Windows 10 Spying? Microsoft reveals it knows "how many hours" you use Windows 10

Mike

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As reportedly prominently by many tech websites, Microsoft has reportedly, inadvertently revealed information about its ability to mass aggregate data about its customers (some have called this... spying). One such company is GoldenFrog, writing:

Microsoft Reveals it’s Spying on Windows 10 Users

Microsoft, in a blog post published Monday, shared some statistics on the popularity of its Windows 10 platform. In addition to showing the platform’s success, the post also highlighted some serious privacy concerns associated with Windows 10 – concerns which were previously reported in July. In brief, Microsoft is collecting vast amounts of data and spying on Windows 10 users.

As summarized by BGR, the blog post included the following “milestones” from Microsoft:

  • People have spent over 11 billion hours on Windows 10 in December alone.
  • Over 44.5 billion minutes spent in Microsoft Edge across Windows 10 devices in just the last month.
  • Over 2.5 billion questions asked of Cortana since launch.
  • Around 30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device vs. prior versions of Windows.
  • Over 82 billion photos viewed within the Windows 10 Photo app.
  • Gaming continues to grow on Windows 10 – in 2015, gamers spent over 4 billion hours playing PC games on Windows 10.
  • Gamers have streamed more than 6.6 million hours of Xbox One games to Windows 10 PCs."
Further...

"As described by Forbes, 'That’s a crazy amount, but what is even crazier is the revelation that Microsoft is tracking exactly how long every single user is using Windows 10.'"

Source: Microsoft Reveals it's Spying on Windows 10 Users | Golden Frog
 
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What gets me usage data isn't spying it's just usage data. Nothing personal is sent to them just usage and diag data to better the product.
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Microsoft spying is news?

I do agree with Forbes that their figgures are hard to credit but it does show Microsoft doesn't really care about its customers privacy, yes all large companies spy but at least they have the humility to deny it.
 
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It is a shame that such little respect is shown for peoples privacy. The link Mike has posted will give back that missing privacy. Combine that wiith a good VPN and job done
 
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Yes we know we're all being spied on constantly. Governments worldwide, big business and, most of all, advertisers are all doing it. What about Apple Computers? Aren't they doing it too? It's been said the only ones who have something to worry about are terrorists and other types of evil-doers. Is there any proof that the spyers are actually targeting the average computer users with any malicious intent? If someone knows maybe they should speak up.

I personally have a problem with viewing ads on my computer and phone. I use a "Hosts File" on both that is pretty effective at blocking them. It blocks redirects to malicious sites that are trying to spy on us too. But it seems to me that if the NSA and big business notice someone is making a serious attempt at blocking surveillance they might take notice and crack down on those individuals.
 
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they are spying but I don't know what you consider malicious... what happens when a teacher posts an image at the pool or if they decide to protest against detention centers?
 
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ussnorway said:
they are spying but I don't know what you consider malicious... what happens when a teacher posts an image at the pool or if they decide to protest against detention centers?
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Of course I don't keep a constant eye on this so I don't know if they're doing any harm. I don't think there's any evil intent towards the casual user. I'm not going to go to extravagant lengths to stop them from looking at me. I think you could make them suspicious.

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk
 
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Agreed with nmsuk, they don't track any PII so it's not really spying. Plus a digital assistant has to know a degree about your habits, likes, etc in order to be useful. Everyone of them has data like this Siri, Google, Cortana. We live in a very connected age and it's ridiculously easy to find data about people online.
 
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