Lawsuit DOES NOT mean anything!!!! Even if they lose, their fine winds up being 3-10% of the revenue the generated by violating your rights & privacy, so it's just a business expense for them!!!! And of course the tax cattle don't just STOP using their product & REFUSE to do any business with them!!! ITS so out of control anymore ya better get used to saying: ALL HAIL THE PARTY!!! 2+2=5
@@Christoff070 Ubuntu is Linux! There are like over 50 Linux distro's. I am using EndeavourOS which is based on Arch Linux. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. I switched to Linux just as Microsoft tried to push Windows 10 on me (Every user thereof) by force! I read the EULA, and that was it: I literally nuked Windows 7 and broke the disk and forced myself through Linux boot camp, so I would learn it for not having Windows to fall back on. I tried getting on board in the 90's when Linux first came out and several times in between, but having Windows always gave me a way to give up for sheer convenience and familiarity. Once I made the switch cold turkey I learned it faster than I thought I would, fell in love with Linux, and have been using it ever since. With the KDE Plasma desktop, it makes Windows look like the POS it really is.
This is so true. Look at Edward Snowden, a CIA and NSA whistleblower who exposed the government for mass surveillance on thier citizens. Who do you think is got in trouble? Let me give you a guess, it wasn't the big 3 letter companies
wydm the software is free, you accept the conditions of the terms if you use their software. Simple just use another software :) Linux for example. Its barely illegal, just highly unethical. If you accept these conditions you're simply making a deal with the devil. Your privacy for shitty software (but its free!!!!!! :o :o :o)
@@RFC3514 I always found "My Computer" patronizing, like those silly "Oops!" error messages some places do. I assumed they changed it the verbiage to make things feel a bit more professional.
I think this is why they removed the network activity indicator from the system tray years ago. They don't want people to realise that their machine is constantly phoning home.
they removed the network indicator because it is useless nowadays. it was useful in the past because web apps werent really a thing and most people had metered connections where they were billed by traffic volume. nowadays this indicator would just be on all of the time. any communication/messenger app like slack/discord/signal has several standing websocket connections open at any time, many apps download updates automatically and so on. any time you want to know "is there network traffic right now?" the answer is yes. no need for an icon to tell you that ^^
@@Михаил-о8ш8щ The firewall options for Linux suck. It's basically just UFW, and that's it, unless you buy an Enterprise level program. MacOS had a bunch of Spyware as well, but it's not nearly as bad as Windows. You can use Hands Off or Little Snitch to monitor what is trying to go where.
My desktop is usually booted into Linux, unless I wanna game once or twice a month... Dual-booting into Windows 10 provides me with 5 popups in a row, trying to trick me in getting Windows 11... My work laptop is on Win11, ask the IT person how much I like it, I nagged his head off hoping to get my Linux distro of choice on my work machine!
A year or so ago I noticed that my Windows PC was working extremely high on CPU, even while idle. I decided to take a deeper look, and saw that the telemetry service was abusing my CPU, for no apparent reason. Digging in a little deeper, it turns out that my pihole was blocking all the telemetry requests so Windows was trying to locally store all the telemetry data in an SQL database in order to try and send it back to Microsoft later. Turns out there was a bug in the way they locally stored the data, so the database kept being re-created constantly, causing my CPU to spike.
Which of course uses more power, that you didn't authorize which gives you a bigger utility bill which also you should send Microsoft for their bullshit which does not benefit you in any way, shape, or form. The extreme end of this is that it maxing your CPU is wearing it out and causing you to have to buy a new machine faster.
@@atommachine you still can, its just the internet explorer wont connect to most websites nowadays. there are definitely other web browsers that still work on xp and you can use them perfectly nowadays if you still use xp for some reason.
@@atommachine you absolutely can hell some modern wifi dongles still somehow have xp drivers available (from reputable manufacturers like tp-link too!)
@@atommachine The biggest issues are 1) getting your certificate store updated so you can speak HTTPS; and 2) finding a browser that is still built with support for XP.
Nice work. Back in the day, it was standard practice to check if installed software (nevermind the OS) was "phoning home." People were _outraged_ if violations of privacy/trust were found and said software was promptly publicly shamed and boycotted. Sadly, it didn't take long before the practice became so rampant that it was nearly impossible to track of all the transgressions, leading us to right where we are now.
Unfortunately, the problems started with "automatic updates". Before then, people relied on receiving regular update packages via post, or upgrades through various service packs. It also gave companies more incentive to actually get the software right first time. Automatic updates normalised the idea of software "phoning home".
