Windows 10 privacy and freedom concerns surrounding the EULA - Vlog

Hey guys, today I'm going to talk about some

concerns

I have with the Windows 10 End User License Agreement. You've requested this video in more than a few comments sections of more than a few videos on this channel, but it was going to be a video I was going to make anyway, if you want a maybe a little more balanced view of Windows 10, feel free to check out a video I made a couple of days ago on this channel where I do a First Impressions of Windows 10. Now It's a first impression, so it's not exactly a review, it's not exhaustive, but it gives you a little overview of what to expect from the system if you're thinking about upgrading, but today.

This is going to be a very critical Windows 10 video and I have a list of bullet points here that I'll go over today. I will also post supplementary information about what you know in the video portion. of this, just, to help in kind of technical language, definitions, sources of that kind of stuff, so anyway, the first point you can't change how and when you update your system in Windows 10, you just install the updates to as they are available. Now Microsoft has taken a significant amount of power out of the hands of the end user, and oddly enough, I have mixed feelings about this.

If this were a policy on any of the Linux distributions I use, I would be pretty upset and outraged and probably something like that. switch to another Linux operating system, so to speak, but Linux is an operating system where customization is like a cornerstone of its overall philosophy. Windows is for everyone, but it is also designed for people who don't know much about computers and don't care much about computers and as a result of that, I take the task or job of choosing which updates to update, when to update them, and evaluating the stability of updates set and taking that responsibility out of the hands of the end user and putting it in the hands of Microsoft and Windows 10 itself is possibly not a bad idea because at least it keeps everyone on the same page, it means that when people provide technical support They know or at least have a good idea about what updates the end user has installed and things like that, so from a newbie's point of view, I don't actually consider this to be a particularly bad policy and if you want to choose, you know how works your system is updated and when your system is updated, I would like to recommend a Linux distribution to be honest, because you know it is so, this could boil down to the line where Linux is for certain types of people and Windows is for other types . of people and without putting people into generalizations or whatever, Windows is certainly promoted as a newbie friendly operating system that someone should be able to learn and use and um and whether you consider it true or not, this is certainly an attempt to make that's the case, so, yeah, like I say, if this had been on any kind of OS that I use, it would actually bother me quite a bit and it bothers me when I boot into my Windows 8.1 partition which apparently every time I do, requires about half an hour of updates, incredibly annoying, one of the many reasons I don't use Windows, that said, my Windows 8 partition is reasonably well updated even though I hardly ever use it, so again I want to say this it's horses for courses, but it's not, this is um, this is maybe like an effort to get everyone on the same page and I think that's maybe something that probably does more good than harm.

I don't know if I understand it. why people are really upset about this, but again, if you want an operating system where you can control said things, Windows might not be it, so yeah, okay, maybe not as critical as some of the other points, the advertising, advertising now, Windows and Microsoft are really I'm going to push the advertising side of things pretty hard on this, so that every Windows 10 user is attributed as an advertising ID and then a lot of information is attributed to them to that ID in the form of profiles so that ads are advertised on maybe kind of like free apps but with ads and maybe something like B ads on various websites and whatever becomes more relevant to the end user and I know that a lot of people have different opinions about the value and ethics

surrounding

this and It seems to be something that you can't know, it seems to be something that worries people out there regarding advertising.

It sounds like you have a pretty high profile, so move on. Cortana Cortana, now it's Cortana. it's big, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, so cotana is the Microsoft Windows 10 version of Siri um SLG Google, okay, Google, I think it's the equivalent of Google, so cotana um uses and collects your personal data and they describe What is in the end user license agreement? It covers everything from your browsing history to your calendar and even includes voice data, which is things like nicknames and sort of communication slang, etc., to learn more about you now. Many people say that this is maybe something like Microsoft Javis.

I don't know if you guys are Iron Man fans. But this again worries me a little bit because it's a gimmick, it really is a gimmick. I personally. I have no problem finding anything on the Internet and I don't even use the Google search engine, which I often use when all else fails, but the home page, um duck ducko, if you know how they work, like searching for anything on The internet is fine, you know it's not a problem and you know that if you want to name your files vaguely and sensibly, searching your hard drive again, it's not a problem, it's not even a problem, so this Cortana thing where it tries gets more into you and tries to understand you more and then gives you more relevant search results and helps you navigate your system more effectively because everyone is a special little snowflake and Cortana has to understand you to understand what the hell you are.

