Re: Why July
As for Windows 10 "spyware", I recall MS put out a statement that with all the options disabled the telemetry returned by Windows 10 was equivalent to earlier version of Windows. For those who are paranoid there is Spybot Anti-Beacon from Safer Networking, or you can block the network packets. That said, anonymised telemetry of how you use Windows is arguably less intrusive than what Google collects about you from search requests, which is not anonymised and is used for targeted ads.
You can leave aside the quotes around "spyware". When we talk about Google, we talk about the Internet and we know we can filter for that (show me anyone who has a degree of interest in keeping safe and I'll show you the filters they have installed). In other words, we know we're entering a zone that is known unsafe and you protect for that in the same way as you would put on a hard hat on a building site.
What Microsoft has done is far worse, because that's always on surveillance in your home and office. I don't care one whit that you can switch if OFF, it should never have been ON in the first place. Using the fact that you can switch if off as a defence is as deceptive as people asking you what you have to hide, where they are trying to make you forget that they first have to explain what business your personal live is of theirs (and explain why they don't reciprocate the favour).
If Microsoft wants to spy on me, it should have at least been so kind to offer data in return. Show me what the CEO does every day. Let me remotely access everything he does so I can see what he gets up to with my data. After all, if they proclaim my data to be safe, surely they don't have anything to hide? If not, the activity on my computer is NONE of their business and attempts to ascertain that against my will I deem to be hacking, and thus a criminal breach of the computing laws that are now found in most countries to take hackers to Court.
There are NO excuses for the practice, none whatsoever. There really is no way you could contrive to make this an acceptable default.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