Those boycotts were possible in an age where most computer users were tech savvy and knew enough about the system to care. Now, widespread adoption has led to an era where everybody has a computer, most of whom don't know anything about the device in front of them. Those tech illiterate consumers comprise the bulk of the market now, and they don't know and don't care enough to ever join a boycott.
I refuse to update to 11 until I am forced to. I only installed 10 when I heard that 11 had been released, because I realized they might stop selling new licenses to 10. But I still use 7 on one of my PCs. Anyway, point is, I always make a point to disable all automatic updates. This was easy on 7. It was a little more tricky on 10 but definitely doable. There's a registry setting that tells the OS that the machine is using an enterprise management configuration. That sort of configuration is used on PCs used by workers in corporate office environments, inside their secure networks, where all software installations typically are performed by IT or desktop support folks and any OS updates or security patches are rolled out across the network on a carefully managed schedule. Anyway, this registry setting prevents automatic updates on Windows 10. Hopefully something similar exists on 11. Beyond that, I also go through all Windows settings and disable anything that involves telemetry, linking to online accounts, "smart assistants", or is used for "improving the product" or "personalized experiences" (which means collecting user activity data for ad targeting purposes). Likewise I disable any services that sound dicey or a waste of resources, like anything involving Xbox.
@@MrEdrftgyuji 100% I still feel that way about software phoning home. I consider my home PC workstations to be like my castles. If a process is using CPU cycles I want to know what it is and why it's running. The idea of the OS on these machines behaving like Android is simply unacceptable. Operating systems should be able to function entirely offline, they should never be trying to serve me ads, and they should never be sending any third parties my personally identifiable information, data about user activity, what's installed on the machine, local network configuration, or the file contents of any attached drive. Any attempt to send anything like that should require explicit approval from the user EVERY. TIME. And rejecting such requests should never cause any failure at the OS level.
@@rdean150 1: you should also refuse to use win10. i know its hard, i am not perfect myself and I'm not using linux nearly enough. 2: use windows debloater from chris titus tech
I always wondered why my old computer struggled with Windows 10 whenever I had an internet connection and it seemed to speed up significantly whenever I unplugged my network cable. Now I know why, it was just sending my soul to Microsoft.
Well, that, and Intel/Microsoft's old network drivers are balls. Plus the hardware back then did a lot less co-processing, offloading all your network traffic to the CPU. Yes, maybe those same drivers functioned alright on XP, maybe even W7+, but the driver layer was changed in Win 10. It now emulates support for old hardware rather than giving direct hardware access. After upgrading to Windows 10, I had a Win 7 Virtual CD driver insert a 700mb CD as a ginormous 7gb protected file in System Volume Information. /facepalm
@@Mavendow is this why one of our work computers is soooooo terribly slow after updating to W10 we just stopped using it...? The other computer that is running basically the same hardware but in Win7 (except I upgraded with a sata SSD) works just fine. It cant be that SSD made it go from snails pace to normal because that other machine takes like 5 seconds to respond from start bar menu commands, and 30 seconds to open chrome.. and there's almost nothing installed on it besides necessary work apps. Has the performance really tanked so hard because of the change In the driver layer? Will the same happen on the other machine that Is begging us to upgrade? All I remember is that they're dual core CPUs
@@neocodexx Nope. I tried to explain but YT keeps deleting my comment. So, short version: The GUI's memory is managed differently, which forces an old PC to use the pagefile. The pagefile thus pegs the HDD. If you run a dual SSD/HDD config, the same thing (occasionally) happens because the default config is to have the pagefile on every drive. Solution is basically to add a SSD and move the pagefile to that drive. Or install Linux which doesn't have a dumb memory manager. I do use Windows, however, IMHO Linux should be seriously considered since Windows is circling the drain.
I literally just updated my windows, and it breaks my machine, the reason why I did the update in the first place, was because my machine wasn't running super well, and that typically means that the timer has run out from the last update and it's forcing you to get the update whether you want or not. Because of course planned obsolescence through updates that destroy your machine over time.
It's very easy to know whether or not there's some foul play afoot: Microsoft: We collect telemetry data. It's just for diagnostic purposes. Consumer: I am not comfortable with that. Can I turn it off? Microsoft: Yes, click here. Consumer: It didn't turn it off. Microsoft: Shut up.
An Old Consumer : ever used DoNotSpy on windows so you can turn that shit off, and it is off its been out there for a long time you must be new to the internet
You technically can firewall all of them, but I don't even need it lol. I'm from Russia, 90% of this sht isn't even working there after Feb 24nd, 2022.
Just a small piece of advice: by capturing within the booted OS, you will loose traffic that has already been finished. To do this properly you would want to mirror a switch port and use wireshark on a separate system to actually capture everything on that switch port. But still a good way to bring the point across. Would love to see this for Windows XP -> Windows 11 and Linux / Mac OS. In a complete comparrision, to objectively see how other products fare.
