jader3rd shares an article from PC World arguing that Windows 10’s data collection “trades your privacy for Microsoft’s security.”
[Anonymized] usage data lets Microsoft beef up threat protection, says Rob Lefferts, Microsoft’s director of program management for Windows Enterprise and Security. The information collected is used to improve various components in Windows Defender… For example, Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge will put the Edge browser into a lightweight virtual machine to make it harder to break out of the browser and attack the operating system. With telemetry, Microsoft can see when infections get past Application Guard defenses and improve the security controls to reduce recurrences.
Microsoft also pulls signals from other areas of the Windows ecosystem, such as Active Directory, with information from the Windows 10 device to look for patterns that can indicate a problem like ransomware infections and other attacks. To detect those patterns, Microsoft needs access to technical data, such as what processes are consuming system resources, hardware diagnostics, and file-level information like which applications had which files open, Lefferts says. Taken together, the hardware information, application details, and device driver data can be used to identify parts of the operating system are exposed and should be isolated into virtual containers.
The article points out that unlike home users, enterprise users of Windows 10 can select a lower level of data-sharing, but argues that enterprises “need to think twice before turning off Windows telemetry to increase corporate privacy” because Windows Update won’t work without information about whether previous updates succeeded or failed.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.