Microsoft Data Theft as a Service
For starters, bulk copying a person’s documents without their approval sounds like mass copyright violation.
If it’s a machine used for business: corporate espionage.
Oh, that’s okay though, you signed them the rights to do that by having an account with them
… I’m sure is how they’ll spin it
Windows users are like abuse victims at this point.
No news is good news.
This bullshit was basically my first experience with Windows 11 when I got a new PC last year. Literally, “Why is my internet so slow? What’s this OneDrive thing? Oh, holy shit fucking stop Jesus Christ!”
Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up, without even a prompt telling me it was happening, and no obvious way to make it stop. I didn’t even know Windows had added a cloud storage option. I actually had to completely uninstall OneDrive to finally make it stop.
I might have liked having a native backup service in Windows if it was like, “Hey look at this handy cloud storage tool we’ve added to Windows! Would you like to pick some files to save?” But as it is, it might as well just be another piece of spyware.
There’s a big long list of reasons why I hate Windows 11, but this OneDrive shit is the thing that’s making me think maybe it’s time to ditch Windows for good.
The extra fun part is when it starts bitching at you for filling up the cloud storage allotment that you didn’t know you were using.
Or when it actually deleted the local files once it uploaded them to one drive. Fun times.
Or the fact that once it’s off of your hard drive and sitting comfortably on their cloud (their hard drive), they can scan it and harvest it for data.
OMG this happened to a colleague of mine and they deleted the files from OneDrive without realizing they weren’t on their hard drive anymore 🤦
Thankfully I noticed what was going on before it got to that point, but when they start vacuuming up all your files and data like that without telling you and without giving you control over it, you kind of have to assume that whatever is going on is not being done for your benefit.
The extra extra fun part is to then offer you the opportunity to pay for bigger storage!
The cherry on top, you can’t say no. You can only tell them to “ask you later”.
At least they’re being honest with that. You know they’d keep asking you after choosing “no”.
I got a great idea.
While we’re sucking up every single file, let’s also do daily, non incremental backups
We’ll hit the free storage limit it no time and then we can start sending DIRE messages about how the users data won’t be PROPERLY backed up anymore.
Then we can upsell them in an outrageously priced storage plan that won’t even last a year of these daily backups so we can start the process over again.
It’d be hilarious if they did that but your paid for space was too low so they had to cut you off but they had already taken the liberty to delete the files before they synched
What’s the big deal? Microsoft security is top notch. They totally didn’t get p0vvN3d by russia basically twenty minutes ago and have their source code stolen.
It’s why the US gummit is so happy to use micro$quash services.
And y’know even then, who cares if all your data is stolen by state-sponsored cyber crime groups, y’know? M$ has spared no expense to ensure all that data is secured end-to-end with unbreakable encryption even microsoft can’t read! (snkk) Even if they wanted to!
It’s not like they’ve tricked everyone into being data cattle for their giant cloud-ranching operation, to shovel everything into AI and sell the results to anyone at the highest price possible. I mean. We’d have heard something about that if it was the case.
To be fair, the DOD uses a different version of Windows than you, me, or any average company, with a custom set of agreements with Microsoft, a bunch of debloating of Windows-specific apps and the addition of a bunch of military/government apps.
I don’t know that to be true, but if so why has the history of Windows been a continual string of vulnerabilities, hacks, and weak security such as their own cloud service being compromised and their codebase stolen?
That is, if there’s a DoD “version” that’s more secure, couldn’t they make more money selling that? I dunno, they’re dead to me but they’ve never been short of people who want to use them for whatever reason.
Because DoD isn’t concerned with the regular internet or unclassified machines as much as with the classified computers - those set up by Information Technician ratings and the Security Managers to handle SIPR and JWICS access. The Admirals, Generals, and O-6s are also often tech illiterate old men, and those just beneath that, and the E-7+ crowd, are often just as tech illiterate. Microsoft also has a lot of multi decade DoD contracts, which they get billions for. Microsoft can’t sell the secure version because that just lets foreign adversaries reverse engineer all the possible vulnerabilities. Microsoft only cares about security as far as they get paid for it and can get away with. In the consumer market, that’s pretty much zero concern - not profitable enough.
