So, running Wireshark on a Windows 10 PC -> the amount of traffic going to Microsoft, in one way or another, is just astounding. I have a mind to just block Microsoft's whole IP range. Windows updates are important, but IMHO not having strangers' prying eyes in my own house is decidedly more so. ... Oh, eww. Also of note: not all the creepy monitoring servers are Microsoft, some of them seem to be hosted with Akamai. I think it would be very hard to block all the monitoring. No idea what to make of this, really. Things are already pretty Huxleyish where I live, but this is pushing it, even where non-computer-savvy people are concerned. I hope it comes around and bites Microsoft in a big way. Meanwhile, my current advice is to keep that Windows 10 PC behind an air gap, if possible. Otherwise, keep it on a separate LAN in a separate room, and don't plug mics or webcams into it. (Have I mentioned that whenever I talk into a microphone attached to this PC, I see burst of traffic a few seconds later?)
@Gullible Jones - of course, running in a virtual airgap on a virtual machine may be more practical. And then you come to think, what exactly is the point of W10 if you aren't hooked on social media and all that?
Found some extra telemetry/MS bad ip block list here: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/63767-Microsoft-Anti-Spy-PeerBlock-List Also peerblock do a cheap subscription service which has an up to date MS list here: https://www.iblocklist.com/
Am glad all these news have come out otherwise one could not research it or block it ! But it would be interesting if more research is done with what data exactly is being sent back to ms and why.... On another note has anyone installed wireshark or similar on linux distro's and checked to see what it maybe sending back or to where?
Did you mean "akamaihd"? If so, what's wrong with them? For all I know they're just a content deliver.
Re the former, perhaps. Win10 is pretty piggish, probably runs better on dedicated hardware. As far as reasons to use it... Tax/finance software? Cloud/hosting company. Probably hosting some stuff for Microsoft.
Akamai is part of the advertising/tracking infrastructure of the web. They have been around a long time. I first knew about them 10 or more years ago. MVPS host files have numerous Akamai servers and domains in them as do any adblock lists. They are a cloud cdn company that hosts ads. Not a good reference at all.
Not just ads though, a lot of legit sites as well AFAIK. If they host MS stuff, that makes it harder to block all of MS.
I doubt that they are hosting MS material directly and if they are, it would most likely be in a mirrored redundancy setup and the content they host would be available on many servers and blocking them wouldn't block the material at all, just reroute it. It is more than likely a business alliance. MS is fairly new to this sort of tracking and Akmai has time tested code and technologies plus a huge back end presence on the commercial web. The unfortunate thing is that just makes the Windows 10 privacy issues much worse because it isn't just about Microsoft, there are other corporations involved with their own interests and tracking technologies.
I've run W7/8 machines this way for ages, and as long as you can throw lots of RAM at it, and sufficient cores, it's fine. Obviously not for gaming. I have quite a lot of Windows apps that I want to keep, including development environments, video/audio/image editing, but they all work fine in a VM. And, if you're airgapping, there isn't anything amiss with using those old XP licences you may have....which will work with anything needing less than .Net 4.5. The biggest issue tends to be activation and update, but even this can be fairly cleanly solved with occasional connection of the VM under controlled conditions. Risk not too bad because you can isolate your real data from it, and use snapshot reversion as necessary. My feeling is that MS have abandoned the SMB sector with Windows 10 retail. Yes, it's a free "upgrade" (actually a downgrade because the Pro version doesn't have things like Applocker that W7 Ultimate does), but at unacceptable cost in terms of data risk. Unless you're willing to get Enterprise licences, it's not a business OS, it's a consumer cloud-social OS, with all the downsides of nominally free.
I found Akamai Netsession Interface installed on my system. I do not remember how it got installed, so I googled it. I have since determined that Lenovo may use it for system updates on my laptop. Lots of conflicting info on google about it, however there was a reference in one article to the Akamai Netsession Interface Console which is supposed to be in the control panel under Akamai. The article says that all you have to do is open it and it will tell you what resource is using the interface. I could not find it. Anyone else?