I'm trying to do no, you know, I think it's completely superfluous, um, and if any of you have actually managed to find any decent uses for Kotana, let me know in the comments section below, but is Catana really worth collecting all that? data about you, you know that's a lot of data to put in one place and again it's important to keep that in mind because when I talk about big data and data collection, we need to understand that you can trust your data to Microsoft, but what not to say where? that data is 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now, Microsoft could have collapsed as a company and that data could have ended up on a server that gets hacked, it could be that Microsoft is bought by a company that you don't trust that could have several reasons, probably completely unforeseeable, about what might happen to your data later and it's a risk you're taking, there's a lot of data in one place and if we're all giving that, you know, if you're giving that information by Just What, like a gimmick, you know, just some bells and whistles on your Windows 10 operating system, just so Microsoft has something new to sell you, yeah, I don't think so. something particularly clever, that's all I'm going to say about that, um, and then I'll link to that because cotana, sure enough, they also say and more, so it's not just about things like browsing history, searching history , um, voice data, calendar events, bookmarks, all that. kind of thing it is and more it's like they take you to know that a lot of the data is system usage and stuff like that, whether your screen is locked or not, how long and what time you are on all this kind of stuff, everything it's included in the factors and um and it all ties back to your advertising ID as well um and that's a lot of data to have in one place um but the thing is what it ties into is another um is the next point on my list is that they reserve the right to hand over and access data pretty much at their discretion, the excuses they use are to help the authorities and to protect the application of their end user license agreement, which is quite broad, actually, it's a spectrum pretty broad, um, didn't mention, of course, that Cortana uses all of this information at will anyway, so, again, you know it's just a lot of your information that Microsoft seems to be using and it seems arbitrarily too, so I have to admit it with respect to a a M you know Microsoft's

privacy

policy is there doesn't really seem to be a um you know it doesn't seem like your rights are protected here and I guess this is the difference between similar end user license agreements from Microsoft and similar end user license agreements like the general public license where ul is like Microsoft Microsoft, your here is designed to take away your rights, whereas something like GP uh GPL, the general public license is actually designed to protect your rights um, it's very interesting um how These two types seemingly very similar um in terms of their functionality and terms of where to find them um and in terms of their type of legal status, but how different they are in terms of their type of actual context um uh and their content um Okay, so the last point here is Wi-Fi, a sense of Wi-Fi that shares your Wi-Fi password with your Facebook friends, so again, this is something that you can decide to use or decide not to use, but I I think there's something problematic about giving your friends Wi-Fi access so that they don't necessarily need you to know your password when they're at your house using their phones, tablets, laptops, whatever, if you're friends with this person on Facebook. , then you can use their Wi-Fi connection and that seems a little strange now again, this is an optional extra, but again I think it's moving along the way towards this social media thing becoming such a big part of our lives. lives. that, we may be restricting our own options here and what I mean by that is, um, yeah, technically if you're really social media savvy, you can protect yourself very, very well, you can stay up to date on

privacy

. settings and your rights and you can read each song and use an Under the Sun licensing agreement but at the end of the day we are all human, we all make mistakes and some of those mistakes are on social media, how many times have we seen like that? a politician or a celebrity says something really bad on Twitter and then is ridiculed by millions of people as a result people make mistakes and mistakes are not just limited to celebrities and public figures, everyone makes them and one day that mistake could be accepting a friend on your Facebook who then abuses your Internet connection C or something, it's getting deeper into integrating social media into more powerful elements of Our Lives, social media really should be, at the end of the day , just that it should be a way to socialize, it should be a way to make friends or communicate with friends or whatever, it should be effectively recreational and the more we link social media with other things in our lives, things that we own, for example , like our uh, Wi-Fi connection and so on, the more dangerous it becomes because that way it seems like we have less control, our control now seems to be no, you know, it seems to be not solely at our discretion, but at our and Facebook's discretion. or us and Microsoft or you know the kind of connection between all of them, um and again, I know it sounds a little like I'm putting on my tinfoil hat here, but the truth is that this is all included in the list of the end user. license agreement quite clearly, I mean you have to give Microsoft credit where it's due, um, it willingly tells you that it will hand over your data at any time to the authorities and that it is collecting almost all the data it can on you . like it's no secret about it, I'm not cryptically ripping apart the final license agreement, it's there in black and white, plain and simple text, uh, that you don't even need to be a lawyer to understand, you know we've removed all the legal documents and they have literally said that we are going to take a lot of your information and we will use it with cotana and we will use it with the authorities and we will use it for law enforcement. our end user license agreement, you know, they don't beat around the bush about it, this is it, you know, this is what they intend to do with your data, so you know, points for your honesty, points for becoming your end user. license agreement, you know, it's pretty easy to read, um, easy enough that everyone can understand it, but that doesn't stop very few people from reading it in the first place and I think that's where my concern comes from, um.