Oh god, you reminded me. I had a run in with this recently because my parents got new laptops. 1TB hard drive, should be plenty right? NO! My mom had 15GB of files in her home folders and One Drive was whining constantly to pay them for more space.
It was about an hour of debugging to keep the files safe, extract One Drive from the home folder locations because it had dug in like a virus, and then (after 20 online searches and scouring forums) click the specific toggle in the specific menu to disable One Drive so it would use local files.
I paid for a 1TB computer, why are you forcing me to use your shitty online-only limited-space shit show. Fucks sake.
Mean while on windows 10, they are forcing updates with a creepy splash screen when you boot up. Can’t exit, can’t stop it, basically held hostage. This was on my old surface pro 4. Then the update screwsed everything up and I had to do a system restore…shits bad 👎
I’ve installed Linux on my dad’s surface 2. He’s more than happy, I bassicaly could’nt do anything with it because how slow Windows had became.
Been running Windows 10 on my gaming desktop for a while now and refusing to “upgrade” to 11 because of how much worse it was. Going to be doing a hardware refresh in a couple months and when I do I’m installing Linux. Thanks to Valve and a few major open source projects Linux gaming has finally reached a point where I can tell MS to fuck off with their enshitification.
My computer doesn’t support Win11, so I have that going for me. Transitioning to the Steam Deck for my gaming, which has been a slow but mostly positive process. Some of the games don’t play well outside of Windows, but none of the ones I really want to play, and I can always switch to my computer if I do.
I don’t think I’ll ever own a Win11 computer.
Just automatically started uploading everything on my hard drive to an account I didn’t set up
Wait, what?
I mean specifically a cloud storage account. Setting up the computer required me to supply an email address and set a password for microsoft.com. There was nothing in that process that I recall mentioning OneDrive, or that would have suggested every file on my C drive was about to be indiscriminately uploaded to a Microsoft server somewhere. I didn’t even know OneDrive was a thing until I had to google how to stop it.
I was having a conversation in another thread a few days ago about the legality of completely fictional AI child porn and how that may be a safer outlet for those individuals as it involves no harm.
It’s legal in many countries, but also not legal in many countries.
In the USA, federal law says as long as its not obscene or has serious value its allowed, but really, good luck with those clauses. Then it says, it’s also legal unless it’s been transmitted by a common carrier, e.g mail, internet.
So, someone might be legally making their own CP so they don’t need to cause any abuse, and then Windows without their permission, uploads it to OneDrive.
You know the person making fictional CP would be the one thrown in jail for transmitting it over a common carrier, but maybe we should throw Microsoft in jail for doing that without permission and fucking us all over, over and over and over again with all this bullshit
They’re literally stealing your files. They’re probably training their AI on anything uploaded to OneDrive. It’s not like they even prompted you or gave you the ToS.
yea well there is no way to guarantee that AI wont spew out CP where the child there looks exactly like a child that it has seen in its training set, i.e a child that really exists. so no go
…wut
“fictional AI CP” isn’t a thing. AI is trained on existing data. It does not create new stuff. If you want AI to generate CP then you have to train it on CP.
The same way the pictures of ninja dinosaurs can only be trained on actual photos of ninja dinosaurs, right?
Can we throw a slice of pizza in there?
AI can create faces and bodies that have never existed. From there it might just take a lot of prompt engineering, but to say you have to train it on CP is false.
Edit: Also that’s only considering life like CP. There’s the whole cartoon/manga side of things which IS purely fictional at all times but will get you sent to prison if transmitted over an open carrier.
Can create faces that have never existed, but can you guarantee that the child in a CP that it has created does not look identical to a child that already exists? after all it can very well produce something using children directly from or very similar to its training set.
Win10 ending, copilot and this shit. Finally pushed me over. Going to order a new ssd and install mint on my main rig.
