Microsoft promises to boil down its lengthy and confusing privacy controls… in 1,500-word announcement

Don't look at what I'm doing;

Listen to what I'm saying.

Sleight of hand and card tricks work like this.

As for " The Future is Private", the Zuckerbag is being honest he will keep everything he slurps from you private, he won't tell you what he's got.

Unless of course you are a paying customer for some of his precious.

It's all privacy theater

The whole point of having the bewildering array of privacy features is for Microsoft to be able to claim that Windows 10 has more privacy features than any other version of Windows, which people are supposed to confuse with Windows 10 having more privacy than other versions of Windows. The whole point of privacy features is not to give the users more privacy-- it's to give them less. By having incredibly specific and granular privacy controls, it means that everything else is still at maximum promiscuity. A simple OFF switch for all telemetry would only be one privacy feature rather than the large number Windows 10 has, but it would be a lot more private. Having no telemetry at all would be zero privacy features, but it doesn't get any more private than nothing.

Of course, that doesn't mean that fewer privacy features will confer more privacy. It's Microsoft, so it's more likely that they'll continue to hide the real meat of the data they wish to slurp behind the facade of security features. By adding more and more privacy options, then cutting them back when it confuses people, Microsoft can appear to be "doing something" about privacy complaints and complaints about excessive complexity without ever really addressing the issues people have. It's nothing but privacy theater. Windows 10 will take the data it wants to take, and that's that. Even the vaunted enterprise edition of 10 has "security" as its most private mode, wherein it only sends security-related telemetry to MS. Even then, there's no "off" setting. "Security" is a lot closer to "off" than anything consumers get, but it's not the same as an actual "off." MS apparently wants everyone to be clear that it calls the shots, and that if it wants to take some data, it will do so.

Too little too late, Microsoft (Facebook, Amazon, Google, et alia).

I already have increased transparency and control over my data. I run Linux and BSD, and shun all billion dollar multinational advertising companies.

Problems solved.

> "data we collect about the pictures people are inserting into Word documents."

Wait, what? Why would Microsoft want to know what pictures I'm inserting into my documents?

>But the proof, as ever, is in the pudding.

And BTW, the proof is in the eating (of the pudding).

Surprised there is anything to gather.

As an IT professional who works daily on four or five different OSs I dread dusting of the Windows 10 laptop and opening the lid.

After waiting a couple of hours for the update feeding frenzy to finish, I then spend 10 minutes or so putting back the various privacy settings I set a couple of months ago, oh, and set the default browser to something that isn't edge Again.

At which point I can attempt to do some useful work, if I can find the one application I need to use amongs all the useless tiles and options, even more of a pain is trying to locate the files I need. MS seems to have given up on the tried and tested Folder concept and instead presents me with a random list of files which it thinks I might want.

How any casual user manages to actually get through this colourful maze and generate any data worth slurping is a mystery.

MS's privacy statement could be very short

as in

We will not take any user or application information from your computer without your consent which you can change at any time

Naturally the consent will be burried away deep in some app that required elevated priv to run from within Powershell that only a few select people inside MS will even know about and under a 1000 page NDA but it will be there...

But they won't so it is BAU from Slurp.

Proudly Windows free for almost 2 years.

a 1,360-word blog post that is very long on explanation and dangerously short on detail

Spin.

Feedback ? I'll give you feedback !

My home server is now running on Mint. I have discussed with my sister and she has agreed to let me put Mint on her laptop as well. My wife's laptop is heading for Mint. As soon as I find the right video drivers, my nephews' game laptop is going to Mint as well.

Obviously my work laptop will have to stay Win7 for the time being, but I am looking into making the transition there as well. My home game rig will, unfortunately, have to stay Win7 for the foreseeable future, because gaming, and my daughter's laptop will have to as well because the video editing program that she uses for her projects does not have Linux version. But all those rigs that are not Mint will stay Win7 until the hardware dies.

How's that for feedback, SatNad ?

I think if you need Windows 10 because 7, 8, Linux, BSD, MacOS or something else won't do and you are concerned about the MS slurping, the best bet is run it inside a VM and deny it internet access once your OS has been installed and activated.

If you need to download patches or software download them on your host OS and copy them over to the VM

"Zuckerberg declares with a straight face"

From the pics I've seen that's the only face he's got with always the same expression on it.

"Required" is a weasel word when it's MS that get to define what they require. A more trustworthy term would be "the minimum required to perform the user's operation".

Definition by example is another problem as it can only be a partial list. Even if the definition is an apparently clear list of what's gathered you need to look at what's not excluded. For instance the last time I looked at the wordy MS privacy statement it included "transactions". At a casual glance it looks fair enough, if you buy something from Microsoft obviously they need to record the transaction. But it didn't say "your transactions with us", just "transactions" which covers any sort of transaction MS decide to snaffle; transactions with your bank, for instance, are equally covered.

Taking into account the last point we need to restrict that apparently trustworthy term a bit further: "the minimum required to perform the user's operation on a Microsoft provided service" and the place to define that isn't in relation to the OS, it's in relation to the services where it can be precisely defined for each service. Everything else should not be just "optional", it shouldn't be collected at all.

Two comments.

1) Microsoft has spent decades using only non-content, lengthy, buzzword PR language, everywhere. I remember when Sharepoint was new, and I wanted to learn about it (as a non-corporate person) that on their webpage I had to click through to the third page of their "About" link (in printed terms, that would have been on the fourth or fifth A4 page) to even learn the first hard feature (that it's a server software). It's hard to change that habit when they spent decades on perfecting it.

2) The reason that they only promise to add these controls is that the data collecting is deeply embedded in the code. I suspect they themselves do not even know where all the data collecting is triggered, so they cannot say if they are able to remove or alter it.

They know what we need better than we do

Microsoft is quite clear that it has listened as much as it wishes to, has made some decisions, and now you are all going to be happy about it. Whenever it comes.

It's the One Microsoft Way. They can't help it; it's in their nature.

When Suckerberg declares with a straight face at F8 event: 'The future is private,' he means you'll never know what Faceplant is up to.

Slurping data on which images people insert in Word documents?

Why? Just WHY????

What possible use could that data be to MS? In future, every image I insert in a Word document will have an offensive or pornographic filename :-D