Does anyone else think Win10 is a privacy nightmare?
I just installed one of the latest builds (101xx).
During installation, I chose "custom" rather than "express" settings. That's where I started to get a bad feeling...
1) The "customize settings" option is tiny text, but the "Express" settings option is a BIG PROMINENT BUTTON.
2) The default option in just about every case is the worse privacy choice. Had I left them unchanged, the OS would be sending info to Microsoft about my: contacts, browsing habits, location, downloads, applications. It would be allowing apps to view my location, associate me with a default advertising ID, and access just about everything in my profile.
3) By default the Search box on the task-bar / Start Menu searches via Bing for everything I type. So if I type "common", for example, the top result is the local file "Show/Hide Common Icons on the desktop" - but I also get search predictions showing what every schmuck on the web has searched for ("Common Venereal diseases", etc). To turn this behaviour off, I had to ferret deep into the Group Policy editor (which, I'm guessing, won't even be an option on "Home" versions of the OS).
That latter point is the one that concerns me; what if I don't WANT Microsoft/Bing/their advertisers to get copies of all my searches? Hypothetically, what if I work for Acme Corp, and search for a local file called "Acme Corp Bankruptcy Plans July 2015.xlsx", or less dramatically, "Acme Corp takeover of FooBar Corp plans.docx"? MS will have a record of that term. Would anyone else using Bing to search for "Acme Corp" get that as a search prediction?
I'd rather have the Windows 7 behaviour, where the Start menu search box was limited to local files/applications.
Am I being a tinfoil-hatter, or does anyone else think this OS is shaping up to be sinister? Considering all the noise Microsoft have been making about protecting users' privacy, this seems... hypocritical? Their default stance with Windows 10 seems to be to datamine the user.
Apart from that I think it's generally an improvement over Windows 8. Anyone else agree?