Windows 10…more worries so listen…

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

SOD-Dave & Vic-I fully agree with you, but why worry? -Most of the info. can be found at my local pub, bank details etc. could be got from all sorts of other sites, none of which we have any control over. Buying petrol is a security risk. Quite happy for any info. ( except bank details etc. ) to be given, every time we buy something it is recorded somewhere. I am dead against all this information gathering, whoever does it, but we can do nothing so why worry.

[VicParticipant @vic]

I understand harvesting data for targetted selling but I don't think trawling through "private communications or files in private folders" is acceptable.

[Brian OldfordParticipant @brianoldford70365]

All the more reason to consider migration to a Linux distro and Open Source applications. It gives those into programming to keep an eye on what it's internals are doing.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

as a non-windows user (apart from an old win98 machine needed to run a scanner and not used online) and a non subscriber to facebook etc I find it objectionable that MS, google etc read the emails I send to others – facebook + google are known to build dossiers on non-subscribers thanks to the actions of the multitude who see no problem with tagging others in photos, agreeing that their emails may be scanned for advertising etc but it seems only the French have enough nouse to go after these companies – the UK can’t even get them to pay 5% of the taxes they owe

Edited By Frances IoM on 30/05/2016 17:00:33

[VicParticipant @vic]

It's a valid point Frances. Windows users may agree to Microsoft snooping into their private data but what about non Windows users that are in contact with them via email etc.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Posted by Brian Oldford on 30/05/2016 16:59:31:

All the more reason to consider migration to a Linux distro and Open Source applications. It gives those into programming to keep an eye on what it's internals are doing.

Or a Mac.

"OS X remains one of the safest operating systems available today."

"From a practical perspective, then, OS X is the obvious choice. Apple has proven itself to be one of the best at fighting off the bad guys, yet there’s also a broad range of software available."

**LINK**

[NJHParticipant @njh]

Well Vic I have been running Windows machines since v 3 and we jogged along together reasonably well. My kids on the other hand are all artists / graphic designers and said for years " For goodness sake Dad get a Mac"

So last year my trusty Win7 machine was retired to the workshop and I entered the world of Mac OS X via a 27in. iMac…….

Fantastic bit of kit ! I'm totally converted and now run that, an iPad each for my wife and myself and an iPod that I keep next to the bed where it can access email and, more to the point, store lots of music ….. this plugs into a music system and helps considerably to keep me going when I'm exercising on the cross trainer!

We've not totally abandoned Windows as my wife has a Win 8 machine which she uses mostly for browsing, compiling and filing recipes and knitting patterns.

But I am MacMan now!

Norman

Edited By NJH on 30/05/2016 18:52:38

Edited By NJH on 30/05/2016 18:53:08

[VicParticipant @vic]

I think there's a certain trepidation about switching to a Mac but everyone I've known personally that made the switch said quite emphatically that they would "never, ever, use Windows again". You can of course run Windows on a Mac if you need to use some specific software. Not for everyone though, especially if you're on a tight budget. Having said that when my wife bought a PC many years ago we spent just as much on buying a decent Sony tower as we did on the iMac that eventually replaced it. Some of the Linux distros look pretty good though and far more secure than Windows although the amount of third party software is a bit limiting.

As you though Norman, we both have iPads for email and surfing so the desktop gets a lot less use than it did.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Gordon W on 30/05/2016 13:51:48:

SOD-Dave & Vic-I fully agree with you, but why worry? -Most of the info. can be found at my local pub, bank details etc. could be got from all sorts of other sites, none of which we have any control over. Buying petrol is a security risk. Quite happy for any info. ( except bank details etc. ) to be given, every time we buy something it is recorded somewhere. I am dead against all this information gathering, whoever does it, but we can do nothing so why worry.

Hi Gordon,

Yes you make a good point. I could pay a private detective to get most of someone's data. Most of us aren't worth the cost of doing that though.

The difference with computers on the internet is that privacy sensitive data can be collected globally, recorded permanently, merged and amalgamated with data from other sources, and then sorted, filtered and analysed at leisure. It's cheap, automatic and impersonal. Much of the activity is no doubt benign, but not everyone in the world can be trusted.

