by johnnyFive

Microsoft should come clean with its user community. The company needs to acknowledge its missteps and offer real, meaningful opt-outs to the users who want them, preferably in a single unified screen. It also needs to be straightforward in separating security updates from operating system upgrades going forward, and not try to bypass user choice and privacy expectations.

The EFF gives a good summary of Microsoft's shady practices and the privacy concerns many of us have regarding Windows 10. I don't think this was intended to be exhaustive. For example, they neglected to mention that Home and Pro users can no longer disable third party "recommendations" from the MS Store (or the MS Store itself) after the anniversary update. It also doesn't get into the widespread technical problems that many people seem to be having.

Regardless, it's nice to see some larger and more respectable groups getting on this. I've been amazed at how the mainstream tech sites (e.g. PCWorld. Ars Technica, and ZDNet) have been so dismissive of many folks' privacy concerns.

For me personally, the aggressive and dishonest ways that MS pushed the Windows 10 upgrade was enough in and of itself not to upgrade, and every story about some other restriction or glitch just makes me happier that I did. My hope is that by the time I'm in a position to build a new gaming PC (probably this time next year), things will be different. But in the meantime, I'm going to do as much as I can to support Linux gaming (which is getting better and better), so that hopefully it'll be a truly viable alternative for gamers by that time. A little competition never hurt, and from a purely personal perspective, I don't want to have to choose between my hobby and my privacy.