Windows 10 Privacy Issues

[Vasudev]

You can add Privatezilla as well. Straight forward app with less confusion. https://github.com/builtbybel

Thank you, friend, I'll check it also.

I'm thinking they use that to send you targeted advertizements. One thing is for sure: it's a big money maker. If you check the torrents you'll see that permanently Windows ISO's and activators are everywhere. Clearly M$ has no interest in selling copies of Windows. They make far more money by making sure Windows is on as many computers as possible and selling ads or using that information to their advantage.

Again, thank you for explanation, mr. Humbert. In case of Windows and M$, looks like that's absolutely correct.

Also, is somebody is interested about recepients of Windows telemetry - I checked some IPs where Win10 sending its data. Most of servers are in USA (Redmond, Washington), and some are in Europe (especially in England and Netherlands).

Maybe FIB and M5I/M7I (spelling mistake intentional!) are behind you. Haha..
Check if your VPN is checking/pinging every time for choosing best server for less latency.

[Daniil]

Maybe FIB and M5I/M7I (spelling mistake intentional!) are behind you. Haha..

Check if your VPN is checking/pinging every time for choosing best server for less latency.

I'm not using VPN at most everyday cases, btw. Why you all thought that it's so important?

[humbert]

I'm not using VPN at most everyday cases, btw. Why you all thought that it's so important?

That's a good question. Are you facing some sort of internet censorship that requires you to have one? Here in America I don't really need one, there is no internet censorship as of today. If I spent all day downloading movies through the torrents I'd probably get a VPN to mask my IP address from prying eyes. But for 1 or 2 movies every few days? Not really needed.

[Shadow.97]

I'm not using VPN at most everyday cases, btw. Why you all thought that it's so important?

That's a good question. Are you facing some sort of internet censorship that requires you to have one? Here in America I don't really need one, there is no internet censorship as of today. If I spent all day downloading movies through the torrents I'd probably get a VPN to mask my IP address from prying eyes. But for 1 or 2 movies every few days? Not really needed.

Here in Ireland my ISPs have all blocked all potentially illegal torrent sites. And it's sadly not at DNS level.

I very, very rarely download anything from torrents anymore. I just dont see it as worth it.
The few things that I do consider downloading are software that is extremely expensive, or recurring cost that to me is out of line with what I feel is reasonable.
Vmware, photoshop, and movies/software that are abandoned/can not be found.

My brother is sharing is disney+ subscription with me, and we have a spotify duo plan&office365 yearly family plan.
In total it is around â,¬350 per year. Divided by 2 (â,¬175), as me and my brother pay for it all, but let our family join in. â,¬15 per month.
All this provides enough legal content for me to be happy. I'm a bit unsure about the office package, but it's nice for the 1tb storage, and actually have software used by companies. It's always better to be proficient in software you use both at work and at home, instead of using one at home and one at work.

Torrenting in EU has been getting worse, I know multiple people in both Ireland and Sweden who's been threatened to go to court over pirated video.
Most commonly is pirated XXX, as people dont want their relatives to know what they download/watch.

Everyone who has downloaded and refused to pay ransom has walked away freely. But it is unsettling getting physical mails threatening legal action.

[humbert]

Here in Ireland my ISPs have all blocked all potentially illegal torrent sites. And it's sadly not at DNS level.

You said that at this time you wouldn't be interested in torrenting. This restriction is draconian and, frankly, I have a hard time believing there's no way to circumvent it. I can think of several off the top my head.

My brother is sharing is disney+ subscription with me, and we have a spotify duo plan&office365 yearly family plan.
In total it is around â,¬350 per year. Divided by 2 (â,¬175), as me and my brother pay for it all, but let our family join in. â,¬15 per month.

You spend quite a bit of time at work and not all your free time in front of the TV or computer, so it makes perfect sense that 1 streaming service is all you need. Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is Office 365? and why do you believe a paid subscription is necessary? Is it using M$ Office programs in your browser? You use it only because it's what you use at work, i.e., a freeware office suite won't do?

[Shadow.97]

Here in Ireland my ISPs have all blocked all potentially illegal torrent sites. And it's sadly not at DNS level.

You said that at this time you wouldn't be interested in torrenting. This restriction is draconian and, frankly, I have a hard time believing there's no way to circumvent it. I can think of several off the top my head.

