You think Cortana can be a spyware by Microsoft?

[M4sh1lo]

Cortana know a lot about you. Do you think Cortana is a industrial spyware to know about Windows users life to sell this data to somewhere? (Love Linux)

[Rkiver]

Facebook, google, twitter, apple microsoft.

 

They  all listen. They all watch, they all sell.

 

It's up to you if you are happy with it, if you minimise it, or just shrug and get on with your life.

You're online, someone, or  something, is watching.

 

Cortana is no more "malicious" than Siri,  Alexa or Google

[Irukandji]

We, are the product for them. 

You have the right to choose what you share with them. 

[theUNK0WN]

7 hours ago, Jtyle6 said:

You have the right to choose what you share with them. 

Indeed. If you don't want information "leaking" around through Cortana, just disable her ; never / don't config. during setup.

[SoldierOfCryptoWar]

I think yes. I don`t trust anything in 2019. Everyone is listening, everyone knows, everyone sees.

[Dice]

On 6/12/2019 at 6:21 PM, _0NiTy said:

Indeed. If you don't want information "leaking" around through Cortana, just disable her ; never / don't config. during setup.

On that; don't use gmail/outlook.com

Dont do facebook/insta/snap

 

 

If the product is free, you're the product

[articzebra]

There has been a lot of controversy as to what Microsoft does with the telemetry they receive from the Windows OS. Apparently it logs a lot of information, depending on how you use Cortana. I first heard about the privacy concerns a while ago. Data is the new gold. These big corporations want as much data as they can get so they can integrate the intelligence they receive from the data into new products, and so they can target more people and in turn grab more data about more people in the process. When I got wind of the privacy invasions of Cortana, it was with Windows 8. That was when a lot of people were forcibly disabling Windows Defender because it really didn't work at the time as well as it does now. I also got wind of ways to Cortana off. You can disable Cortana from the registry without much hassle. Also, you can disable telemetry collection from the registry as well. That's the first thing I do when I install a copy of Windows 10; deactivate and disable all the features which collect too much information. You also can go into your settings and choose not to have ads tailoured to your specific ID, have minimal system reports sent back to Microsoft etc.

As for being a spy, I really don't think or believe Microsoft is a spy agency. You would have to be a spy agency in order to work at the heights Microsoft does and with the power, money and responsibility Microsoft has in order to plant spyware in an operating system. I mean, to have software in millions of computers around the world that does that sort of stuff is NSA level spying and intelligence gathering and would also be considered malicious, and illegal. Microsoft will work with governments around the world and they share information and they collect it and no doubt sell it too. But as for spying? No. I think there's big confusion around what companies do with people's data. No genuine company aims to collect data in order to exploit it's customers. Microsoft is in the business of bringing an operating system that is known without doubt around the world to customers. They might be rich and powerful and their practices might not have been ideal in the past (there are very few companies with perfect track records) but as for deliberately going against the general public in order to collect data? There is being cautious and practicing good op sec and then there is bordering on delusional and paranoid believing that others are conspiring against them. Your typical computer user will go about their daily activities with no malicious interference from other parties. This will be likely be the case for the entirety of their lifetime. Unless they encounter infection from a malware of some sort, they will unaffected. True, they may tick boxes which grants companies the ability to collect data and this in and of itself is a concern for privacy and they might get tracked around the internet with cookies and beacons (Facebook, Google etc) which is also a privacy concern but are Facebook, Google and Microsoft intentionally targetting you? Do they want to know what time YOU get home? Who YOUR girlfriend is? What underwear YOU specifically wear? What YOUR specific hobbies are? No. They couldn't give a damn, much like everyone else. They are in the business of making money and these days, like I said above, making money involves generating data on customers, potential customers and the landscape in which they conduct business, and even further out than that. They aren't waking up in the morning to spy on Joe Bloggs from 22 Sunset Avenue or Jessica Lastname from 77 Bendy Road. They are casting a wide net which has no deliberate or intentional targets. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't wake up in order to find YOUR I.P address so that he can intercept YOUR personal information from YOUR internet service provider. Facebook would be considered creators of spyware if that was the case, which means your antivirus software would detect URLs and content provided by Facebook as being malicious. Same with Cortana. If antivirus companies really have our back, and there are many antivirus companies out there who are on the frontline of information security - wouldn't Cortana be dubbed as spyware? Wouldn't there be a war between antivirus software and Microsoft? Some sort of legal battle to get Cortana freed from detection and quarantine?

Beacons would technically be spyware then. The Facebook beacon, which allows you to connect to services around the web by logging in with your Facebook account, would be malicious and therefore blocked by antivirus. There is being privacy focused and putting your privacy and security as a top priority and then bordering on delusional.

Most companies are not out to get you. They don't want to know what you get upto and where you are going. They simply conduct activities which generate revenue for the company. Data makes money. Profits make the fat cats happy. The process continues. It's the organizations and entities that have put their focus solely on collecting information to purposefully exploit people, perhaps even without their consent and their ticking of a box, whose intentions are not honest, you should be worried about. Those guys are the real bad guys.

[SoldierOfCryptoWar]

Windows 10 is full of spying soft, first thing you need to do is turn off all these shit and updates. 

[James Elsworth]

Most of them selling!

[biob]

Windows 10 in general, is spyware for Microsoft 🤔

[INFOTRACE]

On 7/16/2019 at 5:05 PM, SoldierOfCryptoWar said:

Windows 10 is full of spying soft, first thing you need to do is turn off all these shit and updates. 

Yeah indeed..........then replace all the system and use the computer as a dedicated Kali Linux machine..........cannot stand MS.........I am not a fan of Twitter, FB, and Instagram either......

[Cap_Sig]

10 hours ago, INFOTRACE said:

then replace all the system and use the computer as a dedicated Kali Linux machine

I'd Just recommend some additional configuration to do so.  Like a standard user account.  Also have read several heated discussions as to rather using a rolling distro is good for a "daily" use OS as it might "break" third party programs that are not part of the main distro every time a update is do.  Not sure how valid that is but just sharing.  Probably like most things, just depends on what a user actual uses a "daily" OS for.

[F0x3nB0x3n]

You mean....like Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri? 😂

[F0x3nB0x3n]

18 hours ago, INFOTRACE said:

then replace all the system and use the computer as a dedicated Kali Linux machine

I triple boot....Windows 10 for Windows only software, Ubuntu (Budgie) for my desktop & Kali for security. 

 

I prefer to use Kali for what it was intended for rather than try to use it as a daily driver.

[INFOTRACE]

On 9/3/2019 at 9:57 AM, F0x3nB0x3n said:

I triple boot....Windows 10 for Windows only software, Ubuntu (Budgie) for my desktop & Kali for security. 

 

I prefer to use Kali for what it was intended for rather than try to use it as a daily driver.

Interesting......triple boot you say........How is that working out for you?

[Cap_Sig]

6 hours ago, INFOTRACE said:

Interesting......triple boot you say........How is that working out for you?

Have done one before as well.  Didn't have any issues with it.  But I have seen people debating rather or not how the drive is partitioned to do so effects the drives life.

[F0x3nB0x3n]

On 9/4/2019 at 9:07 PM, INFOTRACE said:

Interesting......triple boot you say........How is that working out for you?

Works well, apart from having to keep 3 operating systems up to date 😂

Installed it in the following order:  Windows 10, Ubuntu 19.04, Kali 2019.2

Even the UEFI side of things appears to be working well (though I've disabled SecureBoot).  Made sure I had at least 512MB for the EFI partition when I did the first bit of partitioning of the drive for Windows.