When it comes to Windows 10 privacy, don't trust amateur analysts

[Batu69]

Another day, another sensational report from Forbes. Oh my goodness, is Windows 10 really "phoning home" thousands of times a day? Nope. in fact, anyone who has even a basic understanding of how networks work should cringe at this shoddy report.

 

Gordon F. Kelly of Forbes is at it again, whipping up a frenzy over Windows 10. This time he claims to have found SHOCKING EVIDENCE that Microsoft's telemetry is collecting STAGGERING amounts of data from Windows 10 users.

 

Sadly, what Mr. Kelly's post* proves is how very, very little he understands about modern computing or networking. Seriously, his article is pure gibberish, technically.

 

But more than 100,000 people have read it so far, and apparently they believe Mr. Kelly.

I feel sorry for those poor benighted souls.

 

What makes this whole sorry state of affairs even worse is that Mr. Kelly hasn't even done any of his own research. Instead, he is relying on ... well, I'll let him tell you:

 

Quote

Blowing the lid on it this week is Voat user CheesusCrust whose extensive investigation found Windows 10 contacts Microsoft to report data thousands of times per day.

 

Voat is a Reddit clone. The user CheesusCrust is ... well, we really have no idea who he is.

Henceforth, I shall refer to him as "Mr. Crust."

 

There is nothing in Mr. Kelly's article to indicate that he spoke with Mr. Crust to verify his credentials or gather any additional data.

What Mr. Crust did was to install Windows 10 Enterprise edition (apparently an evaluation version) in a virtual machine, using the free VirtualBox running on Linux Mint. Mr. Crust says he performed a custom installation where he "disabled three pages of tracking options."

 

[A side note here: Actual network administrators configuring Windows 10 Enterprise have hundreds of Group Policy options at their disposal, including fine-grained controls over telemetry and privacy settings. There's even a fourth option, not available to users of retail and OEM Windows 10 editions, that dials telemetry back to an absolute minimum. There is no evidence that Mr. Crust is aware of these options.]

 

And then, Mr. Crust reports, he "configured the DD-WRT router to drop and log all connection attempts via iptables through the DD-WRT router by Windows 10 Enterprise."

 

Oh dear.

Mr. Crust says his intent was to "analyse the network traffic of Windows 10 on a clean install." If there are any readers with networking experience in the audience, they might see the flaw in his methodology. If your software needs to connect to an outside resource to perform a specific task, and the connection drops unexpectedly, you will not get any traffic to analyze. Even worse, when the software detects an unsuccessful connection it will try to connect again. And again and again and again.

 

So what might have been a single, short data exchange could instead turn into multiple connection attempts.

 

Mr. Kelly is outraged:

 

Quote

The raw numbers come out as follows: in an eight hour period Windows 10 tried to send data back to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses over 5500 times. After 30 hours of use, Windows 10 expanded that data reporting to 113 non-private IP addresses. Being non-private means there is the potential for hackers to intercept this data. I'd argue this is the greatest cost to owning Windows 10.

 

I might have to pause here for a second to allow those of my readers with networking experience to try to make sense of those last two sentences. Don't even try. It's gibberish.

 

Helpfully, Mr. Crust supplied the raw data, which I plugged into a spreadsheet so I could perform my own extensive investigation. The results are unintentionally hilarious.

 

First of all, 602 connection attempts were to 192.168.1.255, using UDP port 137. That's the broadcast address where Windows computers on a local network announce their presence and look for other network computers using the NetBIOS Name Service. It's perfectly normal traffic.

 

Another 630 of those connection attempts were Domain Name System lookups to the router itself, 192.168.1.1, using UDP port 53. That address is the router itself.

 

Why is Windows performing those DNS lookups? One big reason is that's how Windows checks whether you have access to the Internet. If there's a problem with your Internet connection, you get a yellow overlay on the network icon down at the right side of the taskbar.

