Microsoft Patents Big Brother AI To Monitor Everything You Do In Windows

[Batu69]

We’ve stated on many occasions that Windows 10 is an excellent operating system, albeit one with a few rough edges that could be smoothed-out. However, Microsoft has angered some users over the past year or so, in its willingness to dance right up to the line of what customers feel is acceptable practice for promoting adoption of its new OS. Further, some feel the company crossed that line with respect to user data collection and privacy concerns.

 

It looks as though Microsoft stands to garner more criticism if its recent patent filing comes to life in a production software product. The title of the company's patent filing is “Query Formulation Via Task Continuum” and it aims to make it easier for apps to share data between them, in real-time, so that the user can make more informed decisions when performing searches.

 

Microsoft feels that the current software model, in which applications are self-contained within their own silos, is detrimental to productivity and potentially slows the user down. “The first application does not provide the browser implicit hints as to what the user might be seeking when there is a switch from the first application to the second application,” writes Microsoft in the patent filing. “The user perceives tasks in the totality. However, since applications are typically disconnected, and not mediated in any way by the operating system, the computing system has no idea as to the overall goal of the user.”

 

 

The Redmond, Washington-based giant highlights the example of a user researching the topic of dancing by taking notes in OneNote, and then using Internet Explorer to search for different styles of dance. These two apps typically wouldn’t communicate with one another, but Microsoft sees a better way forward.

 

To combat this disconnect, Microsoft has devised a way to facilitate better communications between apps through the use of what it calls a “mediation component”. This is Microsoft’s all-seeing-eye that monitors all textual input within apps (including text embedded in photos and digital fingerprints from songs currently playing) to intelligently decipher what the user is trying to accomplish. All of this information could be gathered from apps like Word, Skype, or even Notepad by the Mediator and processed. So when the user goes to, for example, the Edge web browser to further research a topic, those contextual concepts are automatically fed into a search query.

 

The patent filing describes:

 

The search engine (e.g., Bing and Cortana) uses contextual rankers to adjust the default ranking of the default suggested queries to produce more relevant suggested queries for the point in time. The operating system, comprising the function of mediation component, tracks all textual data displayed to the user by any application, and then performs clustering to determine the user intent (contextually).

 

Microsoft says that this in effect provides faster and more relevant searchers to users. However, to some people this likely sounds rather creepy and big brother-esque. The Mediator would in essence keep track of everything you type and interact with in the OS and stockpile it in real-time to data-dump into Bing. Microsoft does provide the disclaimer, however, that personally identifiable information is not transferred to Bing (only high-level contextual concepts are transmitted).

 

 

Microsoft also describes how this would work with a full suite of Microsoft-backed products:

 

For example, in a Windows OS ecosystem of devices, which can include two or more Windows devices such as a Windows Phone, a Surface Pro tablet, and Xbox, etc., the OS of a given device gathers and monitors the information from the non-OS applications engaged on the given device, and communicates with the operating systems of the other devices to enable the OS of each device to have a “global awareness” of the contexts of the other ecosystem devices. These separate device contexts can then be computed to derive a global user context of the ecosystem.

 

The company says that its Mediator can be introduced as an optional module that can be installed on an operating system like Windows 10, or it can be directly built-in to the operating system. If it’s the former, most folks likely won't have any problems with this new Mediator. It could also potentially be the foundation of a powerful platform for contextually aware computing. Then again, if it's built in and not optional feature, we're sure there will be plenty of people looking for a kill switch for this functionality.

 

Article source

[Stanners]

Big brother is watching! Id like to say that's not the rule but its true on all devices you use the companies cant help them selves and once they build something like that in a systems no matter how "good" the intentions someone will use it for good or bad.

 

 

[vissha]

Windows 10 Might Soon Track Absolutely Everything You Do for Your Own Good

 

 

Microsoft patents new tracking tech for Windows

 

Quote

Microsoft has often been accused of spying on its users with Windows 10 because the operating system collects some data needed to diagnose bugs and help improve reliability, but if this recently-patented technology ever reaches mass-production, the firm should really be ready for a never-seen-before amount of criticism.

 

Called “Query formulation via task continuum,” the patent basically describes a technology that always monitors what users do on their computers, including here the time when they’re working with third-party apps.

 

As MSPU notes, the whole thing is happening for users’ own good, as what Microsoft is trying to do here is to connect third-party apps with its own services in order to provide better search experience.

 

Here’s how it works. Basically, Microsoft claims that by keeping an eye on whatever users are doing on their computers, such as writing a document, the search engine can always be prepared for delivering better search results. For instance, if you’re writing a paper on dancing, Bing knows what you’re interested in and can then provide results that are relevant to your work.

 

Users are always in control

 

Microsoft has a few more details in the patent description, explaining that the new feature can collect any kind of “signal,” including text displayed to the user, text recognized from images, audio from a currently playing song, and many others.

 

“The operating system, comprising the function of mediation component, tracks all textual data displayed to the user by any application, and then performs clustering to determine the user intent (contextually). The inferred user intent sent as a signal to search providers to improve ranking of query suggestions, enables a corresponding improvement in user experience as the query suggestions are more relevant to what the user is actually trying to achieve,” Microsoft explains.

 

It goes without saying that Redmond emphasizes that users are always in full control of the feature and no data is tracked without their consent first, but we all know how these things work and how easily it is for privacy violation to take place.

 

For the moment, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be ready to bring this feature in Windows, but if the company is thinking of it, there might be a moment when some sort of implementation could be at least tested by the company. That will be the moment when we can finally say “bye-bye privacy.”

 

Source

[Batu69]

Topic moved from Security and Privacy News Forum & has been merged.

[pc71520]