Alas! I found Cortana factory-installed on my cell-phone and there seems to be no way to get rid of it. Of course I never activated it and still every now and then a sexy female voice pops out of nowhere to tell me that she didn’t understand what I said. What do you think?
Anyway my Nokia is still a pretty good camera and as such I’ll keep using it (paying good attention to what I photograph), but to communicate I’ll have to buy a new cell-phone with some non-MS OS.

“If you have nothing to conceal, you have nothing to fear”… where did I already hear it? Gestapo? KGB? Holy Inquisition?

I am not ‘important enough’ either(nor am I breaking any laws) but I still value my privacy and resent the violation thereof.

I DO care about ‘evidence’ being obtained, without a warrant, from google searches as it violates our constitution and that NEVER leads to anything good down the line or otherwise. (it is especially worrying as it is entirely circumstantial and to have someone convicted based on a google search is worrying as circumstantial evidence isn’t supposed to carry that kind of weight in a court of law and a mildly related search shouldn’t count as evidence anyway as it doesn’t actually connect them with anything and the person could have simply been curious-but here we are, in a society where this has been done—you have no idea how many ‘jokes’ go around writters circles because when looking up something for a story sometimes you have to be like “please don’t show up at my door to arrest me for my google search on _____” in your head-because it’s actually happened where people were taken “in for questioning” or otherwise arrested for a google search—people seriously worry about if there was a crime nearby they don’t know about and if there search somehow might be similar about it because of things that HAVE happened)

I DO care about all the things spying on us. I DO care about all the stuff that goes on. Literally you could leave your laptop open and be getting it on and someone can be watching you and you’d never know. In fact, its happened. It’s rare you find out about it but… it HAS happened and it’s sick and wrong and I resent how resigned people often seem to have become because our government spies on us, companies spy on us, and somehow this somehow is there reasoning for ‘not having a problem with it’.

I for one, cannot imagine NOT having a problem with it.

To be honest it was not meant as sarcasm. In today’s technological world a person cannot breathe without being recorded in some way. This includes telephone communications, computer operations, television viewing habits, and even walking down the street (everyone has a camera on their cellphone). I am not paranoid about what I am discovered doing/researching on the internet. The best I can do in all of those instances is to monitor when/if that information is compromised and adjust accordingly. There are tools available to monitor what the Windows Firewall is allowing in and/or out and believe me, I’m not important enough as an individual for anyone to care what I am doing online. I don’t care about ‘evidence’ being obtained in searches because I am not committing crimes…either online or anywhere else. If I don’t stand in the fire I will not get burned.

I wouldn’t joke about that. Google searches are now ‘evidence’ when crimes are committed. It takes nothing at all for them to obtain. We aren’t far from someone using Microsoft in just such a way. It takes less than you think to get from where we are to that point.

And considering what they actually DO… I doubt it. To answer anyway what I assume is meant as sarcasm.

It’s not secret because it’s not much of a ‘secret’ if its so easy to figure out.

I tried windows ten when it force updated me at one point, managed to get back down from it and all that but yeah, it wasn’t great at all. In fact Cortana communicates with them constantly even if you ‘disable’ cortana and attempt to block her. Wanna know how I know that? Because it’s not hard to monitor and pay attention to what is communicating to outside of your computer and it doesn’t take a genius to know a disabled program shouldn’t be doing that at all let alone as much as cortana does, which is pretty much the same whether you have her ‘disabled’ or not.

Unfortunately it’s the illusion of shutting cortana down that you get, not actually shutting it down.

Don’t we all know it. Its really very annoying to say the least.

try to find a computer that doesn’t come with window’s pre installed. I called over a dozen stores at one point, right after windows ten came out. It was the only system for sale at all on disk in the stores and the only system that came on any new computers.

Using it doesn’t mean people like it or trust it. When a monopoly happens, that is common and Microsoft, and Apple have a monopoly. Anything else that crops up, they edge out so they can keep it. All safe guards that are supposed to be in place against monopolies in the USA have failed.

So it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a windows user.