 

To do that test, Windows first performs a DNS lookup of www.msftncsi.com. It then makes an HTTP request to retrieve the page ncsi.txt from that site. This file is a plain-text file and contains only the text "Microsoft NCSI." (NCSI stands for Network Connection Status Icon.) Finally, it performs a DNS query for dns.msftncsi.com.

 

The whole procedure is extensively documented .

DNS queries aren't "spying." Neither are NetBIOS name broadcasts on your local network. So far, that's 22.3 percent of the so-called traffic that's easily accounted for as "not spying," unless you think there's something sinister about a two-word text file that has been downloaded trillions of times from that poor Microsoft server.

 

Next up is a staggering 1,619 connection attempts using UDP port 3544 to the address 94.245.121.253, which Mr. Crust was unable to identify, along with another five attempts using the same port to other servers.

 

That address does indeed belong to Microsoft. It's a Teredo server, teredo.ipv6.microsoft.com. Teredo is an Internet standard that is used to supply an IPv6 address to a PC that speaks only IPv4, making it easier to perform secure and reliable communication between two endpoints without having to worry about network translation. It's also well documented and doesn't involve any exchange of information other than IP addresses.

 

In short, Windows keeps trying to make a simple connection using its IPv6 capabilities, but the router keeps dropping those connection attempts. So it keeps trying again and again.

 

That's another 1,624 entries we can add to the "not spying" list. So far, by my tally, more than 52 percent of the connection attempts are completely harmless and involve no data collection at all.

 

Another three connection attempts are using port 123. That's the Network Time Protocol, which devices use to retrieve the current time from authoritative servers on the Internet. Setting the clock on your computer is not "spying."

 

Mr. Crust's list has another 549 connection attempts on port 80, which is plain old HTTP. Windows doesn't have a web server installed by default, so those are all incoming connections, with Windows trying to retrieve data from Microsoft's servers. They're not sending it the other direction.

 

Many of the addresses on the list belong to content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai Technologies and CloudFlare. Some of those downloads are possibly trying to refresh live tiles in the provisioned MSN apps (News, Sports, Weather, Money, and so on). There are perhaps some updates to the Windows Store in there too.

 

We might know more if Mr. Crust had allowed his machine to complete some of those connections so he could perform some actual traffic analysis. But he didn't, so we can't.

 

We can, however, safely conclude that none of those connections would involve any "spying."

Which leaves us with 2,100 connection attempts in eight hours over port 443. Those are secure (HTTPS) connections designed to exchange data so that it can't be intercepted in transit.

 

We have no idea how many secure connections that machine would have made in eight hours had Mr. Crust actually allowed them to complete. The number would almost certainly have been smaller, perhaps by an order of magnitude or even two.

 

And of course, those connections are not all about telemetry.

The most important one is the Software Licensing Service, which checks the state of Windows activation periodically. By dropping those connections, Mr. Crust is not allowing those activation and validation checks to complete. Windows gets very cranky when that happens, which could explain why there were more than 1,700 connection attempts to a handful of addresses in a single range of IP addresses managed by Microsoft.

 

Other content that gets delivered securely over port 443 includes Windows updates, Windows Defender updates, and updates from the Windows Store for apps that are provisioned on every Windows 10 machine. Windows 10 attempts to contact OneDrive, also securely, to see if there are any saved settings for the current user. There are lists of known malicious websites that get delivered to the SmartScreen service in a hashed and encrypted format.

 

And yes, there is certainly some telemetry data in there. We have no idea whether Mr. Crust changed the default Diagnostic and Usage settings to Basic. If he had, there would probably be a single ping to Microsoft's servers when the machine starts up, which would disclose what that setting was, whether Windows Defender was up to date, and whether his installation had experienced any failures in software or driver installation.

 

If he had kept the Enhanced or Full settings, Windows would periodically deliver a batch of anonymized usage data to Microsoft. (Of course, since he wasn't actually using the machine, there would be no data to exchange.) But we don't know, because Mr. Crust didn't actually do any traffic analysis.