I’m seeing that a hell of a lot this year… Linux might actually finally make some real headwind with the tech crowd
I kept my Windows drive in my pc when I switched to linux, I wanted to be able to mount it to grab stuff I missed or boot into it incase I needed it.
I haven’t even mounted it for close to a year.
When I rebuilt mine a few months back, I got two drives so I could put windows on one of them, and mounted my old drives for the same reason… I’ve barely touched the old data and the second SSD has not even been formatted yet, and when I do it’ll probably be to give my current system more space
I installed Fedora as a dual boot 2 months ago, and I haven’t once booted up Windows in that time. Everything just worked. Now that I feel a bit more confident I’m going to wipe the entire drive and try Fedora Atomic.
At this point, Microsoft is becoming an advertisement for Linux.
I finally switched to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. CoPilot/ Recall was the last straw.
Been using Mint for about a month now on my daily laptop. It’s nice, not having to deal with windows’ bullshit, but on the other hand I’ve had a number of issues with it; most recently, it sort of reboots itself every so often randomly. That, and issues with not being able to hear high fidelity audio on a bluetooth headset while also using the headset’s mic (there’s a codec that let’s me use both mic and audio, but the audio is low quality).
Usually though issues get fixed with an update, just gotta check the update manager often.
I work with Linux for a living and am finding the transition frustrating myself. It feels like every new is just revealing more stuff I have to configure before it works, then usually get hit with the backend of the solution as well. Be sure to check /var/log/anythingrelevant for the system reboots for logs. My display driver kept crashing.
I made the transition last summer and there was definitely growing pains. Over time it will become second nature like everything else. The advice I would give would be to be patient and accept that you have used a different operating system probably for over a decade, so there will be a learning curve initially.
Also, artificial intelligence models (especially Claude) are very useful for troubleshooting.
“By involuntarily uploading your data to onedrive you also agree for it to be used in training AI models”
Checkmate, consumer.
“Also we will keep a copy of your data on our cloud service, for you to access, for only $19.99 a month”
I once turned that feature on thinking it was an actual backup (copies of my files in the cloud), I remember how angry I was when I found out it wasn’t a backup after all and just removed your files from your computer and only made them accessible online.
You’re supposed to uncheck the save storage space and download files as you use them option.
You’re supposed to remove windows
Ah yes, the classic Microsoft “what you really want is hidden behind a checkbox, otherwise you’ll get shit”.
They may have actually been inspired by Apple lmao (or maybe the other way around)
They made it the default option for businesses that routinely buy computers with less local storage than their users need. Pretty much every company I have worked for.
They then pushed it out hard into the consumer market when SSD came out and the average storage space on lower end models dropped by 75%.
I see why they did it, how they did it was in usual Microsoft fashion, idiotic.
It’s sort of their pattern.
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Introduce new changes.
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Screw it up royalty.
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Fix the features that are salvageable and revert most of the remaining except: Double down on the shitty ones that they think will make them more money.
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Rinse and Repeat
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This. Files uploaded locally should automatically be synced though.
You can see their strategy at work here.
It is possible to keep individual files on the local hard drive with different settings (that in my experience never seem to stick past updates).
The default, though, is to take everything on your computer off of your computer, put it into the cloud (their computer), and recommend you pick and choose which ones stay on your computer. In essence, they want you to think of your computer as secondary to their computer. An extension of it.
There is no “your computer”, it’s just the computer you happen to be logged into at the moment.
The cloud is not something you take advantage of, the cloud is where you live now.
Wtf!
Good thing I use to debloat windows 10 on a local account and got rid of onedrive before it could wreck havok so.
But got to be honest, Far as long as I can remember, I always had backup of important data. Encryption - client side if off to the cloud.
Shit I’m so old that I prefer my music on HDD instead of using streaming services.
Using Linux nowadays too BTW.
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I have to use Outlook for work. It is so annoying to have to avoid the one drive attachment option everytime I attach a file to an email. Nobody wants to be forced to deal with that crap.
I legit don’t understand why this exists. Why would anyone want a bunch of shit in their OneDrive to have a permanent link?
Microsoft just loves money at the expense of quality products.
