this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024

528 points (91.9% liked)

Privacy

31993 readers

490 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

528

I installed Windows 10 in a virtual machine...man, this is straight up dystopian. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

118 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The tips, ads, and recommendations you see will be more generic and may be less relevant to you.

And this is treated as a bad thing?!

The number of ads you see won't change, but they may be less relevant to you.

Send only info about your device, its settings and capabilities, and whether it is performing properly.

In other words, even after turning off all the settings, your data still gets collected.

The rest of the installation process wasn't fun either. It was worded in this weird, condescending tone, like "Let's get everything set up for you", and "Let Cortana help you get things done!".

Thank goodness for FLOSS and GNU/Linux.

(page 3) 32 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wait until you get to the screen that asks you if you want to share your data with their 300 friends.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

(we will share your data regardless of your choice :/ )

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 49 points 8 months ago (2 children)

if you care about privacy linux is the best honestly

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Maybe also not Ubuntu or RHEL? I heard they also collect telemetries and hard to trun off. Unsure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

i actually uninstalled the telemetry package and it stopped even being able to enable telemetry

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

The telemetry is opt in so feel free to use them. (Correct me if i am wrong)

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ubuntu will ask you if usage data can be collected and sent to canonical when you first log in after installation. You get to look at the exact data that would be sent before making a decision and if you say no, then they'll comply with that and never ask you again.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Great to know

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 77 points 8 months ago (6 children)

One of the many reasons I always run privacy.sexy every time I need to install windows (on both bare metal and inside a VM).

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I shall yoink that, thank you very much.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Not to mention being forced to create a MS account if you're online.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

With win10 you should be able to click the small text to get a local account but yeah I think with newer win11 installers you have to be off the internet for a local account. And then when you do log in with your MS account to save your license (important when using a Win7 OEM key to license win10) it would convert your profile to online, and then you had to "do steps" to put it back to local. Annoying af

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

When installing Windows 11, say you want to log in with your Microsoft account, then when it asks for email address and password enter [email protected] and any random password. It will say the account has been deactivated and let you create a local account. No need to be offline.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Not on Win10 and you can get around it on Win11

[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago

First time?

[–] [email protected] 132 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yea, it's really shitty.

Enterprise folks don't have this problem because they use the WAIK (or whatever it's called now) to customize the installer.

Anyone can use it, and from what I've read, the Win10 generation of the kit is much easier to use than previous versions (which were pretty bad).

But yea, this stuff is awful.

Checkout things like WinDebloat, Privatezilla, Winaero Tweaker, and LoveWindowsAgain. There's some overlap between them (as they were built for different purposes), but they all pretty much kill telemetry at the service or installed level (as in remove the components providing telemetry).

Yea, it's BS you have to do this. And screw MS for this crap.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

LTSB or LTSR I forget which. Toss some classic shell in there, boom, Win 10 like you remember Win 7 was like. Too bad they fucked up 11 so bad I switched to Ubuntu.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think the pro version doesn't have most of this too. I've never seen an ad in w10 and 11

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They don't show explicit banner ads or anything, but every now and then there will be links to "recommended software" in your start menu's app drawer or the notification thing in the bottom right (not the taskbar, that foldable drawer thing).

You can disable those as well, but not by default.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Candy crush is what they put as "recommended software" if I remember correctly.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, Windows sucks. I recommend the LTSC version for minimized tracking. But even then, I had to use third-party software and hacks to minimize it further. I don't ever plan to go back after switching to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

LTSC sounds great or else there must be something like MicroXP for windows 10/11 where someone has debloated it down to the bare bones.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What's that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

LTSC is the enterprise/business version that have extended period for patches with less bloat. It's similar to LTS with Ubuntu.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is most people's reaction to using Windows for any reason.

load more comments