Windows 7 and 8 have added snooping

[foxidrive]

ghacks and Ars Technica are providing more detail about Windows 10's telemetry and "privacy invasion" features being backported to Windows 7 and 8. The articles list and explain some of the involved updates by number (e.g., KB3068708, KB3022345, KB3075249, and KB3080149). The Ars article says the Windows firewall can block the traffic just fine, and the service sending the telemetry can be disabled. "Additionally, most or all of the traffic appears to be contingent on participating in the CEIP in the first place. If the CEIP is disabled, it appears that little or no traffic gets sent. This may not always have been the case, however; the notes that accompany the 3080149 update say that the amount of network activity when not part of CEIP has been reduced." The ghacks article explains other ways block the unwanted traffic and uninstall the updates.

Hey, can you still buy Windows 3.11 ? It's safer!

Back in April, Microsoft released a non-security update for both Windows 7 and 8. This update, 3022345, created a new Windows service called the Diagnostics Tracking service.

That's one service you can disable if ya want to.

 

[aye-aye-Chris]

Hey, can you still buy Windows 3.11 ? It's safer!

Buy? Did you ask "can you still buy it???

I'm fairly sure there'd be a copy or 2 in (one patch over an eye*)bay and other sites.

If you have any trouble I'll slip you a zip, shouldn't take long to download, a few megabytes, not 10's of terabytes.

*Doesn't matter which eye, as long as it's one on your face, not your %$*# or your @%$#

 

[misi]

Hey, can you still buy Windows 3.11 ? It's safer!

I have DOS 3.1 somewhere...

 

[foxidrive]

If you have any trouble I'll slip you a zip, shouldn't take long to download, a few megabytes, not 10's of terabytes.

You mistook me for seriousness

Thank you, but I also have a nice copy stored safely for the day that I need it!

 

[foxidrive]

I have DOS 3.1 somewhere...

That is what I started with too on an ibm machine

 

[Guess]

I have an 8" floppy.....

 

[foxidrive]

I guess you can uninstall, and then hide, these updates in Windows Update.

Last week came the warning, now comes the roll out. One of the most most controversial aspects of Windows 10 is coming to Windows 7 and 8. Microsoft has released upgrades which enable the company to track what a user is doing. The updates – KB3075249, KB3080149 and KB3068708 – all add "customer experience and diagnostic telemetry" to the older versions. gHacks points out that the updates will ignore any previous user preferences reporting: "These four updates ignore existing user preferences stored in Windows 7 and Windows 8 (including any edits made to the Hosts file) and immediately starts exchanging user data with vortex-win.data.microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com."