French watchdog blasts Microsoft over Windows 10's privacy failings | TechRadar
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... gs-1325172

Good. MS just want to be Google in an even sneakier way, and possibly even worse, without competence.

The first thing Windows 10 does on installation is ask you what data you want to share with Microsoft, and why they need the data... You can turn the data on and off to suit your needs.

You can't really berate Microsoft for user stupidity / laziness.

The tracking browsing is an option that the user can turn on and off and is used to help improve making website suggestions, when typing in a new URL, you know, just like Firefox and Chrome do. It is also used for the Smartfilter service, which compares entered URLs with known URLs containing malicious content, again the user can disable this feature if they really want to.

The PIN number is an odd one, in the German Windows 10 installation, it recommends setting up a PIN, as it is more secure than a password!?! How can a 4 digit PIN be more secure than a 25 character password?!? But, again, it is up to the user to decide, whether they want to use a PIN or not, MS is not forcing them to use it.

MS stopped using Safe Harbor, when it was declared illegal, it switched to so called standard contractual clauses, which weren't invalidated by the EU, although I would say that they had also been invalidated in spirit, if not in fact, as they were no better than Safe Harbor. Now the replacement for Safe Harbor has been ratified.

As reported, the CNIL accusations don't make much sense, as it is collecting similar data that Apple and Google already collect and during initial set-up the user is given the offer of turning each of these data collections on or off, complete with an explanation of what the data is used for.

MS know most people don't even understand what they're reading or just simply won't read it.

Plus there's supposed to be privacy settings you've to drill down into on installation that you likely wouldn't know were there, but I haven't had to do any of this stuff myself yet.

If you're doing the install yourself. Many people will buy it preinstalled by an OEM (say on a new laptop). They'll have no idea what was selected.

Which should run OOBE (Out Of Box Experience) and ask you those questions.

As Saspro says, when you first turn on a new machine, you are faced with the questions. I've set up several new Windows 10 machines and I have always set the privacy settings to those I want to give out during the initial set-up.