Just remember, that isn’t a valid reason to invalidate someone, what they think, or how they feel. If anything it’s more telling that the person likely knows quite intimately how little Microsoft can be trusted through using the programs or even simply reading the TOS(which for windows ten in particular is ridiculously intrusive and underhanded).

it still lacks control. Like how even though I have certain apps disabled on my phone there companion ‘system apps’ still are pinged back on my vpn and I still have to deny them access manually because those are the ‘loophole’ as it were, for them to get away with still getting your data and using it in ways you don’t want it to be used, without even telling you they are doing it by the way, after you’ve already disabled there stuff under the pretense they will be unable to do so. Like Facebook app manager on my phone doesn’t allow me to uninstall or disable it and despite the fact I have never used any facebook app and disabled them on my phone, it still has transmitted data to the Facebook app and so I have still had to clean out that data, because of that ‘system app’ that really has no real purpose but to undermine your security while you bask in the illusion of privacy. Yeah. It’s underhanded and horrible but they do it anyway.

It’s similar with a computer unfortunately, just I don’t have a vpn for my computer. I have other ways of seeing what goes in and out of it though. I’ve yet to find a good vpn I trust for my laptop is all and I don’t know how to make one, not surprising since it requires scripting and while I can do plenty with a computer, that simply isn’t one of them.

Unfortunately Microsoft has proven it cannot be trusted. There ARE ways to manually see what is trying to access the internet and what for and what servers… so it’s not all that hard to know stuff still goes on and undermines what you actually want by the very company who apparently thrives on giving the illusion of choice in the matter.

Unfortunately umbra is right on that one. It doesn’t give a whole lot of control and when it does it’s more of an illusion than actual honest control.

One of the many reasons I hate windows ten in particular as it gives more illusion like that than previous versions who pretty much just screw you and hope you don’t notice. Somehow telling you that you have a choice then undermining that choice just seems more underhanded than they were before. I mean now they have no excuse not to know your against it but they still undermine it. That just seems worse to me because there is no excuse and your expressing quite clearly what you want. Maybe that’s just me though.

I used them. A lot actually. Whatever gave them the actual idea nobody used them? Emsisoft itself requires a lot of manual individual setting as is than your typical malware or antivirus software. Did they even ask people if they used it or did they just assume?

If they think we are so niche maybe they should consider taking out the part where I HAVE to go in and set monitoring individually… since they are seeming to think we are all idiots who want basic software. Though that one would have made at least that part less tedious… since I set all my stuff to be monitored just in case. If they were going to try and dumb it down, that would have been the first thing I’d have done… or simplifying how to do it from a user standpoint… but… not this. Never will I be OK with axing it and as they say… a pleased customer tells a friend, a pissed off customer tells a hundred friends.

They are going to lose a lot of customers if they start axing the very things that make people want it.

I don’t think they realize that ‘niche’ keeps them in business and makes up an awful lot of there users… If they ax it then… people will leave the moment someone else offers something better since axing it actually takes down there quality of product and how well it works as well. Takes away the control of the user… and basically guts a very important part of it. It’s really annoying. What? Did someone new take over or something?

You basically gave the middle finger to Power Users under the banner of “simplification” and “hey you don’t need HIPS” and with that we lost the ability to monitor connections requiring a 3rd party program to give the same functionality.

Now your given solution to “improving” security is to tell people to use a worse firewall and run your product over the top of it? Is that really the best solution you could come up with or is it more that you don’t want to spend your time supporting a wanted and in some cases needed product?

Is EAM going to allow inbound and outbound port blocking or IP ranges? Is it going to stop GPO manipulation if something gains privilege? How are you going to prevent secondary accounts impacting others?

We’re lowering you security coverage but “Have a great, well-protected day!” suffices to say once my licence is up I’ll be dropping EMSI as part of my security package an looking to people who support their userbase and does not see advance users as a hindrance and low usage cases. Next you’ll be telling us that AM and AV are unimportant and we should just run Windows Defender with your product over the top as a “hardening solution”

I also got a good laugh out of “they are covered by both their NAT router and Windows Firewall” assuming that everyone is still on IPv4 and they are running two firewalls at the same time. “We just decided […] this control is what most of our users
need” is also a good one, sometimes what you “need” isn’t what you should have, by that logic your product is irrelevant since most people don’t “need” your firewall any more.