I have a friend who adamantly took the line that no-one would notice that he was online with an un-patched XP system with no virus protection, or firewall. He compounded his problems by giving himself admin privileges and not bothering with a password. He thought a hacker was a spotty youth trying to break into business systems from his back bedroom who wouldn't bother with him. Yes such people exist.

What he actually encountered was a criminal organisation based in Russia that was using a sophisticated distributed worm to internationally scan IP addresses by the million. They were looking for insecure machines. One way of doing this is to send malformed messages over the network to see how the target machine handles the errors. It is usually possible to identify the operating system and version state of the target machine by the way it responds to corrupt messages. You don't know if this is happening or not unless you check. My firewall log shows that my IP address is occasionally been probed unsuccessfully.

Having identified a machine and operating system, the next stage is to run a series of scripts that try known weaknesses. A fairly obvious one is attempt to log in as admin with no password, and if that fails to repeat using each entry in a long list of common passwords. People aren't very imaginative. There's a lot more that can be tried to find an entry point.

My friend logged in one day to find that the baddies had logged in and encrypted his hard drive. They wanted money to unlock it. As he wasn't prepared to give them his account details he lost all the data on the machine and also had to reinstall all his software from scratch. It was a painful lesson.

He wasn't targeted because he was rich, interesting or important. He was identified because he was vulnerable, much as the weaklings in a herd get hunted by lions.

What you do to secure your system, or not, gives it a kind of electronic signature that allows weaklings to be identified. If you have also been unwise enough to store password lists on your machine, or allowed your browser to remember sensitive passwords, you can expect fireworks once they gain access.

This type of attack uses nothing more than computer time. A human is only involved when a break-in is reported. Once they are in, it becomes even more dangerous if the bad guys have access to other information about you. For example, people often use their car registrations as a password because it's easty to remember, and then they use that same password for all their online accounts. More seriously a good understanding of who and what you are and how much wealth you have makes it much easier to con you.

Anyway, I'm simply suggesting that it's prudent to take precautions. Burglars looking for work tend to avoid houses with alarms, good locks, strong right arms, and dogs. It's much the same with well protected computers.

I don't want to panic anyone. Banks, ISPs and other security sensitive services do try quite hard to protect us. The internet is fairly safe as long as we take suitable precautions.

What all this data collection means in terms of civil liberties is another dimension. In the West, despite some obvious exceptions, we are lucky to have better than averagely trustworthy governments. Let's hope they stay that way!

Cheers,

Dave

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Further to the above– I do have virus etc. protection, my passwords are not easy to guess. The local council and the garage down the road have my bank details, among others, goodness knows what protection they have. The only safe way is cash and that involves a lot of driving around. Just now I am more worried about stopping crows from stealing my hens eggs.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Things are working out just like Orwells 1984

Oceania which is The USA and south america

Eurasia which is the UK and europe through to turkey/Ukraine

and Eastasia which is china and India etc

Edited By Ady1 on 31/05/2016 09:51:23

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

If you have a Samsung PC or laptop…

**LINK**

!

And just to repeat yet again, there are downloadable utilities that will block Win10 download – links have been given several times on this forum.

[Fowlers FuryParticipant @fowlersfury]

"And just to repeat yet again, there are downloadable utilities that will block Win10 download – links have been given several times on this forum".

True of course, but SWMBO has just got caught by the latest Microsoft dirty trick:

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Redmond assumes closing nagware dialog means 'yes', says that's by design

Microsoft is hurt and disappointed that people would think it was trying to “trick” them with a confusing Windows 10 upgrade dialog that scheduled an upgrade without users explicitly agreeing to do so.

Redmond recently created a new Windows 10 nagware reminder that presented a dialog asking you to install the OS. But if users clicked the red “X” to close the dialog – standard behaviour for dispelling a dialog without agreeing to do anything – Microsoft took that as permission for the upgrade.

[Mark P.Participant @markp]

As far as I can see there is no advantage to going to W10,7 does more than I can use, in fact XP was good enough for me. I have turned off automatic updates.
Mark P.

[Dave Smith the 16thParticipant @davesmiththe16th]

To me its not the we are stealing your data, this is obvious and its huge money now. One of the companies that offer free games on facebook and android got caught out recently.