 

Meanwhile, Mr. Kelly might want to write a little less and study a little more. I know some networking experts who've done some excellent video training courses where he could learn a lot about TCP and UDP and HTTP. I could even recommend some books that might be helpful.

 

But something tells me he really isn't interested in learning.

* As always, I hate to line Mr. Kelly's pocket with traffic for such shoddy work, but if you insist on reading, the Forbes post is here.

 

Article source

[steven36]

All this PR wrote  because  you  have the windows 10 haters  at Forbes Gordon Kelly,  and M$  fanboys  at CBS /Cnet/ ZDNet.com that got caught taking  bribes  from Microsoft like  Ed Bott. and they cant stand each other.

 

It really pisses fanboys off when M$ gets exposed  Were's  Ed Bott.'s  test at proving it dont spy? I bet you he cant provide none..   all see is him criticizing someone else's effort that no true fanboy is going to expose because they been brain washed  or being paid off.. 

 

 

Quote

 

Not so long ago we showed Microsoft advertising creeping into editorial sections/structure of ZDNet. there is also an increasing number of former and present Microsoft staff there, acting as “journalists” (syndicated in news feeds) whose bias reeks. Zack Whittaker, former Microsoft UK staff, uses this tech tabloid to spin Microsoft antitrust cases and this month he used this CBS-owned tabloid to spread Microsoft lies about Vista 8 ‘sales’. These are lies. It’s like libel but in reverse, lying for a company rather than against it (hence it’s unlikely that a formal complaint will be raised). The spinner takes the lie as a given, spreads it, and then attempts to shift attention to another topic in his headline. Disgusting.

 

Some more Google bashing in this tech tabloid comes from Microsoft staff (link) and the Microsoft-bribed Bott (peripheral PR), who encourages us to go to Microsoft for our Fog Computing needs (Bott plays a special role for Microsoft along with Mary Jo Foley and Microsoft Jack). Here is the link to the ad (Ed). Others in the site have a mixed history with Microsoft; some try to announce the death of form factors where Microsoft could never make headway (link), but the bottom line is, ZDNet has a disproportional amount of Microsoft coverage (promotional), which is not surprising given that even Microsoft staff, not just peripheral unofficial staff or former staff, works there under the banner of ‘journalism’.

http://techrights.org/2013/05/14/zdnet-msft-staff/

 

Ed Bott: Bought by Microsoft

http://techrights.org/2008/11/09/ed-bott-laptop-bribe/

 

It was in the NY times  that  Microsoft bribed bloggers like Ed Bott with free $2,500 laptops and stuff  to promote Windows Vista  and Windows 8 so I'm sure  there still giving him stuff  lol.

 

Stopping the cash for comment online

http://www.smh.com.au/business/stopping-the-cash-for-comment-online-20091008-goyx.html

 

[vibranium]

testing it with more advanced sniffers is easy for IT admins.

 

Where's MS official comment on this?

[steven36]

12 minutes ago, vibranium said:

testing it with more advanced sniffers is easy for IT admins.

 

Where's MS official comment on this?

I just use what i want and laugh at these scam artists  who write this horse manure . This is why i  dislike main stream media . Ed Bott  , Paul Thurrott etc  make Goggle were its full of lies were I cant find any relevant results . I seek the truth .  Not you're word against there's  I seek scientific proof   . I'm a realist .

[vibranium]

I agree that there are too many so-called reviews out there. 

 

 

[CODYQX4]

Sure, IPs != Spyware, but we're talking about an OS with forced telemetry and Express Settings = Keylogger enabled.

 

They won't even tell us what's in the frequent cumulative update packs.

[VileTouch]

2 hours ago, CODYQX4 said:

They won't even tell us what's in the frequent cumulative update packs.

that's the problem, Microsoft used to be a bit (not much) vocal about updates and common problems. (hell, they still have a KNOWLEDGE BASE code), but right now, there is no information available for none of these stuff. instead there's this "social" help forum where all you get is canned responses that usually make the problems worse .

