Since Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates sent a memo 18 months ago urging the company to focus on making its software trustworthy, the company has devoted developers and money to security in its software products. But Microsoft has given short shrift to a second concern outlined in the so-called “Trustworthy Computing” memo – protecting privacy – except when forced by the government. With the hiring of a new privacy chief, the software company is hoping to improve its privacy record and keep government regulators at bay.
Microsoft Corp. Turns Focus on Privacy
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Microsoft and privacy – those are two words that when used together constitute the best example of an oxymoron that I know. Get real….Microsoft will never fully embrace personal privacy. Just look at their track record. Their whole Palladium platform will according to Microsoft enhance privacy but with a catch…You can have privacy as long as it is okay with Microsoft. It is my wish (a big one!) that people would wake up to what Microsoft is trying to pull with “Trustworthy Computing”. This is one is going to be bad…really bad.
Hoping is the word…
Microsoft doesn’t know what real privacy is. When you look at the number of firewall rules people put into place to shield a MS desktop from Microsoft’s OWN SOFTWARE that’s known spyware it’s plain that this is just marketing FUD same with the so-called “year long security re-training”.
So much for the re-training. Server 2003 shipped with the ethernet leak that was released months ago, which MS swore up and down that NONE of the drivers released from Microsoft had the security hole.
Windows Update itself reports every single installed application and version number to MS update servers. To Mr Bill Gates I say prove it, WITHOUT bribing the Oxford Dictionary people to change the definition of the word “private”. I remind you Mr Gates, we have ways of proving compliance no matter how much you encrypt the information you steal from us.
When an app crashes on XP, regardless of whether it’s Microsoft’s or some other vendor’s, Windows puts up a message box saying “Please tell Microsoft about the problem”. If you click yes, presumably a Dr. Watson log containing the thread call stacks of every app that has crashed on your machine since the last time you deleted the log – and who knows what else, perhaps some user ID info from the registy – will be emailed or http-post’d to Microsoft.
I have a problem with that, because this seems to give their marketing department a major edge over other application software vendors; they get tons of free research data on what applications people are using, and which have crash bugs and where. It’s true that I can answer “No”, but the first couple times I clicked “Yes” without thinking. I bet a lot of people click “Yes” without thinking. This amounts to statistically sampled spyware.
Microsoft doesn’t know what real privacy is. When you look at the number of firewall rules people put into place to shield a MS desktop from Microsoft’s OWN SOFTWARE that’s known spyware it’s plain that this is just marketing FUD same with the so-called “year long security re-training”.
Though I don’t deny the allegations and would agree that MS is guilty as charged, I can’t really say that I care anymore. So MS wants to know what’s installed on my PC? Fine, whatever. I have come to the conclusion that there are much more important things to worry about than whether or not MS knows that I use Firebird instead of IE and how many porn sites I have visited in the past month. If you worry about these kinds of things, then go outside …. it’s probably sunny.
Sure, such practices can lead to worse things such as MS ‘turning off my OS’ for forced upgrades and such. However, I doubt it’ll ever come to that. And if it does, I will deal with the problem when it happens, probably by paying Mr. Gates a personal visit.
I am I the only one, who thinks that it’s good that MS is *finally* thinking of security and privacy? Remember Windows is a commodity software package…
Sure MS has had a bad run on these fronts, but things are improving. For those people locked into an MS environment (due to some poor management decisions), this IMHO is a good thing…
When you look at the number of firewall rules people put into place to shield a MS desktop from Microsoft’s OWN SOFTWARE that’s known spyware
For the layman, what spyware are you refering to? If you mean product activation, have you actually looked at the packets sent to MS? And secondly if you bought the product legally, then what do you have to worry about?
They should be focused on that 8 years ago.
to late.
There has never been any version of Windows or Office that respects an individual’s privacy.
And there never will be. Microsoft has a “fuck the customer” culture that is as ingrained and deep as it comes from Gates and Ballmore.
They will probably find out that the unknown net traffic is Microsoft spyware uploading data from your PC to Microsoft and the USGOVT.
It is time for Microsoft to stop these giant lies. The only way people will ever trust Microsoft is for Microsoft to open their code and enable others to build the OS from the open code using third party tools.
Until that day of open code, it is safe to assume Microsoft will be up to their same dirty tricks — GUIDS in documents, Magic Lantern, jillions of undocumented GUIDS, TCP/IP user GUIDS, etc.
If you value your life and your right to privacy, the smart thing to do is get off of Windows ASAP and move to Mac or Linux.
I don’t mean to sound like a troll, but where’s the proof to all the above anti-MS statements. I understand that MS has been involved in some dirty tricks (just every other corparation out there, without exception), but show me some proof that Windows has spyware in it?
I know that you can’t show me code, but show which binary file (either exe or dll), and show me a TCP/IP dump of it actually doing what it is meant to be doing… Well if you can’t then I can safely assume that is being spread is Anti-MS FUD… Simple…
They should be focused on that 8 years ago.
They did and it’s call NT… I know they f**ked up the implementation, but at least they had the right ideas, like ACLs, GUIDs, NTFS, SMP support from day 1, micro-kernel* design (even though it doesn’t exist like that now), etc…
I would just like to say, all I’m trying to do, is keep the FUD out of the equation…
Which both sides seem to love
Chewy509…
* NT was original desinged as a pure micro-kernel, but due to performance reasons has migrated to a macro-kernel architecture… (macro-kernel is between monolithic and micro-kernel on the kernel implementation levels).
is to hire respected researcher/consultants/white hats from the security community if i wanted to gain some respect from the people.
people like matt blaze, dan kaminsky and other hardcore whitehats..
or outsource these parts to a company such as counterpane.