We collect no data and do not sell data etc etc. When questioned on how they make their money and why they need so much access to facebook users details they had to come clean they do collect data but its not identifiable to the user. They soon changed their access and no longer required a huge list of permissions.

They no longer need access to your address book and everyones phone numbers.

Even this forum links to google analytics and facebook and myhobbystore, these are in the background how many know this is happening?

The issue for me is the ever foreceful tactics to upgrade. As mentioned a nag box pops up and if ignored or closed it assumes that you agree and installs anyway. The issue is that some people leave their computers running so they will not even see the nag screen and be able to cancel it.

One guy updated his media centre computers and then found out that win 10 does not have a media centre. So the update was not really compatible with his system. No warning that windows 10 lacked a medai centre.

I have some old programs that wont run in windows 10, so happy to stick to windows 7 for now. Although a lot of them i run in a virtual machine anyway. Not tried windows 98 in a VMWare enviroment on a win 10 machine yet.

I had issues with an old program on a windows 8 machine, it just didnt run at all, no matter what i tried. Compatability mode or even a VM enviroment. It works on my Win 7 machine in a VM though.

[Fowlers FuryParticipant @fowlersfury]

Before the editorial blue pencil descends for this all being off topic for model engineering……….

Re. "16th" post, a couple of points, not to disagree, just maybe clarify

1."Even this forum links to google analytics and facebook and myhobbystore, these are in the background how many know this is happening?". Probably few is the answer but the solution – for Firefox users – is simple. Use the free add-on "No Script". This will block all scripts running on a web page unless you expressly allow. For example on THIS page, as "16th" states, Google analytics, Facebook and MyHobbystore all try to run scripts. I only allow MyHobbystore to run theirs. Also add "Ghostery" and you're fairly safe from data harvesters.

2. The loss of Windows Media Centre from Win 10 was serious (e.g. it was the simplest & most reliable way to watch TV via a usb stick) but a quick Google search will reveal that it's simple & straightforward to restore it.

In many ways I envy the Linux users who don't have to contend with these countless updates and quirks from Microsoft. Furthermore, they haven't yet become targets for scammers etc. But many of my expensive progs aren't available for Linux and I really don't want to get into 'dual booting' for other reasons.

It's difficult to justify Win 10 over Win 7 IMHO. Consider the infamous "Cortana" designed for hand-holding users. It ("she&quot is not only a user-data harvester but a major consumer of computer resources (about 29Mb). There are innumerable websites asking how to stop it running in Win10 and to do so permanently requires a complicated procedure as I discovered.

Win10 is fast and stable for sure but it's been foisted on us by Microsoft marketing – presumably why it is still free, at least for another month.

[VicParticipant @vic]

I'm still intrigued as to why Microsoft have given it away for a year. I know they've lost billions in revenue in the past for both their OS and MS Office but why give it away now? It's rumoured to be between 79 and 99 pounds or dollars I believe after July?

[Bob StevensonParticipant @bobstevenson13909]

I'm really pleased now that I started this topic…some of the posts have been interestingn and valuable…….

It has been said that "power corrupts, and total power corrupts totally"……this it seems is the state of play with Microsoft. I have no problem with Ms selling a product and making a profit,….nor with their steadily updating that product. The trouble is that Ms is effectively the 'only game in town' and Ms no longer looks at you and I as 'customers' but as tiny plantlets in it's own vast cash crop…plantlets that can be cropped and processed in many ways to give a big pay off…….

……We've been here before with American corporations….IBM comes to mind as they were completely autocratic withh their captive audience of users….until the fall!!

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

Some of the content of this page might surprise you Bob

**LINK**

Mac sales have been rising steadily for some time and are an alternative. Inertia is probably holding it back significantly. People have an awful level of inertia when they have been accustomed to something for years.

Linux usage has also increased. Actually it's all a lot of people really need. It's very hard to get true figures on this but one thing is true those that are sometimes claimed are way too low.

Maybe Apple will start selling their OS. Doubt it but it would be interesting.