My brother is sharing is disney+ subscription with me, and we have a spotify duo plan&office365 yearly family plan.
In total it is around â,¬350 per year. Divided by 2 (â,¬175), as me and my brother pay for it all, but let our family join in. â,¬15 per month.

You spend quite a bit of time at work and not all your free time in front of the TV or computer, so it makes perfect sense that 1 streaming service is all you need. Pardon my ignorance but what exactly is Office 365? and why do you believe a paid subscription is necessary? Is it using M$ Office programs in your browser? You use it only because it's what you use at work, i.e., a freeware office suite won't do?

Office365 gives full access to excel, word, outlook, powerpoint, access, onenote, and 1tb cloud storage and removes the adverts on outlook.com.
The free tier only has 15gb total storage, and only permits web applications for office. Which is very limiting.

I'm not really limited by the free software, it's more that it is daunting having to learn freeware when I already know the paidware.
Best paid feature is the sync that it offers, as it allows you to keep going where you left off on documents, on phone, pc, and web.
Cloud storage is good for storing critical documents etc, and encrypting them before uploading.

I could pay up for the 2018 edition, but that would only be the 2018 edition, and then I'd any to penny up for the next versions anyway.


Most my time at work is spent with some show on, or sometimes even idle-style games or in calls with friends. If it isnt busy, ofcourse

I was never a big fan of story driven games, or movies/shows. The only thing I've really watched lately is futurama. I won a tablet at work at an internal competition, so I've propped it up in the bathroom and stream on it when I'm taking my eco-breaks.
https://www.harveynorman.ie/computing/tablets/lenovo-smart-tab-m8-8-2gb-32gb-iron-grey.html

Suprisingly good tablet, especially given the cost.
Processor is a bit sluggish and screen leaves some to be desired in terms of light bleed on the edges, but the speakers are the best i've had on a tablet. The little charging stand is also really nice. I think this tablet will do me good until apps wont be able to run anymore due to old android version. It's using android 10 for now. It will only be used for video and googling. Which it does well.

[Daniil]

Are you facing some sort of internet censorship that requires you to have one? Here in America I don't really need one, there is no internet censorship as of today. If I spent all day downloading movies through the torrents I'd probably get a VPN to mask my IP address from prying eyes. But for 1 or 2 movies every few days? Not really needed.

Yes, we have a some censorship today in russian segment of internet. Some say that censorship is too heavy, but I think that it's only looks like heavy in comparison of total anarchy of russian segment in 2000-th. Officially any torrents are blocked, but officials can't block a transaction protocol - they only block torrent sites and a part of trackers. But, there is always a lot of ways to get around this blocks - TOR, web proxy, etc.

VPN isn't the best way in our case, because when you use a VPN, you should to pay a money for it, i.e., you should show your bank transaction, your tax identity, your name or something like this. If you do this and then do something wrong, officials will have a questions to you - why you are using VPN? And you must give an answer, you can't say "It's not of your business!". Because if you didn't answer, then you definetly downloading a child pornography through it, and sending to evil US military and personally Elon Musk blueprints of our rusty innovative rockets!

So in our case the best ways are those which didn't leave any trail of official documents. Yes, you can get a problems when you are downloading or uploading a lot of data - since 2020 officials have a system to check what torrents were downloaded or seeded from selected IP address, and if you every day download a lot of torrents, cops will find you. But, there is a lot of torrent users here, and most of ISP end-user's IP adresses are dynamic. So, if you don't become too much impudment, your torrent traffic will be lost in other people traffic. But officials can't drop all of us to prison.

Here in Ireland my ISPs have all blocked all potentially illegal torrent sites. And it's sadly not at DNS level.

I very, very rarely download anything from torrents anymore. I just dont see it as worth it.
<...>

My brother is sharing is disney+ subscription with me, and we have a spotify duo plan&office365 yearly family plan.
In total it is around â,¬350 per year. Divided by 2 (â,¬175), as me and my brother pay for it all, but let our family join in. â,¬15 per month.
All this provides enough legal content for me to be happy.