You'd need to compare a large number of Linux distributions. Unlike Mac OS and Windows, there isn't a standar Linux install to examine. You'd need to compare multiple different base distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, etc. and multiple instances of each with different desktop environments installed.
@@sumuduranathunga yes that is possible but not what is intended. The idea is, that the normal standard user shoudn´t need to even have to do anything to protect their own personal space / data
I miss XP and 7 which are my two favorite iterations of Windows which both felt more like a desktop OS and came without all the bloat that started showing up on Windows 8 and so forth. It feels like every operating system has gone down this route as of late and I'm tempted to just use linux once Windows 10 dies off.
For me I think when windows 10 dies I'm switching over to Linux. I've used it in the past & have it installed on many of my secondary computers. I used tools like O&O Shutup 10, DestoryWindows10 Spying, etc. Hopefully this helps remove some of the stuff windows does but generally I find myself hating Microsoft these days after how they've been ruining Minecraft. I will never give Microsoft a cent in the future, I will always have ad block on, I use my free OneDrive account with Crypomater so they can't spy on my data, etc. I am not gonna do my best to ensure they don't make money off me until they change their ways.
@@ran_red Ouch, I only last for two months. I still haven't had time to start organizing my mess yet. Hope this time I can relly REALLY build my own NAS now.
Another misconception is when they used the term 'trusted' it does not mean they trust YOU. It means they trust your computer to act on their behalf, regardless of what you may want to do as the end user.
I rooted my android 10 and its now "orange state, your device can't be trusted". Oh, I trust it. It doesn't even have google services anymore, airplane mode really works and cuts off all wireless transmissions. I own this phone. However, I can't use google play store or official apps. Thats the trade off with big tech. You can run Linux and not get to use the best and latest software, or you can use windows and submit to authority.
Tbf there is some better reasoning here; 20 years ago you had tons of viruses going around because peoples PCs were unsafe, and they would easily spread malware over the network. So the question of if you can trust other PCs is actually more relevant than you might think, because of networks and internet. These days security is way better, thats why we dont really got malware/virus waves like back in the day. Doesnt mean Microsoft is pretty bad with a lot of stuff. In my family, the only time Ive seen corrupted profiles was with faulty MS updates.
Not sure if it would apply to Wireshark, but iirc Apple have specifically engineered their network stack to allow their own apps to bypass any installed VPN or firewall software. Chances are if they're doing something similar to Windows in this video, it would just be better hidden from the user - Microsoft really just doesn't care if we know at this point.
@@Noksus Yeah, obviously Mac being designed to let 1st party apps bypass on-device VPNs and firewalls won't let it bypass VPNs and firewalls installed on external hardware. But the vast, vast majority of users don't have separate hardware running their VPNs and firewalls, they install software on their computer to do the job if they even manually install one at all rather than relying on what's provided pre-installed on the device they bought. Particularly with portable devices like phones, tablets, and laptops, their purpose is to be taken with you to use wherever you are: school, coffee shops, a friend's house, or just about wherever you find yourself out of the house or office with a mobile data connection. I personally have dedicated hardware on my home network filtering all traffic, but people like us are the rare exceptions not the rule.
And in case you guys wonder, from what I know, there's telemetry data sent whenever you open an application on osx. :| In fact, there has been cases where apps open slow because Apple has had server issues, where the fix is to disconnect from internet, because somehow if you're online it's required to contact Apple whenever you open an application. I absolutely hate all of this bs.
I think Microsoft in general has some third party platforms that they work with. But I think they should be upfront with everyone to tell us the platforms they are affiliated with or to and their purpose also. We need to know the data that is been collected.
Read the EULA! But yeah, it's called loading MSN on the taskbar... when you boot a new XP and load internet explorer to download chrome for the first time... same thing
Yeah, they call information that can be accessed by anyone with the right technical knowledge "publicly available"... Same as how they say Elon Musk's private jet FAA number is publicly available. I tired to find it myself and it would have required a 10 hour deep dive into how to do it.
@@LANPOCALYPSE It's only "publicly available" when it's convenient (to them). Remember that hitting F12 in a browser and finding embarrassing contents you could be accused of corporate espionage. Another fun and closely-related topic is those cookie alerts that (in the EU) are required to have a "reject all" button as accessible by number of clicks as the "accept all" button, but of course it's almost always a much smaller button the same colour as the background, or an x in the corner, if you can find it at all.
dude, the amount of ad-tracking is nuts. I run my network through pi-hole and it's got nearly 40,000 blocked queries since I reset the router a week ago. absolutely insane.