 

no, seriously!: if your have any problems with universal apps the canned response you will get is a powershell command to reset the apps... which would be good, except it breaks every app completely (that includes the start menu and search) because of an unresolved bug and the only way to fix it is to reinstall windows!. but they keep instructing people to do that regardless, because...well, that's what their manual says.

 

TL;DR:  they are not giving enough clear answers as they used to, and that makes everyone unconfortable.

 

 

[vibranium]

How they can do this and expect to push corporate VL versions is beyond me. Would any big company put up with constant doubt?

[GRiM]

7 hours ago, steven36 said:

All this PR wrote  because  you  have the windows 10 haters  at Forbes Gordon Kelly,  and M$  fanboys  at CBS /Cnet/ ZDNet.com that got caught taking  bribes  from Microsoft like  Ed Bott. and they cant stand each other.

 

It really pisses fanboys off when M$ gets exposed  Were's  Ed Bott.'s  test at proving it dont spy? I bet you he cant provide none..   all see is him criticizing someone else's effort that no true fanboy is going to expose because they been brain washed  or being paid off.. 

 

 

Ed Bott: Bought by Microsoft

http://techrights.org/2008/11/09/ed-bott-laptop-bribe/

 

It was in the NY times  that  Microsoft bribed bloggers like Ed Bott with free £ 1,722.31 ($2,500) laptops and stuff  to promote Windows Vista  and Windows 8 so I'm sure  there still giving him stuff  lol.

 

Stopping the cash for comment online

http://www.smh.com.au/business/stopping-the-cash-for-comment-online-20091008-goyx.html

 

 

 

Whether he has bias or not is somewhat irrelevant.   What matters if what he said was true or not,   can you contradict any part of what he has said?   Was his debunk accurate or not?

 

I'm not a network expert/engineer but even I knew that the original article is mostly nonsensical bollocks.

[VileTouch]

8 minutes ago, GRiM said:

 

 

Whether he has bias or not is somewhat irrelevant.   What matters if what he said was true or not,   can you contradict any part of what he has said?   Was his debunk accurate or not?

 

I'm not a network expert/engineer but even I knew that the original article is mostly nonsensical bollocks.

SOME things are true. I am aware that some of the connections are harmless and have been used for years. however, it didn't make people uncomfortable before because it was just a matter of googling and you most likely found your answer from an official microsoft (knowledge base) article. but this is not the case any more. you google it and all you find is...people concerned about telemetry spionage and canned/unhelpful responses from support moderators.

Microsoft as a company needs to come clean with all of this before....well, it's already backfiring.

 

some connections are needed, we all know this. the live tiles need to update, it needs to check your mail, your calendar, your onedrive, onenone,etc. plus it needs to check windows updates, driver updates, time, connection and a lot of things. that's fine!, we understand. but then there's cortana, which is a BIG question mark on it's own..and it keeps connecting to the internet even when disabled. but there's no info on exactly WHAT is it doing. that's the problem.

[steven36]

6 hours ago, VileTouch said:

some connections are needed, we all know this. the live tiles need to update, it needs to check your mail, your calendar, your onedrive, onenone,etc. plus it needs to check windows updates, driver updates, time, connection and a lot of things. that's fine!, we understand. but then there's cortana, which is a BIG question mark on it's own..and it keeps connecting to the internet even when disabled. but there's no info on exactly WHAT is it doing. that's the problem.

Some connections are needed as long as you use there services  and programs and they spy on you though these so that's  the price you pay for trusting them  ... But if you use legacy programs not Microsoft you can  block every bit of it but windows updates and system .. Because when I had windows 10  i removed  all apps , edge and cortana and still  it called home  and I blocked what was left with firewall and it worked fine. My firewall by default allowed  the things  to use the  internet and windows update  and i had to block or allow anything else

[steven36]

8 hours ago, GRiM said:

 

 

Whether he has bias or not is somewhat irrelevant.   What matters if what he said was true or not,   can you contradict any part of what he has said?   Was his debunk accurate or not?

