There’s been a bit of a storm brewing over Windows 10 and user privacy.  In case you are not in the know, please allow me to inform you.  By default, Windows 10 harvests information about almost everything you do and all of the data you have on your computer.  They have decided that users should have to opt-out of data harvesting instead of opting in.  This is a problem.  Specifically, it’s a problem for business users.  Microsoft has had the business world to themselves since the early 90’s.  One must ask why they would do such a thing and risk businesses not adopting Windows 10 because of it.  For a general user the outrage can be understandable, but if you take a look at the recent history of Google and Apple’s mobile platforms, along with all three pushing to eliminate local storage for cloud storage, it will put why Microsoft has gone this route into perspective.

Android and Apple’s iOS have zero privacy.  Third party apps can have access to almost everything on your device.  These devices have been widely adopted in businesses because they are cost effective and easy to manage despite the fact that the flashlight app you just downloaded needs access to your pictures, call logs, and contact list.  Microsoft has an app store that is built into Windows 10 which makes it possible for apps to work no matter if you’re on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or cell phone which is a very cool idea.  However, the permissions granted to apps is the same as Android’s and Apple’s.

When it comes to the desktop experience people have historically had an expectation of privacy.  Local desktop environments were the last strong hold for it.  Unless you decide to go to Linux these things are here to stay.  This is not to say that Windows 10 can not be secured because it can be and it’s not hard to do.  One must realize that Windows 10 isn’t free because Microsoft decided that they wanted to be nice.  The cost is your privacy.  Microsoft is betting that most people either won’t bother to disable all of the data harvesting options, or are not knowledgeable enough to do so.  We can only hope that they adjust their EULA so that if you purchase a retail version or volume license of Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise at full price, you will be automatically opted out of the data harvesting.  At least, it would save your IT team a few minutes of configuration time.

Only time will tell if manually locking down Windows 10 will keep Microsoft from snooping.  I would have more faith that it would, had they not been so sneaky in the way they went about implementing the privacy settings.  As of last week, Microsoft pushed out updates to harvest information on Windows 7 and 8 as well even if updates were disabled.  But hey, it’s just business right?

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