That equates to four a minute. But I’m guessing you’re also surfing the internet through that gateway too, so while it sounds like a lot compared to the amount of traffic that’s going through, it’s probably a minute percentage.
@@youtubasoarus lol it died months ago. IDK why, most likely a Mikrotik bug. Oh well, was annoying having the manually restart the container every time the router cycled.
It's worth clarifying if this was a brand new off the shelf pc vs just a clean install of Windows because OEMs will also include their own bloat when they sell their units.
Gigabyte boards come with "McAfee service", right in the Bios level so there isn't a way for you to disable/opt out of that in the OS level, which also might be why in this video there was a ping to one of there websites. Or really, even if it's not the cause there still is nothing to be surprised of
Yeah, I was going to say… While Windows 10/11 is definitely doing stuff in the background, this comparison isn’t exactly fair. Off the shelf computers come with all kinds of extra junk installed - even in the XP days, there was extra software. I can imagine it would be hard to get a new old-stock XP PC to test with these days, but it would be trivial to do a bare installation of Windows 10/11 to at least make this test fair (even though the outcome would likely be the same)
I love when people take the time to SHOW how awful companies are getting about just prying open the doors to our information without even telling us or people knowing about it. So happy I've been migrating everything I can over to Linux.
I did distro-hopping since ~2010 to ~2015, and since ~2015 I am trying to fully migrate myself to Linux. It's still a half-baked OS. For the common people that just browses the web and some other things like that, it may be a good OS. But deeply, for people that mess with the internal of operating systems... is not. For example: No proper disassembler/debugger; I'm hard-working to pimp out Evans debugger (edb, the most decent debugger with GUI in Linux [tried each one in existence]; still that thing couldn't even select multiple lines of disassembly, a basic and necessary feature that I had to add, for example) for myself but every time I remember everything It's already done and working on Windows 7 (x64dbg) I have a hard time doing it. Browsers in Linux constantly crashes and have diverse video problems; they all require you to do things, mess with flag combinations and command line parameters to work properly... just to find you just broke another thing. So, you worked hard and made internal, binary modifications to a Linux software? Prepare yourself to lose it in 3 days in the next update. Is that, or you condemn yourself to skip updates for that software. Also, there is no proper equivalent to Windows' Process Hacker. The closest one is "qps", is a good piece of software but is still years behind... I'm also working on it, adding the features I need. Htop and other similar things running on the terminal are just not enough for me. And the Wayland thing... it just slowing all Linux development, requiring most software to start from scratch, now to work to adapt all the apps to that new, unnecessary protocol/display server. It will take years, again, for the Linux software to reach a stable status. That duality X11/Wayland, GTK/Qt, and what other calls "flavors" (distros) are just Linux weaknesses, internal divisions. And about Windows... after almost 2 years of trying to replace Windows 7 with Windows 10, I returned to Win7 and promised myself never to return to that slow, involved version of Windows, no to say "Windows 11". They moved all the spying to kernelmode and raised what they call "security" _(Patchguard, the thing they added so you cannot gain deep control of your own kernel, of your own system )_ so is now even harder to patch.
@@Braxton1981 "Browsers in Linux constantly crashes and have diverse video problems" i've never got a browser to constantly crash, it could be because you are using a NVIDIA GPU "And the Wayland crap... it just slowing all Linux development, requiring most software to start from scratch, now to work on a new, unnecessary protocol/display server" Wayland were created because X is insecure and also a mess. With that I think you hate innovation in cost of being compatible with other applications like how Windows does. So the distro you're looking for is Debian Stable lol.
Yeah, that's where we are at the moment. All these people collectively telling Microsoft "There is *absolutely nothing* you can do that will me stop using your product" so then, yeah, they will do whatever they want to you and your data. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything in order to switch to Linux, they won't sacrifice their time in order to learn how to use it or sacrifice some of their productivity while they migrate to different applications, etc. This is insane, people will read guides and watch videos on how to edit the registry on Windows, install stuff to block telemetry, use debloating scripts, etc. but they won't apply the same effort to learn Linux, it's mind boggling
@@ran_red This, i went to Linux in the first place because i thought Linux could be faster than Windows on an old Phenom machine, the interface were nice after all but only OpenGL games worked better (because Vulkan wasn't support on the GPU i was using), like Minecraft, and then later i switched my laptop to Linux because Windows loved to install back the OEM drivers that weren't better at all.
I know that it may seem "simple" or even silly to do, but it might be helpful to have a follow-up to this to show users "how you can make your Windows 11 traffic look more like XP" -- and highlighting exactly what User Experience "losses" or changes that it causes.