Just a heads up, Windows 11 IoT LTSC is out, and it has none of M$'s bullshit you read about weekly. It can be tricky to find the .iso, so it would be a real shame if people wasted their time looking for it @ massgrave.dev
It’s somehow even trickier to find a list of differences between them and regular win 11.
It’s probably hard to keep up with lol. I’ll try my best. It has Edge and Defender ONLY. No cortana, copilot, recall, candy crush bloat or anything similar, .net, vcredist, edgeview/runtime, TPM requirement, online account, secure boot, store, xbox, one drive, winget, nor widgets.
You finish the install and it is BARE. All I do post install is, in regex and gpedit, turn off telemetry.
For my use, Steam installs all the .net and vcredist as needed.
Store and Xbox and the like are available to install via power shell or downloads, but fair warning. Once you do store or M$ account sign in, copilot and recall might find a way to sneak in via updates. None of them work, and error out when you open them, but the fact they install and exist makes me uneasy.
Edit: If you don’t even want Defender, nor Edge, look up Windows X-Lite. That man is a wizard at figuring out the bare minimum needed for an .iso.
Didn’t know these customized windows os’s were still a thing. I thought they did out in the windows 7 age
But like back then, how do we know these are safe and don’t have some kind of password stealing malware? Excluding Defender specifically makes it a bit sus
There’s a custom OS forum where I found it originally a year ago. Everything got scanned from virus total when uploaded and showed the report. And the guy had an excellent reputation there as well. I decided to go for it until 11 LTSC came out, and daily drove it for 2+ years issue free.
In the end, it’s up to you if you want to trust it.
I think reputation is better than the virus total scan, since it wouldn’t catch malware broken up in different parts that are integrated into the OS.
I will definitely keep this in mind. Have you had any issues with the OS not having Edge? I thought it wasn’t easily possible without causing some issues.
One of the things for X-Lite I would do post install, is install Edge WebView2 along with the other runtimes available on X-Lites website. Not sure if I ever needed it or not, but never had issues with no Edge.
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bullshit like this is getting worse and worse and is why i moved away from windows.
Same. They’ve always done this shit, but installing windows - and then uninstalling or disabling all the cooked-in bloat and spyware - has become so ridiculously tiresome that I just said fuck it and went Linux full-time.
Every update or service pack, it starts all over. There’s no such thing as a clean windows install.
Nobara was up and running in like ten minutes with no fuckery at all, and it’s no nice not having to fight my OS on everything.
the constant cat and mouse game to disable the crap is something i dont miss after switching.
You game and if yes, ATI or Nvidia?
Edit: yes I’m old and meant AMD.
I’d be really impressed if anyone still gamed on ATI.
I’m not that guy but yes and Nvidia
I can testify for AMD. It just works on the 7900xtx.
Early last year it had issues buy they pushed a driver update and its perfect now.
Yep! I’m on Nvidia, the new drivers are really solid. I’ve read AMD cards run fine as well, but don’t use one
What are you running? I tried Ubuntu as my daily driver and honestly found it’s user experience pretty shitty. Lots of little buggy issues with the interface and running a few games on steam that support Linux wasn’t great
i’m running ubuntu. its flawless for me. its less work to set it up how i like it than to remove all the crapware on windows.
if you are running nvidia it might explain the little issues.
Yeah I run a 4070. What’s the go with nvidia
nvidia doesnt follow the standards with their linux driver, its just the windows driver adapted to run on linux. its not bad for gaming ime, but causes all sorts of little issues on the desktop especially if you are running wayland instead of xorg.
its changing though, they opened the source code for it and are currently rewriting the driver with the community. long way to go still though.
Never knew, thanks for the info. Probably explains what I experienced. Nothing super major but just enough to annoy me over time
What do you mean by this?
nvidia drivers are much less than ideal on linux, it causes all sorts of small issues on the desktop. depends on your setup though, some people run it fine.