There are privacy features that can't actually be turned off in your Privacy Center, which is why a lot of people have accused Microsoft 10's privacy options of being some kind of cover-up and kind of a red herring in the I have a feeling. which yes, you can disable a lot of location information and things like that, but that in many cases just prevents applications from accessing them, it doesn't stop the collection of that data and of course, Microsoft and Windows 10 are uh of components owners means that we never really know that it is very difficult to get the information they are collecting about you and what they are doing with it because you can't open the source code and take a look.glance. yourself, so you know you have to trust this and anything you want.

I know a company with end user license agreements like this, you know, I can't, you know, I'm not going to trust if I can avoid it and I do because I'm not going to use Windows 10, so, those There are some problems that I have, there is no doubt that there are more and feel free to discuss them in the comments section below, but as I say, you know that many of these privacy features are actually or a lot of these privacy

concerns

are kind of avoidable in all honesty, not all of them, um, but some of them are.

The fact of the matter is that not everyone will be smart enough to navigate this and we now live in a time where computers are very, very commonplace and almost everyone is expected to use one at some point. , at least here in the UK, I think for every type of legal procedure or type of communication with the government or whatever you know how to claim. benefits or um or something like that, although there are online functions for doing that and like filing your taxes and all that kind of stuff, there are also offline equivalents, do you know that your right is effectively reserved not to use a computer or not using the internet to carry out your civic business, but having said that, I can see a day when that won't necessarily be the case where it costs an absolute fortune to keep a call center open, but it only costs a couple of a pound per month to maintain an active website, so okay, maybe a little more for a government website, but you can see that there are such cost savings that people could be driven more and more to use computers, uh, more now than ever. before and that it might get to a point where it's actually mandatory um and that being said this is when our rights become more important and I think there's enough pressure or a lot of pressure on a lot of people to actually get computers um and However, learn to use them, navigate the end user license agreements and understand how companies like Microsoft and Google access your data and what they do with it and how they make money from it and what they do with it in the case of uh.

You already know their interactions with law enforcement and not just with law enforcement, for example, like the NSA, but also with foreign governments. You know this is something that a lot of people are going to have a hard time navigating and a lot of people aren't going to do it. know and it's very easy to say, um you know, take a very cold stance of well, everyone should be educated about everything, but people don't have the time, they don't have the inclination, um, hell, you know, maybe not. I even have the ability to understand all the complicated ins and outs of end-user license agreements, privacy policies, and all that kind of stuff, and these people have just as many rights as you or I, and maybe it's up to people like me, like you, down there. the comments section and those of you watching this video to educate and spread the word and to let people know, but I think there needs to be some type of accountability on Microsoft's part to really protect people's privacy. and I know that the European Union has intervened in a number of companies, not only them, but also the UK government when it comes to privacy issues, so we know that even by European Union standards, our rights they are being INF Fringe. to one degree or another, um, so that's where I ended my rambling because I have a lot of concerns, as I just expressed regarding Microsoft's end user license agreement and privacy policy and um, I don't think I'll be wearing.

I think what I'll do if I can is hold out my Windows 8.1 until it's no longer maintained and then I'll probably switch to Linux completely. In fact, having said that, I'm the only one. reason why I keep my Windows 8.1 partition activated and I won't change it to something like Fedora um or mangaro or Arch or something like that, the only reason it is is because there are several new games, the new Fallout game, the new Hitman. new game DSX game that looks absolutely amazing and I don't want to risk them not working with wine, there really are a lot of games.

You know, I've had a lot of success with wine even with Steam and um and I've been playing uh GTA Vice City which runs amazingly on Steam uh on Steam on Linux by the way um and um Fallout New Vegas too, which I'm not going to call it a game. Reasonably new, but it's pretty new and works great on Steam on Linux too. I use Play on Linux which is a good software that helps you run games on it too. I have to say, you know, regarding games, I can now get pretty much everything I want to play in Wine and part of me is willing to wait until I can play newer games in Wine, but again, I have this inactive 8.1 partition which I'll probably stick with, there's no point in me upgrading to Windows 10 considering how little I use my Windows partition in the first place, but anyway, that's it for me today, thanks so much for watching the feeling.

You can leave your thoughts in the comments section below. I read each and every one of them even if I don't respond and until next time I've been Chris W and you've been amazing, take care.