In a round about way IBM were responsible for their own "fall" if that is the right word. They designed the PC and made the info freely available for anybody to build them. Some thought this was to give DEC and their mini's a severe problem as they were causing IBM a lot of grief. The interesting aspect of the design is that it was old hat even before it was released but very similar to the sort of arrangement they were used to. Apple went state of the art with their Mac's at the time but I suspect no one had any idea how many people would eventually own one otherwise their prices would have been very different and they would probably be on top now.

The Mac's OS is based on OS X. Done by IBM to try and get a more sensible OS in PC's despite MS who had proved incapable of providing some of the features that should have been there since day one. OS X mostly came from Linux and that came from Unix due to licensing problems.

In terms of the over all PC market it's been struggling for some time as the producers see it. It's become harder to get people to upgrade. This has been true for a long time now. In those circumstances it makes sense to get people to buy into something that includes buying upgrades or of course renting the stuff out. Even better doing what ever it is more or less entirely over the web. I expect people will see more and more of these sorts of things as time goes on. Also ideas that no one has thought of yet.

John

–

Edited By Ajohnw on 01/06/2016 17:36:55

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Sorry to be pedantic but iOS, the Mac's operating system, since I think OS X has been based on the BSD distribution of Unix as modified by Apple. This was not written by IBM. It was based on Unix rather than Linux because if you take Linux and modify it, then redistribute it for example as the OS in a personal computer, then you also have to publish all your changes, which would have meant that Apple would have had to make their OS freely available! That's the last thing they wanted! They avoided this by using Unix since that is published under the BSD licence which is much less restrictive than the GPL that Linux uses. It is rumoured that the next release of Windows will also be based on Unix.

As Linux is the basis of Android, and most smartphones sold use Android, Linux probably has the lion's share of the OS market worldwide. Much of the WWW runs on Linux as well as a lot of telecoms platforms.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by John Haine on 01/06/2016 17:58:39:

Sorry to be pedantic but iOS, the Mac's operating system

.

John,

Sorry to be extra pedantic, but: iOS is specific to Apple's "portable devices" [iPhone; iPad; etc.], not the Mac. There is some 'look and feel' convergence between OS X and iOS, but [to the best of my knowledge] they remain structurally different. … But; Yes, OS X is built upon UNIX.

MichaelG.

[AjohnwParticipant @ajohnw51620]

What I fail to believe John is that people who do these sorts of things don't steal techniques etc from other software that is about. I've also seen things that suggest that under it all Mac's have BASH or at least some of it. An odd choice. Something that grew like topsy in universities with all sorts of needs thrown in.

Unix does have an odd history. Bell Labs but the work was funded by several companies including DEC. The only reason I know that is that I was dealing with them at the time and wanted to use it. The response was interesting – no way. It's too heavy for am 11/23.

Even the history of BSD is messy.

**LINK**

My basic understanding is that Linux came about when Unix suddenly had licensing difficulties probably because some one decided there was money in OS's. Linux was released in 1991.

Things have changed a lot in the software world even in my time. The first thing to do if someone wanted to write some code was to dial up a bulletin board and ask if anyone had any that would help in the task. It would be freely give to save the person the time needed to write it. In that sort of world it's hard to know who did what and where it came from. It was even possible to pick up a monstrous header for early windows applications let alone functional code.

Yes I used to connect to bulletin boards over the phone. The web too which generally went 'its up when America woke up.

John

–

Edited By Ajohnw on 01/06/2016 18:27:19

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

The problem with OSX is that it is Apple specific. For all their faults, anyone can build and sell machines that will run windows. However much OSX appeals it's hard for many people to justify even a refurbished Macbook when you can buy a new, higher-spec laptop for around half the price.

Neil

[VicParticipant @vic]

Won't happen anytime soon but who knows. Look what happened to giant Kodak.

**LINK**

[VicParticipant @vic]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 01/06/2016 19:02:42:

The problem with OSX is that it is Apple specific. For all their faults, anyone can build and sell machines that will run windows. However much OSX appeals it's hard for many people to justify even a refurbished Macbook when you can buy a new, higher-spec laptop for around half the price.

Neil

Not quite true as you can run OS X on non Apple hardware provided it has a high enough specification. Search Hackintosh if you are in doubt. High spec PC laptops aren't often a lot cheaper than MacBooks. The real advantage with Apple is that they make both the hardware and software.

[Author]

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