 

I'm not a network expert/engineer but even I knew that the original article is mostly nonsensical bollocks.

Being biased and being paid/bribed  to promote windows is 2 different  things .  And  did windows vista or windows 8 do any better because he try to make like they was better than  anything else?  no they didn't .

 

I can tell you this I  used windows 10 longer than Mr. Crust has he only test  it in vm  . I can get on my windows 8.1  or windows 7 machines without telemetry  and get windows 10   updates and windows updates turned off . All I had to do was opt out  of CEIP and error reporting and my ip sniffers  are clear .  When I used Windows 10 I had to block unneeded ips even after i uninstalled all that modern stuff that came with Windows 10 .

 

Even the store  can be removed .. CEIP and error reporting  are mandatory in windows 10 .  In all O/S before it was opt out  . Meaning it calls home and there's no way to fully opt out no matter what you remove  or disable in default  settings,

 

The  only way too fully opt out is to block CEIP and error reporting with a firewall in windows 10 . And there's no way to turn updates off in windows 10  without not getting any updates  . Meaning  its doing unneeded connections 24/7 that  were all opt out out in other windows .

 

Windows 10 in a nutshell  for me  a piece of bloatware  full of  programs i never needed before in 15 years that collect you're  data because even Microsoft TOSS say they do. So you agree to it when you use windows 10.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/

 

But even if you remove all this crap it still calls home unlike other O/S if you opt out. 

 

And  if you knew how to do you're  own testing to begin with you would not need a expert/engineer or amateurs advice.. I dont see no difference than taking Mr. Crust's advice  that may block too much for you're taste than people trusting 3rd party programs  that dont block enough without even testing  them to see do they fully work.     I been testing software for 15 years  so Im no noob at it. Reverse Engineers  have came too me for help before .  it's not rocket science. And Microsoft dont hide the fact they spy on you, they have it all written in there toss so  you cant  sue them for it.

 

And people still try to make like  its not  there.

 

Windows were cracked  all trough  histroy by reverse engineers and software testers  not by no pawn for M$  that has twenty years of experience writing about M$ .

 

Ed Bott is no expert  in the industry hes only and expert  at writing  about  it.. the  way M$ tells him to project a story .  there's a lot of bloggers that's real ITs  and Engineers and Ed Bott  is not one of them. 

 

 

 

[GRiM]

4 hours ago, steven36 said:

Being biased and being paid/bribed  to promote windows is 2 different  things .  And  did windows vista or windows 8 do any better because he try to make like they was better than  anything else?  no they didn't .

 

I can tell you this I  used windows 10 longer than Mr. Crust has he only test  it in vm  . I can get on my windows 8.1  or windows 7 machines without telemetry  and get windows 10   updates and windows updates turned off . All I had to do was opt out  of CEIP and error reporting and my ip sniffers  are clear .  When I used Windows 10 I had to block unneeded ips even after i uninstalled all that modern stuff that came with Windows 10 .

 

Even the store  can be removed .. CEIP and error reporting  are mandatory in windows 10 .  In all O/S before it was opt out  . Meaning it calls home and there's no way to fully opt out no matter what you remove  or disable in default  settings,

 

The  only way too fully opt out is to block CEIP and error reporting with a firewall in windows 10 . And there's no way to turn updates off in windows 10  without not getting any updates  . Meaning  its doing unneeded connections 24/7 that  were all opt out out in other windows .

 

Windows 10 in a nutshell  for me  a piece of bloatware  full of  programs i never needed before in 15 years that collect you're  data because even Microsoft TOSS say they do. So you agree to it when you use windows 10.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/

 

But even if you remove all this crap it still calls home unlike other O/S if you opt out. 

