Microsoft Responds to Windows 10 Privacy Concerns - Comments Page 2

Google collects more "private data" than does Microsoft. Every single non-governmental company anywhere including the pop-mom stores needs to make a profit. If Microsoft did not collect advertising data Windows 10 price would have to be more than it is now.

Hi Bob. Is there a way of establishing if the Win10 that I installed on my workstation is genuine. I am having doubts as I do not have any of the issues that everyone else seems to be able to identify.
Any suggestions please.

Cheers, and thanks for all that you do.

Another point to consider; not everyone has unlimited internet connection, and must pay by the MB for uploads and downloads. That is one major reason, amongst many, that I will never upgrade to Win 10. When my 8.1 dies, I will buy a Mac.

Any one that believes what Microsoft says is a complete idiot. They have pushed "updates" out to Windows 7 that spy on users the same way Windows 10 does. Everyone needs to disable the "Diagnostic Tracking Service" in services to prevent this. Don't be stupid this spying does not benefit the customer it only benefits Microsoft.

Thank you for your diligent work in helping us all to understand the intricacies of our computers. I will be hanging on to Win 7 until the last possible minute. I agree that any stripping of personal information before transmission of crash reports, etc., should be done on the user's machine. This would not be brain surgery. I also resent having ANY company try to "make my life easier" by suggesting ads or providing information they "think" I might want. I've managed to make it to age 72 by locating and using information relevant to my needs, including purchases, and I think I'll be able to manage quite well in the future without Microsoft's trying to hold my hand.

The bit that M'Soft and Google might collect about us is irrelevant up to what our government's can collect from Facebook and other P2P's
If and whatever the government collect from our PC's is for our general safety because the Western world is in deep Do Dah!!! most folk just don't realize it yet.

Hi Bob
I was concerned about privacy issues on Win 10 before reading the above article which reassured me. But, after reading all your readers' comments I'm back to square one. How long before MS no longer maintains Win 7?

I can confirm what's in the error messages because I've been analyzing some crash.dump files for another program I use. I opened them in the Windows Kits WinDBG and there is no indication anywhere of user names; just the application that crashed and what registers and things it was doing at the time of the crash.

On the rest of the privacy stuff... This sadly is the way the world has gone. In the olden days of personal computers, you were its master. As time has gone on, people have been connecting to each other and the rest of the 'net. The problem with being connected means that there is money to be made. This is where the advertisers, sorry marketing gurus, come in and figured how to maximize the company's exposure with in your face advertisements. Even this page we're looking at has advertisements.

Sure we can move to Linux or Solaris, but then we pay the price of no applications. Not all of us are programmers or hackers. Hacker not in the bad sense but in the old-fashioned computer gurus-types, who could hack around any computer and get stuff done. Insead we're now stuck with either accepting what's out there for a price, or writing and fiddling around in the back room.

I say this as I think back to my install of SAMBA on a Sun Sparc Ultra 5 a few years ago. It was an interesting experience, but needing to run a gunzip to untar a tarball file, then run pkgadd, or a makefile to install the program. This didn't count the configuring of the .conf file for the application, setting startup parms, permissions, and so on. Seriously, can you see your elderly aunt or parent doing this? I doubt it.

Well ... I'm staying clear ... I used 98 to its final end ... then got Vista ... my laptop imploded and got w7 with the next one ... its manageable and I bought a used laptop with Vista on it for what it would cost for a new battery in my w7 laptop but will use these until they die. All these upgrades of everything is b.s. I will avoid as much as possible.

I have Windows 10 and I keep getting a "critical error" message saying Cortana has failed and that I need to restart. I have Cortana turned "off" but this still happens. There are rumours that my Avast may be causing this, but the suggested solution of pressing F8 during startup is not working. Has anyone else experienced this? Or better, found a solution?