I don't know if it's correct or not, but a while back I saw a video that said that the Windows 11 EULA basically says that any file you put on your computer with Windows 11 is Microsofts property to do as they please with. They can basically also lock you out of your computer if they feel that that's what they would like to do and you can't do anything about it, because you accepted their EULA. Windows has become a gigantic pile of bloatware the last couple of versions and it's spying on you way more than you can imagine. On the other hand I guess Apple is no better than Microsoft.
@@longdashes what's up with these linux lobbers on every comment? this is very well possible and I do it with every Windows computer I own. As others suggested, there are tools as Spybot Anti-Beacon, Pihole etc.
@@freezEware Because also your weird 3rd party scripts, won't disable tracking entirely. Especially since Windows has a history of changing these settings back to "default", after updates. The reality is, with Windows you cannot deactivate tracking entirely and Windows also violates the GPDR, which has been a topic for quite some time already in EU. At this point, Linux literally seems to be the only solution, sadly it won't fit everyone's needs.
@@longdashes this is why paid, subscription based immunizers are updated all the time, and you dont need to worry about re immunizing your pc manually. take a look And yes, you can disable tracking 100% if you are tech savvy. I would imagine every avg linux user can do that
Remember when they decided to rename "My Computer" to "This PC", it was more than just a symbolic gesture. This is one of the reasons why I'm on Mint and not Windows.
If Mint was good at power user tasks or gaming I'd be there. It's great at just about everything else straight out of the box, I even use it as a server OS just for the convenience factor, it's the only Linux branch I recommend just because it's as user-friendly as Windows XP was. I'm still stuck with Windows 10 personally, thankfully via ReviOS so most of this telemetry is gutted. Why? Because most of the information on virtualization for Mint is woefully out of date and has led to some boot-bricks, and the few games I play either don't run at all (Cyberpunk, Private Server MMOs, some oddball JP stuff), or aren't modable on Mint (Skyrim, FONV, FO4, etc) with Proton (as of last check on September 2022), and NEITHER of the 2 Linux-compatIble games I play run right either. Insurgency doesn't like how Mint handles graphics handovers so out of the box it complains about not getting exclusive controll of the Nvidia GPU and crashes on startup, or after a random time interval it'll crash without a message anyway with either of the 2 fixes I've seen recommended for the crash on start. Starbound after a random period of time will have a black triangle cover a section of the screen until restarted, this'll even happen on the title screen and persist into gameplay.
@@KiraSlith Any linux distro will be significantly better for actual power users than Windows. Windows is anti-power user. I could even make the argument that MacOS is better for power users than Windows As for gaming, Proton has gotten 90% of the way there, but eventually the blame for platform lock has to be on the developers of the game and not the OS. Same applies to Nvidia, as they haven't open sourced their drivers like everyone else, linux engineers can only go so far.
@@KiraSlith Yeah, I'm not saying Mint or linux in general is the best option for everyone, but for my specific use case it does a great job. Lots of people are unfortunately stuck on Windows for one reason or another, I myself still have to use Windows at work.
Man I remember back in the day on dialup there would be the little network activity icon on the taskbar of two computers, one would blink for uploading, one for downloading and you could kind of tell if you had spyware or something on your computer because they'd be blinking away showing activity even if you weren't actively browsing. When your system was clean and you weren't doing anything they'd stay quiet also.
makes some sense but I think with modern day systems, and what little I know about programming, the cpu has to even keep thinking things like don't fall asleep until(whenever). just like a human. All kinds of functions are happening without obvious signs of any ones control.
@@zerronoah3851 To be fair they had a lot of that back in XP days too. I suspect Microsoft just decided no one cared about that feedback and removed it for a cleaner look.
It would be interesting to see if changing the thousands of options that you can tweak in windows to improve privacy actually change anything. An analysis like this of MacOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, FreeBSD or the SteamOS would also be nice.
@@paulbarclay4114 Yeah I guess that makes sense. But some options are strict enough to kill Cortana, for example. Some spyware will remain, for sure, but do you think that those options change absolutely nothing?
@@paulbarclay4114 Not sure about Windows 11, but you can definitely prevent updates in Windows 10. My computer is still running the version of Windows 10 that came installed on it, all that needed to be done, and I imagine it's the same in Windows 11, is to disable the Windows Update recovery and Windows Update services. Ta'da now Windows can't update and it can't turn update back on because the repair tool is turned off. (From a quick google this for sure works with Windows 11 as well.) Yes that takes messing with the services on your computer, but given how user friendly the UI is it's fairly hard to screw it up.
@@Mojo_DK My guess would be that as long as you make sure the services for these things are disabled and not set to turn back on the moment the computer is restarted you should be able to get rid of most of the spyware. Failing that with some know how you can make a custom iso for installing Windows 11 that basically removes all the bloatware and spyware, or just use Ghost Spectre's custom install though as that is fully 3rd party there could be stuff hidden in the iso that we wouldn't know about so use Ghost Spectre at your own risk.