 

And  if you knew how to do you're  own testing to begin with you would not need a expert/engineer or amateurs advice.. I dont see no difference than taking Mr. Crust's advice  that may block too much for you're taste than people trusting 3rd party programs  that dont block enough without even testing  them to see do they fully work.     I been testing software for 15 years  so Im no noob at it. Reverse Engineers  have came too me for help before .  it's not rocket science. And Microsoft dont hide the fact they spy on you, they have it all written in there toss so  you cant  sue them for it.

 

And people still try to make like  its not  there.

 

Windows were cracked  all trough  histroy by reverse engineers and software testers  not by no pawn for M$  that has twenty years of experience writing about M$ .

 

Ed Bott is no expert  in the industry hes only and expert  at writing  about  it.. the  way M$ tells him to project a story .  there's a lot of bloggers that's real ITs  and Engineers and Ed Bott  is not one of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

So you're avoiding my questions?

Win10 by it's very nature calls home more.  Doesn't mean it's all evil, collecting sensitive data and spying on you.   

...again,  his alleged bias or him being paid is completely irrelevant.  What matters is the substance of what he is saying/debunking.  To me I do not see him lying or misleading at any point whatsoever.  All he has done is simply point out what total rubbish, pure ignorance and paranoia the original article.

[steven36]

33 minutes ago, GRiM said:

 

 

So you're avoiding my questions?

Win10 by it's very nature calls home more.  Doesn't mean it's all evil, collecting sensitive data and spying on you.   

...again,  his alleged bias or him being paid is completely irrelevant.  What matters is the substance of what he is saying/debunking.  To me I do not see him lying or misleading at any point whatsoever.  All he has done is simply point out what total rubbish, pure ignorance and paranoia the original article.

Like I said I been testing software for 15 years . If you dont care about you're privacy please do as you wish.   What you call paranoia because you fell you have nothing to hide. Privacy  is a human right .

You are still are trying play the it dont exist card  with me . Most Windows 10 users know better here at Nsane . They been testing software  long enough to know most any of it that calls  home has bad side effects if not properly  reversed or blocked .

 

I dont trust people I dont know  in real life,  I dont  trust half the people I do know. So its not Ed Bott's or you're call to make how i should do something

or what i use even.    Microsoft dont  offer no real proof it dont   and you  and ED cant possibility know because the data is encrypted .  So tell Microsoft shows me real proof it dont . I will treat it like I do all other software and block the shit  out of it tell its real proof.   No proof  is reason enough for me . There's more proof on it does spy on you  than there's proof it dont. 

 

When researchers   finds a bug  or something they offer proof  on how its  executed or some even how to fix it .

 

Microsoft has a bad habit  of leaving everyone in the dark as much as they can  because  they dont want reverse engineers and others  to debunk  there methods.

 

 

 

[GRiM]

15 minutes ago, steven36 said:

Like I said I been testing software for 15 years . If you dont care about you're privacy please do as you wish.   What you call paranoia because you fell you have nothing to hide. Privacy  is a human right .

You are still are trying play the it dont exist card  with me . Most Windows 10 users know better here at Nsane . They been testing software  long enough to know most any of it that calls  home has bad side effects if not properly  reversed or blocked .

 

I dont trust people I dont know  in real life,  I dont  trust half the people I do know. So its not Ed Bott's or you're call to make how i should do something

or what i use even.    Microsoft dont  offer no real proof it dont   and you  and ED cant possibility know because the data is encrypted .  So tell Microsoft shows me real proof it dont . I will treat it like I do all other software and block the shit  out of it tell its real proof.   No proof  is reason enough for me . There's more proof on it does spy on you  than there's proof it dont. 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet again you completely avoided my simple questions and replied with complete irrelevance.  That speaks volumes to me.

 

Also,   please learn the difference between "you're" and "your".  They are two completely different words and meanings.

I'm not here to say say Windows 10 does or does not invade privacy,  I simply asked questions which you avoided because you know what the guy said was correct.

 

I'll leave it here until you decide to answer my questions.

