this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Is that legal?
Anything is legal when you force the customer to agree to it or not use your product. They can say whatever they want in the ToS because it's 365 pages long and only attorneys can understand what is actually being said.
You can turn this feature off without any problems.
And based on their track record, they will just quietly turn it back on.
Microsoft is so far beyond the benefit of the doubt they couldn't get back to it if they tried.
Are there actually any documented cases of them just enabling userland features after they've been disabled? The only thing I heard of before was registry edits / telemetry changes being undone. Not to say that that's cool of course, but at least it's not like it asks you for your privacy settings during startup and then undoes your choices. As far as I know, maybe I'm just out of the loop.
Generally though, what do you think would actually be Microsoft's motivation to randomly re-enable this particular feature? Do you think that the claim that the data doesn't leave the device is a lie?
Does it get much worse than telemetry settings being quietly enabled? It's spyware at the best of times, much less when they get all sneaky about it. And I've definitely had them change privacy/telemetry options that I set on startup, multiple times.
I don't necessarily think they're stupid enough to come out with the full data harvesting machine on day one. They'll release what they can get away with - in this case, taking screenshots and storing them locally - and they'll boil the metaphorical frog from there. Maybe they offer more powerful AI by running it through their servers, and then they can start "accidentally" opting people into that "service".
I'm not even necessarily saying there's some grand scheme going on here, but nobody can possibly deny they have every incentive to push that boundary until it breaks, and they have consistently shown that they will pursue that incentive without any regard for user privacy whatsoever.
We know this because they have done it so many times before.
I will make it legal.
Darth Stiffneckedppl could detect the clever movie references of others, but could not get other people to recognize his in turn.
Ironic.
Something tells me they'll need to do some fix in the EU version and who knows how Cina will react. We'll see.
The feature as advertised would be completely fine in the EU because none of the data leaves the device.
The feature as advertised would be legal, since they are claiming it'll only be stored and processed locally.
I’ve been thinking about all of these major companies sending data by default and how this can’t be good for government contractors and the like.
I imagine accidentally (or someone who doesn’t know any better purposely) clicking an AI assist option and sending military or aerospace prints or medical records to an outside party. I know Adobe Reader has this built in now. How long before they’re processing classified documents?
There have already been issues with HIPPA violations due to pretty much all software being spyware now.
There's a reason large parts of the government are still running Windows 10/Office 2016, with all the cloud features disabled. This shit is absolutely not secure enough to meet national security standards.
Some are even still running XP if it's airgapped from the internet.
You can disable it.
It shouldn't be enabled-by-default in the first place.
It's not. It's enabled during install.
It won't even be able to run on most current computers. They're planning to sell "ai ready" badged devices that have special graphics chips for AI specifically.
It's not. It asks during setup.
And Microsoft will eventually release an update that resets to the default enabled state.