You can still block similar services on Win 11 as well but everything is moving in that direction. They may me more difficult to keep from getting turned back on but there's always a solution until Microsoft goes full 1984 on us which is going to happen sooner than later. I suspect at least the Home versions will eventually always be free and behave like stock Android on phones that can't get rooted.
@@paulbarclay4114 You could block the ip's/url's in windows 10. There is software like anti-beacon that does this in one swoop. I assume its not available as an option in window 11?
Windows is now “free-to-play” where you are the product. Then they push their “battle pass” at you with Microsoft 365. Would be interesting to see what a fresh Ubuntu and MacOS setup does in comparison.
The pushing of 365 is especially annoyingly if you already purchased Office. Why the hell would I pay a subscription for a product essentially identical to a product *I already purchased from you*?!
Would be interesting to see a comparison between Win11 out of the box (maybe after a reboot or two) and Win11 after being neutered by utilities that promise to disable most of the useless services (like O&O ShutUp10+)
@@Vercusgames this is completely false. Both systems perform within margin of error (with updated windows 11, not release win 11 with ryzen and intel cpu bugs) as evidence by literally every benchmark on youtube ever.
@Vercusgames With Linus I assume you mean Linus Tech Tips? In that case, they're often wrong and mainly just an entertainment channel having fun with IT. There are much better channels out there if you want correct and useful advise. I've been running Windows 10 and Windows 11, both from the very first technical preview. I've been running them on multiple machines, yet still a very low sample size. It's very hard to say, this OS suffers from bla, bla, and this OS is the best out there... LTT even showed how bad they are at using Linux. Making stupid mistakes again and again, blaming the OS and not their own stupidity. Linux requires that you have some technical knowledge or at least are willing to learn... Well, unless all you do is open the browser, then most distros would be fine. I was personally very surprised with Windows 10, even during it's initial technical previews. After release I've been on and off the technical preview branch on my main PC, but I always kept at least one machine in preview. Now all my machines are running Windows 11, and the only issues I've know with preview builds have been audio issues. My main PC is still running the release branch to be as stable as it can be, and I see no lag spikes, performance is great, and if you ignore the graphical changes and the new thread scheduler, it feels just like Windows 10. But this is all just my luck... All my machines run Intel CPUs, say what you want about that, but in this case, it's to my benefit. Windows 11 came with a new thread scheduler that supported Intel's new big-little (big-bigger if you ask Intel) design. Many advancements are happening in the hardware industry, we're no longer just seeing higher clocks and more cores. This all puts a lot of strain on the operating systems thread scheduler/director, meaning it's hit or miss when you buy new hardware. Just because someone is running Windows 11 without issues doesn't mean that the case is the same for you. And it also goes the other way...
Id be interested in seeing one of these tests done on Windows 10 After running Windows10 debloater, there is an option that apparently disables telemetry, it would be interesting to see if it actually does
retired IT guy here. i've been out of the loop for a few decades. it's gotten to the point that i can't keep up with all the crap that's being thrown at me (us) by systems today. it never ceases to amaze me the amount of BS we are now forced to endure just to do simple tasks that were so much easier in the past. (back when a computer that i bought was actually mine and i was allowed to control it.)
You've just described the state of modern day living. Something that once worked well, was balanced, was easy to understand and did what it said on the tin has now been resigned to a shadow of its former self. IMO the Internet started it all, leading the 'modern world' into a civilization of people who sit in their houses and interact, communicate and consume through an RJ45 cable.
in my opinion its just part of the package to water down or simply extinguish the "i own this this thing or a copy of this software" a few months ago i did a bit of work on an old laptop first for fun then just to see how far i can push it. if you are working in an office environment and old machine from 20 years ago is still perfectly usable and fit for purpose, do the things email the thing -> profit. The issue in this case is the "cloud" (aka someone else's computer), that can eat tons of resources on an older system for the simple reason that most of the stuff can be run in a browser window. another issue is the copious amount of java script that every website uses to make the experience smoother and friendlier, no issue there until you run out of resources.
personally i am glad the days of 110bps or 75/1200bps dialup are long gone. but it's just gotten ludicrous with (what seems like) all software moving to what they are calling a "subscription model" but i just call my monthly mugging. 😐
Maybe compare Windows 10 LTSC. The truly strip down version of Windows and see what it is doing. I feel that Windows is pretty loud on ethernet when running, and if you try to block those connections using a firewall it breaks functionality in Windows. I wish they were more transparent on what each connection is really sharing. But there isn’t really another platform that has the software support that Windows has. So we are kind of stuck at the moment.
