{"id":3954,"date":"2015-09-04T00:43:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T16:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/?p=3954"},"modified":"2015-09-09T19:36:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T11:36:34","slug":"microsoft-data-harvesting-backported-to-windows-7-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.darknet.org.uk\/2015\/09\/microsoft-data-harvesting-backported-to-windows-7-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Data Harvesting Backported To Windows 7 & 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

So as a follow up to our recent article about the rather lax Windows 10 default privacy settings<\/a>, Microsoft has decided that even if you aren’t upgrading – they want your data anyway.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/p>\n

The most complete cloud indeed, made up of telemetry from your machines. Microsoft is back-porting the data harvesting portions of Windows 10 to both Windows 7 and Windows 8 – nice eh? And yah, Microsoft data harvesting? Not really surprising to be honest.<\/p>\n

We recently mused, half seriously, whether the entire point of the Windows 10 upgrade was to harvest your personal information. With Microsoft suffering from a serious case of Google envy, perhaps it felt it had some catching up to do.<\/p>\n

Now Microsoft is revamping the user-tracking tools in Windows 7 and 8 to harvest more data, via some new patches.<\/p>\n

All the updates can be removed post-installation \u2013 but all ensure the OS reports data to Microsoft even when asked not to, bypassing the hosts file and (hence) third-party privacy tools. This data can include how long you use apps, and which features you use the most, snapshots of memory to investigate crashes, and so on.<\/p>\n

The updates are KB3068708 (“Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry” and mandatory) KB3075249 (“Update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7”) and KB3080149 (also an “Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry”, both optional).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n