[steven36]

13 minutes ago, GRiM said:

 

 

Yet again you completely avoided my simple questions and replied with complete irrelevance.  That speaks volumes to me.

 

Also,   please learn the difference between "you're" and "your".  They are two completely different words and meanings.

I'm not here to say say Windows 10 does or does not invade privacy,  I simply asked questions which you avoided because you know what the guy said was correct.

 

I'll leave it here until you decide to answer my questions.

I'm not here to play games to answer you're silly questions . Because  Ed is talking about port 443  witch there's no way he  could know what the heck Microsoft  is doing because port 443  is encrypted . So that's ED word against Cheese's word  I dont  read  that crap Kelly wrote  because I know hes biased just Like Ed is . I read Cheese's post though and all he is trying to do is help people out .  And  if the mass media was not trying to make a  story out someone  trying to  help people out  on a forum  you would never been reading  this in privacy news  . When I posted  about i did not consider  it news worthy so i posted it outside the news section.

[CODYQX4]

8 minutes ago, steven36 said:

I'm not here to play games to answer you're silly questions . Because  Ed is talking about port 443  witch there's no way he  could know what the heck Microsoft  is doing because port 443  is encrypted . So that's ED word against Cheese's word  I dont  read  that crap Kelly wrote  because I know hes biased just Like Ed is . I read Cheese's post though and all he is trying to do is help people out .  And  if the mass media was not trying to make a  story out someone  trying to  help people out  on a forum  you would never been reading  this in privacy news  . When I posted  about i did not consider  it news worthy so i posted it outside the news section.

If one really wanted to see, they could use Charles Proxy on their PC, effectively MITM themselves so they can read the HTTPS traffic.

[steven36]

18 minutes ago, CODYQX4 said:

If one really wanted to see, they could use Charles Proxy on their PC, effectively MITM themselves so they can read the HTTPS traffic.

You know more about windows  10 than me you  done  work at some forums on how to  block it ip wise . When I blocked it my ip sniffer was built in my FW the traffic  it was coming from Microsoft  https and http i just blocked the exes and dll down and it stooped  it in its tracks . Me myself  dont  trust ip blocking  because its to easy to change up ips.  I only block with ips as a last resort .   

Charlesproxy only tells you were its going to it cant  unencrypted your data can it to see what there collecting ? can this actually show what there uploading ?

 

[DKT27]

From what I can understand from all this is that a non-biased expert, specifically a non-biased security company out there needs to look into this matter. There are too many misgivings in both the original research and the argument against it.

 

However, each and every news outlet, whether in real or in web news, is biased for or biased against something or someone. In recent times I am yet to see a good one that is not one of them.

[steven36]

14 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

From what I can understand from all this is that a non-biased expert, specifically a non-biased security company out there needs to look into this matter. There are too many misgivings in both the original research and the argument against it.

 

However, each and every news outlet, whether in real or in web news, is biased for or biased against something or someone. In recent times I am yet to see a good one that is not one of them.

I'm glad cheese  done it it though  maybe  some real experts will investigate  it  . But i doubt it because  it was in the media before  in August 2015 and no experts done any real research on it. I went to the forums  were the 1st test that came out in the media from  they was being hammered by fanboys  .

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/212160-windows-10-still-phones-home-even-when-ordered-not-to-do-so

[CODYQX4]

7 hours ago, steven36 said:

You know more about windows  10 than me you  done  work at some forums on how to  block it ip wise . When I blocked it my ip sniffer was built in my FW the traffic  it was coming from Microsoft  https and http i just blocked the exes and dll down and it stooped  it in its tracks . Me myself  dont  trust ip blocking  because its to easy to change up ips.  I only block with ips as a last resort .   

Charlesproxy only tells you were its going to it cant  unencrypted your data can it to see what there collecting ? can this actually show what there uploading ?

 

It actually can decrypt HTTPS traffic by installing a root cert that can decrypt everything.

 

I've never used this, rather just blocked everything, but it is possible to inspect the traffic that way.