It's a chicken or the egg scenario. Linux is usable, and alternatives exist. If we invest time and money into privacy-respecting platforms, they'll flourish. Been using it for years.
When I type a localIP (192.168...) it automatically goes to the internet and then tells me " not found". I have to use InternetExplorer to be successful.
The ways in which it tries to reset you to using Edge ... and / or Bing search ... got to admire their sheer diligence on this. It's a huge game of Whack-a-mole to kick it back under the carpet for a bit
I wish XP was still supported. I loved that operating system. So easy to use, compared to Windows 10, and it seemed stronger. I also miss the Windows Movie Maker from that time/system.
Windows XP doesn't yet have the newer desktop compositor, the new way of handling audio, UAC, and the driver situation was horrible. Makes win7 much more viable choice.
I used comodo firewall on a windows 11 computer and I couldn't understand why so many windows stuff were being blocked by it. At first I thought they were all false positive (and of course some were) but later I understood that was windows doing as always fishy stuff.
Imagine paying $150 to Microsoft to get your Windows activated, but you still see those suspicious system stuff all over again I miss the time where Windows actually give its users a true premium experience. No ads, no bloatware, and no suspicious system activities
@@kanjakan I did MSCA and E on windows 7 and absolutely wish it was still current. I still run a Server 2003 install that is isolated from the net for a file server.
@@JBSbass Server 2003 is based on the XP codebase, why are you running an outdated, ineficcient and filled with RCE exploits SMB 1.0 file server? Unless you have some specific needs, a Linux Samba server will acomplish the same without all the security nightmares
you should let this run for 24 hours... you'd be surprised how much more stuff is going on in windows 10 / 11. the scheduled tasks are full of regular phoning home.
@@mrbubetube It should be a crime for ANY thing of a computer to not be "Opt-In" WITH an "Opt-Out" option. These companies shouldn't be allowed to steal data from us when we PAY FOR a product.
@@FelixUmbra you opt in as soon as you accept the terms of use agreement when you install Windows. If you don't agree to it, you don't have to install it.
I think a very instructive anecdote is that I worry more about windows update bricking my machine than I do about malware. These days I think the impunity that "white hat" actors display in taking control of a pc that you are meant to own, is really no longer different to that of the hackers we are told to worry about. As the days go on I get more and more serious in assessing the alternatives to windows
@@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070 The only reason I use Windows is video game compatibility. Every other program I need is available for linux. Steam OS 3.0 is a linux distro specifically built for compatibility of existing games, but which will also enjoy widespread future support as it is the OS of the Steamdeck. I.e. developers will ensure compatibility with the steamdeck for future releases, which means compatibility with Steam OS 3.0. I'll be switching because it will be the point that I will no longer need Windows for the vidya-and that's the only reason I need Windows anymore, period.
It also depends on manufacturers. I would have love to see a scrubbed system without all the mfnr installs (lke McAfee and so on). I tried it on an enterprise dell laptop, and I get a lot less. Even be tter, Win11 on dell pro/enterprise will not require a MS account. The default install is local user admin, which is not even easy to do on a fresh win1 iso
I love how it is now impossible to uninstall the Edge browser. It's so cool how it will eat up my memory and when I go to close the task it automatically disappears from the task manager, then it restarts after I close the task manager. These Microsoft products keep getting better and better!
Modern windows is definitely spyware... But I think it would be fair to segregate what comes from Microsoft and what comes from the manufacturer, as you mentioned it was a brand new Laptop and the OEM image is heavily bloated.
exactly! the McAfee thing for example was most likely manufacturer bloat than Microsoft spyware, I would like to see the result tested again on a fresh install from an official iso
I remember all the way back, lots of people were talking about how when you make a new installation of Windows XP, the first thing you really have to do is to run the XP-Anti-Spy tool.
As some people already mentioned, would be cool to check other Windows versions, from Vista till 8.1. Also, if possible, interesting to see same thing on MacOS and different Linux distributions! Thanks for the video!
Install ntlite and make your own “clean” iso in comments earlier I wrote what I was able to remove and what not (almost everything exept edge and internet explorer)
Always been a fan of network analysis on Wireshark. It just points out everything that comes n goes through the network. Reminds me of the good old days as a teenager. I am looking forward to seeing the same analysis on macOS machines.
