Privacy News Windows 10 Exposes Users to Hacking Dangers Even With Telemetry Features Disabled

[conceptualclarity]

Wednesday, February 10, 2016 Swati Khandelwal

"Traffic Analysis Reveals Extent of Windows 10 Spying

Curious to know the extent of Windows 10 spying, CheesusCrust set up his Linux laptop with a Windows 10 Enterprise virtual machine as well as a DD-WRT router that was being utilized to monitor traffic.

CheesusCrust also disabled every single tracking and telemetry features in the operating system. He then left the machine running Windows 10 overnight in an effort to monitor the connections the OS is attempting to make.

The results are not so surprising:

Eight hours later, he found that the idle Windows 10 box had tried over 5,500 connections to 93 different IP addresses, out of which almost 4,000 were made to 51 different IP addresses belonging to Microsoft.

After leaving the machine for 30 hours, Windows 10 expanded that connection to 113 non-private IP addresses, potentially allowing hackers to intercept this data."

Using the software DisableWinTracking improved the situation but did not eliminate the Windows 10 spying.

Pardon me if this has been shown before; I did do a number of searches that didn't turn it up.

 

[Cats-4_Owners-2]

Thank you for this share @conceptualclarity as unsavory outbound connections have lately become an even greater concern.
"DisableWinTracking" shall be a software I'll look at more closely too!

 

[juhful]

Everyone totally paranoid about spying.....never go on the internet again!

 

[conceptualclarity]

"DisableWinTracking" shall be a software I'll look at more closely too!

I have seen a number of companies come out with anti-Windows 10 spying products. Somebody should do a thread comparing them.

 

[frogboy]

O&O Shutup 10 is a good one to have a look at. O&O ShutUp10: download free antispy tool for Windows 10

 

[NullByte]

This is not new, there was some articles about this since Windows 10 was released. Yes, Windows 10 spies on you but, if you look at Steam and other apps, they do the same, just read EULA, T&R, PP. Privacy is a dream nowadays, even if you look at Linux (Ubuntu) it sends search history to amazon and other places.

If you have an Android Phone and look at what permissions have most apps you will see that privacy is dead.

 

[ravi prakash saini]

Great , I am unable to understand why all these people are doing the work which my wife is supposed to do after all it is her duty to spy on me

 

[hjlbx]

Trying to eliminate every single threat to privacy on a W10 system is an exercise in futility - and will serve no other purpose than to drive one absolutely nuts while trying to figure out how to stop data collection by M$.

How many home users are ever targeted by capable hacker ?

Virtually never...

And a hacker doesn't want your M$ telemetry data, they want loot ($) - which M$ telemetry data isn't going to assist the hacker very much in that regard.

 

[hjlbx]

Great , I am unable to understand why all these people are doing the work which my wife is supposed to do after all it is her duty to spy on me

That is good one...

 

[DracusNarcrym]

I have seen a number of companies come out with anti-Windows 10 spying products. Somebody should do a thread comparing them.

There's already DisableWinTracking, Spybot Anti-Beacon (my personal choice) and O&O ShutUp10, and probably more.
Of course, you can try to manually disable the most important telemetry features, if you have the patience to do it.

Note that these tools obviously do NOT eliminate telemetry, but they still help a bit.

 

[jamescv7]

Everything is becoming complicated because the deep internal components of Windows 10 is already design to gather some information that people considered a big privacy issue.

 

[Logethica]

O&O Shutup 10 is a good one to have a look at. O&O ShutUp10: download free antispy tool for Windows 10

I am with @frogboy ...
O & O Shut Up 10 is my favourite too..
I used to use Spybot Anti-Beacon but removed it as it is seldom updated...
As others here have rightly pointed out,nothing works 100%...
The MS provided options available to the user regarding W10 telemetry/Data Collection are just "the illusion" of choice.
I use O&O Shut Up in conjunction with the "Killing" of certain MS Services through ZoneAlarms Application Control,and blocking access to Bing.com (Wow ..MS sure does like to run everything through Bing/IE/Edge)...
Telemetry is probably down to 15% of that of a Clean OS Install...and I would be fighting a losing battle (IMO) to attempt to reduce this further.

 

[ravi prakash saini]

To add insult to injury they are asking for feedback ,in the attached image you can see my feedback

 

[Logethica]

To add insult to injury they are asking for feedback ,in the attached image you can see my feedback

HAHAHAHA...HAHA
Excellent Post Ravi...Hilarious

 

[L S]

I use Spybot Anti-Beacon.

 

[Logethica]

I have seen a number of companies come out with anti-Windows 10 spying products. Somebody should do a thread comparing them.

Yes, I would be interested to see some recent comparisons too..
Last year I tried a few out.One of the sites that I remember looking at was this one...
ghacks.net- Comparison of Windows 10 Privacy Tools
The Article goes back to August 14, 2015 ,and was last updated on December 7, 2015.

 

[DJ Panda]

I don't believe in "spying" its useless trying to resist. I just let them do what they want I don't do banking or anything sensitive on my computer so I don't really care.

 

[L S]

This three Programs : { DisableWinTracking, Spybot Anti-Beacon, & O&O ShutUp10, } It is Ok to use more than One Program on my Windows 10 ? Or I will have complications etc. Thanks. )

 

[hjlbx]

This three Programs : { DisableWinTracking, Spybot Anti-Beacon, & O&O ShutUp10, } It is Ok to use more than One Program on my Windows 10 ? Or I will have complications etc. Thanks. )

You can use more than one program. Some block things that the others might not. I use three: Win10Privacy, Windows Privacy Tweaker, O&O ShutUp10. Saves me a lot of time...

 

[L S]

You can use more than one program. Some block things that the others might not. I use three: Win10Privacy, Windows Privacy Tweaker, O&O ShutUp10. Saves me a lot of time...

Thanks A lot hjlbx