection through ipconfig and ping yahoo.com, I have not used the Windows 10 installation at all (the basis for the first part of this analysis)
  6. Let Windows 10 Enterprise run overnight for about 8 hours (while I slept).
  7. I use perl to parse the data out of syslog files and insert said data into a Mysql database.
  8. I use perl to obtain route data from whois.radb.net, as well as nslookup PTR data, and insert that into the Mysql database.
  9. Lastly, I query and format the data for analyzing.
Here is the roughly 8-hour network traffic analysis of 5508 connection attempts of an unused, base install of Windows 10 Enterprise (NOTE: I did not remove any 192.168.1.x home network IP addresses from the analysis):

individual connection attempts by IP address,port, and protocol:

select distinct(ip_address),port,protocol,count(ip_address) as attempts from rejected_connections group by ip_address order by attempts desc;

Read the full analysis HERE
 

Venustus

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Let's all give up on Window$ and pass to a Linux distro :) If there was no gaming for me, I'd absolutely change my main system to a Linux.
Indeed!! :)
The whole WIN 10 operating system is one massive PUP:p:p

This is not new, there was an article about this (last year, I think).
I know!!:)
That is why I have the "disclaimer" at the top of the OP;)

Just in case some people were not fully aware!!:)
 

jamescv7

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Once you connect in the internet, expect those hidden components of Windows 10 even disabled will transmit information and that's how Microsoft powerful on their own
 
A

above

Removed windows and installed Ubuntu . If I had known it was this easy to get used to I wouldn't have stuck with windows this long. Looking forward to alot less drama. I don't think the win.10 thing is going to do anything but get worse, too many people jumping in with out a concern what they are giving away.
 
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Neno

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Talk about privacy in this age (under this social system) is absurd. You may avoid some 'traps' (or invasion of your privacy) just to utterly fall into thousand others you dont even see or grasp their existance. Ergo, there is no reason for evasion as there's no privacy.

(Not a rant, just a fact :) )
 

Nightwalker

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Almost everybody seems concerned about Windows 10 privacy problems and yet those same people have facebook/social media and smartphone around (much more invasive that anything that Microsoft ever pulled).
 

Dani Santos

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Let's all give up on Window$ and pass to a Linux distro :) If there was no gaming for me, I'd absolutely change my main system to a Linux.

Try Steam os. It is a linux distro made for gaming. It's in beta and doesn't have all games windows has but you can try it if you want.

Almost everybody seems concerned about Windows 10 privacy problems and yet those same people have facebook/social media and smartphone around (much more invasive that anything that Microsoft ever pulled).

100% agree, everybody is concern with simple telemetric data which is used for statistics purpose, but nobody talks about the gmail reading your emails for ads, android, facebook tracking you in every website and phone,ect...
 
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