@emmjay That's not on my Windows 10 PC. I'd get rid of it - and conduct a thorough examination for malware. Re my initial complaints: I've currently settled on wholesale blocking large swaths of IPs. Currently I've blocked on my router 64.4.0.0-64.4.63.255 (Microsoft) 65.52.0.0-65.55.255.255 (Microsoft) 111.221.29.0-111.221.29.255 (Microsoft) 23.32.0.0-23.67.255.255 (Akamai) This does block MS Live, but I don't use their cloud services anyway, so whatever. In any case, so far, so good; I'm seeing absurd numbers of dropped packets from the Win10 box. Also somewhat fewer ads, probably from blocking that chunk of Akamai. Of course, I'll have to see how things are in a few months...
I have found no malware. I checked out the installation folders and see the control panel exe and the admin tool. There were 80 instances of IP addresses that Akamai has stored on my system. This may be the list of the peer-to-peer IPs it has communicated with to distribute stuff (?) - eek. Also found a readme file (it warns that if programs rely on it and you uninstall it, some programs might not run properly). If I stop the service, it immediately starts another, so I chose to block it instead.
akamai used to host/cache updates on their servers for antivirus such as AVG ,and pretty sure norton used them too.Dont know what they host these days ,or who uses them ,but im guessing theres quite a substantial list of companies using them the same as always.
New blog post from Microsoft about privacy and Windows 10: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/09/28/privacy-and-windows-10/ And a post about Windows 10 and online services: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/online-services
I read both of the above. One comment ... Organizations running Windows 10 Enterprise or Education have the option to disable telemetry completely, but not so the Home user. as they are in need of a more delightful experience. Turn off what you do not like in W10 and it still constantly phones home - whatever its content or purpose, it is encrypted and stored to keep it safe. I think it would be a real blast to work in PR. Re-arrange a set of aggressive legal statements to say something so benign that the reader gets the warm fuzzies all over.
It doesnt make me feel any more comfortable: Just substitute Seattle Seahawks for seeking information on managing anxiety. They really sanitzed this so anybody who disagrees with the invasion of privacy comes across as crazy. I like my solution for windows privacy.... run it in a Qubes VM without external network access. Dont need to have Windows Enterprise to delay updates or telemetry. Still loved activating my MS products over the telephone and explaining that I didnt want to connect it to the internet.
What I find interesting is that if I disable Cortana she seems to re-enable herself after logging off and on three to four times. To be fair this is probably just a glitch and not directly related to Microsoft wanting to spy. I've noticed the same thing happens with the system sounds too. If I set the Sound Scheme to no sound (all the sounds kind of get on my nerves sometimes), it eventually changes back to WIndows Default after a few reboots. But, if this is happening with the settings I've mentioned above then who knows what other settings are being set back to the installation's default.
That is just Skynet becoming self-aware. Mostly pointless since so much software requires admin privileges to run. Security in Windows is still more of an afterthought than design.
"Rigz said: ↑ I find interesting is that if I disable Cortana she seems to re-enable herself after logging off and on three to four times." If you just rename the Cortana Folder, it will keep it from running. You have to be fast, kill the process in Task Manager, rename the folder. It worked for me.
The concern that I have with this is that if privacy settings revert even for a brief minute there is the possibility that all of the information stored prior to privacy setting change could be transmitted. If this is something that happens on a wider scale it is pretty scary.
You got two choices on using Windows: either you deeply care about privacy and actually don't use any edition of Windows; or you don't care much about privacy and use it anyways. Or you actually can't switch to Linux because one or more applications you must use aren't available for Linux; but in this case, considering you actually care about privacy, you should be able to at least have a second partition that has Linux in it so you can do your private stuff (although I have my doubts about the effectiveness of this method). It has been proven, with 100% certainty, at least three times, that all editions of Windows (95 and later) have back-doors in them that allow Microsoft to do anything they want with your system. This particular Cortana misbehavior is just one example of how you don't have full control over your system, but Microsoft. You have to keep finding "hack-ish" routes to actually control some parts of Windows, but in the end it won't matter because Microsoft has other ways of invading your privacy (like previously proven)