Hmm. I think I’m going mad - I read your comment completely differently last time. Seemed completely unreliable. Probably just me lol.
i often edit my commeents for clarity, might have been it
Ah, gotcha, maybe that’s what I’m seeing then :)
Recently I’ve found Fedora based distros better than debian (like Ubuntu) based ones, especially on “newer” hardware (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Hezio/saved/#view=TwZfpg)
For gaming Bazzite literally installs everything you need for you except Proton GE, although Steam’s regular Proton isn’t bad either for most games.
It’s really a matter of would you rather:
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Deal with MS relentlessly jamming their garbage down your throat
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Become a sysadmin
Really depends on your use case. Like @trougnouf@lemmy.world said, casual users that use the OS as a browser and email client can use practically any distro. Users that do a bit more, like casual gaming on gold-rated Steam games, generally do fine with something like Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.
It’s when you start going towards the more hardcore users, like really hardcore gamers that play obscure titles or have unsupported Windows-specific hardware, artists that need very specific unsupported programs for editing or recording, engineers who need to do CAD specifically in a Windows-specific proprietary software, or a tinkerer that’s used to the Windows environment, that “become a sysadmin” starts being a reasonable complaint.
not that big of a deal if you choose a distro with good defaults ootb. choosing the right distro is the biggest step imo if you don’t want to debug your computer.
I became a sysadmin, I like being able to learn to get around problems. But an outsider just sees someone spending all morning fiddling with winetricks when it ‘just works’ on windows.
The thing is it’s the same base linux as decade(s?) ago, windows is changing how stuff is done all the time.
So a one time effort or a marathon IMO.
I don’t think my grandma was a sysadmin.
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Fedora and bluefin have been working quite well for me.
Its been their practice since the early 90s. Bundling and defaulting all their shitty apps, then making sure everything else has compatibility issues by design.
The worst thing to happen to Microsoft was the IETF. It shattered their walled garden and forced them to integrate with a host of other internationally developed and encoded systems through a uniform protocol. They’ve spent the last 30 years trying to claw their position of OS dominance back.
This has to be a massive GDPR violation?
If I understand it correctly this behavior happens only for newly deployed computers if you sign in with Microsoft account so there are no unexpected uploads to OneDrive, only downloads of your existing files if you used this feature before.
Although once you start saving files you might not realise files are being saved to also OneDrive. All in all it is a weird and dumb change, that popup where you are prompted if you want to enable known folder move was perfectly fine.
We get Windows 11 N
Doesn’t the N mean it’s only media player, and codec free? If so, IoT LTSC is a much better bet for minimalism and privacy and bullshit free.
My bad, you’re right. I thought it also excluded the software that made automatic onedrive support possible but apparently not.
The c-levels are really sick of all these new features they’re adding and no one is using them because of silly reasons like “they don’t work good” or “I can’t even see the point of this for me”.
In their wisdom, they’ve taken the option to say no away from the users. Now they have a much easier time justifying their bonus this year, just look at how many users are using their new features!
Yeah they’ll take that bonus and then dip to another company and get a big resignation party and golden parachute while the rest of us stare in amazement
- somebody who has worked at these types of companies
Edit: Grammar is good and stuff
Grammar is good and stuff
How dare you good grammar want
This is so fucking true.
Governed by an excel entry.
The end can’t come soon enough.
Begging people to subscribe to their own hardware will have increased results when they can show you your OneDrive is full. It probably will get them more money than it loses them. They are utterly thirsty for subscription revenue.
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First recall, then getting rid of local accounts, and now this.
Might shift back to Linux now.
What would be the final straw
For me? Recall. I’m ordering an SSD to dual boot Linux off of and ween myself off Windows as much as I can. Probably can’t remove it as long as I want to play games* with friends, but I’d be happy to have my day to day be less awful.
* Before anyone says Proton, Wine, etc, I mean the awful multiplayer rootkits like Valorant.
I was in the same boat, I have a dual boot main machine now but I haven’t booted I to windows since I installed Pop!OS, I’ve been mostly just seeing what alternatives to everything so far, especially photo stuff, but I seem to be pretty settled now after messing with popos on a little thin client and little second pc I keep at work
One of us!