Yep, I heared about this rude anty-piracy laws in EU. That's have no sense sometimes, and sometimes violates rights and freedoms (as for my understanding that concepts). For example, I know some english translations of classic anime - it's official translation, published on official DVD, etc. But this official translation is incorrect, so incorrect that this changes a plot. And I know unofficial translations of that anime, posted on torrents, and they are much better. So, the question is why users must eat a sh*t made by big companies? Why they restricted in their choice?

BTW, as for me, I partly agreed with Shadow, but partly disagree. When it comes to games of software, torrents today isn't required. In most cases it's easier to pay for a game (I'm torrenting games only when I doesn't shure in it's quality or plot, and, if I like the game, I'll buy it - developers also wants to eat). For my job for most cases I can find a free software, and sometimes it's better than payware. The trouble is movies and shows. I don't like subscriptable movie or music services, because all content on them isn't interesting for me. Also, most of russian services of that kind have a very low quality content - all that dumb shows and stupid comedy, more stupid than a parody to stupid american shows.

[Shadow.97]

Also, most of russian services of that kind have a very low quality content - all that dumb shows and stupid comedy, more stupid than a parody to stupid american shows.

On this note.. The content is so different in ireland, sweden and other countries as well. And sadly you often dont know what you sign up for when you subscribe for a service.
Content often arrives months later, or not at all. Or with weird changes, or forced dub/subs.

One of the main things I hate about disney+ is not being able to pick video quality myself.
The quality sometimes change to something that I'm assuming is 480p, and it looks horrendous.

[humbert]

Shadow -> Is Office 365 used inside your browser or a client? For example, do you get a copy of MS Office as part of your paid subscription? With respect to Disney+, are you sure the 480p is their fault or could it be that your landlord's ISP doesn't want to give you more bandwidth? Have you checked with speedtest or some other way?

Daniil -> Based on what you're telling me the GRU would find out about your using a VPN because of how you paid for it. What if you paid in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency assuming there's a VPN that accepts it?

Daniil again -> I'm curious about something, How much more or less of a dictatorship is today's Russia when compared to the Soviet Union before Gorbachev? I realize you probably were not alive at the time, but certainly you know people who were.

[Daniil]

On this note.. The content is so different in ireland, sweden and other countries as well. And sadly you often dont know what you sign up for when you subscribe for a service.
Content often arrives months later, or not at all. Or with weird changes, or forced dub/subs.

One of the main things I hate about disney+ is not being able to pick video quality myself.
The quality sometimes change to something that I'm assuming is 480p, and it looks horrendous.

Yes, absolutely correct. That's why I don't subscribe any of this services. BTW, it looks like that all technical component of this services are mostly same worldwide - on ivi.ru, as I heared from my colleagues at work, they faced same problems with variable pixel rate.

Based on what you're telling me the GRU would find out about your using a VPN because of how you paid for it. What if you paid in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency assuming there's a VPN that accepts it?

Not GRU. GRU are on recon and spying in foreign countries. With inner troubles work FSB (ex-KGB). But, anyway, you offered a VERY good idea! We can use cryptocurrency here (they aren't wide-spreaded, but are legal). And buy a VPN traffic with a cryptocurrency is a good solution. But, we should use VPNs from third countries, because at friday (June, 18) I read in news that officials banned and blocked a bunch of russian and european VPN services.

I'm curious about something, How much more or less of a dictatorship is today's Russia when compared to the Soviet Union before Gorbachev? I realize you probably were not alive at the time, but certainly you know people who were.

As old people says, dictatorship is lesser, but it'd be better if it'd be much harder. And sometimes I think they are right. I know, it sounds very strange for you, but you never lived here, and can't watch to life in Russia from inside. Communists sometimes wasn't wise, their methods sometimes was rude and barbaric, but they tried to build a society with equal rights to each man. Yes, that became a dictatorship, but the rights was "equal". I.e., if you really wanted, you could became a part of communist party, and raise to power and wealth after all. Party, science, hard work at factory, career in army could gave you wealth and became a social elevator. Today, dictatorship isn't so hard - but at the same time putinism doesn't have any social elevators. I.e., if you don't born in a family close to "Ozero" cooperative (it's an unofficial name of near circle of Putin's friends), than you can't reach any wealth and power. At all. Your hard work, your knowledge, your business abilities means nothing. Modern russian elite actively deny any attempts to join it.