What were you doing in the good old days with Wireshark :D ? I got myself a small linux laptop and had lots of fun with messing packets up in my local network. Never stepped more than pranks on family though
@@____.__._.._ I was into cybersecurity and networking mostly. I remember using Backtrack Linux (Kali Linux now) to access all these network security tools. I had a wifi router with the WPS encryption key, and I used Wireshark and other tools for packet sniffing. I remember that I found out brute forcing was a much better approach :D
@@Behianoa yeah and then all of a sudden people started using those wpa psk. at least we managed to do sth before it become obsolete. now to get into some wifi I prefer social techniques tbh
This is a fantastic video, it's wild how much gets sent just by the laptop being on and existing. I'd love to see comparisons between windows 11 traffic for machines that opted out of telemetry vs. the default configuration (which of course is telemetry being on). I'd be willing to bet there is still sketchy activity on machines that have opted out.
it's kind of weird that they're using XP 64bit though because that was kind of a flop and if i remmber correctly, the last version of 64bit XP was released before XP 32bit SP3
Problem is his deep analysis wasn't done properly. Most of the websites where he was going off about where from software that wasn't from a clean install, but programs like McAfee etc. who are added to laptops by manufacturers. We also don't know what settings he used during install etc.
It would be nice to see a comparison between completely clean installs from an ISO of the same build level (Home, Pro, Enterprise) and not a preconfigured laptop with bloatware on it. Not that Win 11 isn't spyware, but an apples to apples comparison.
Windows has been spyware since windows 8. They really ramped it up for win10. No doubt windows 11 is worse. I know a lot of technicians who still use win7 despite ongoing loss of support.
windows 11 is pretty much windows with integrated bloatware. so at the worst case it will just be bloatware on top of more bloatware, but since they made a deal with most bloatware provider, they got it shipped with the OS itself.
@FredyR.S. It would be to test Windows itself, though. It doesn't matter if that's not how most users are installing it. If you want an accurate comparison between Windows versions, then comparing the ISOs is the way to go.
I’d love a video comparing a regular install with opting out of telemetry, using a strict firewall like SimpleWall, using a DNS sinkhole like PiHole and an app like O&O ShutUp 10++
@@CelesteOnRUclips This is beyond preaching. I don't even like Linux, can't stand the command line BS, but it's still infinitely better than what windows have become. So I transitioned 12 of our family's machines to various flavors of Linux. No reason for the different ones, was more like I had no clue what to go with. All seem to work satisfactory. An immediate positive is way less ads all over the place.
@@CelesteOnRUclips Most people don't know enough about Linux to know if they want to use it or not. My wife was the same way, didn't want Linux at all. Then she started noticing Microsoft's and Google's BS a few years ago and asked if she could try Linux Mint (keep in mind she knows nothing about computers, much less Linux). She has never gone back to Windows, uses Mint on a daily basis with zero issues. "Most people don't want Linux", most people don't even know what Linux is
@@xhec Well to be frank I was about to ditch Windows 10 because it was real crap and switch to Linux, but Windows 11 arrived, and the interface is dope. Cannot say what happened to Microsoft for them to put tiles in the start menu.
I remember 20+ years on Windows Me we'd install something that showed a popup every time the computer was making a request to a new IP and we could allow/deny - effectively needing to whitelist every IP your PC could talk to manually. Cant imagine that even being possible now.
Thank you for doing this! Just found this channel and loving it already. I would love to see you continue this to a mini-series and do this with Mac and on a Linux distro (or several) as well. Also, it's probably not your turf, but many are probably thinking about moving away to some more safe and secure OS and might be interested to learn about all kinds of hurdles you might encounter on the way (have to say goodbye for some Win only software etc.)
I really like the sarcasm Tpsc makes about privacy in this informative content. It's because of these independent av testing labs that we are able to get the real and unbiased information about cyber security and concerning products. Thank you and please keep up the good work.
You can. There's a diagnose data viewer app that you can install. It shows you the data that is being send and also the time it was being sent. However it takes 1GiB of disk space don't expect to understand it if you're not a programmer or someone who knows Windows to a deep level.
A bunch of marketing research companies compile information that they can use to sell more stuff to people, that's pretty much it. Like Google Trends, but a lot more invasive.@@Tokuto-kun
We absolutely do not need this kind of analysis. It's absolute rubbish. He's taken a laptop that's come installed with all the bloatware laptop vendors put on and attributed that to Windows 11 when it has nothing to do with Windows 11. If you did a clean bare install of Windows 11 McAfee wouldn't be listed in the connections for a start.
I started out as a loyal Microsoft user in the days of MS-DOS, but my migration to Linux and FOSS started in 2009 and my recent experiences with Windows 11 have convinced me that Microsoft has lost me as a customer forever. This video was the last nail in the coffin.
4:27 since the kernel for XP was released some time ago, I wonder if the community could create a fork that would modernize it, without all the spyware of today.
@@rubisetcie I really think that specific "project", it's roots (the ones leading it) was financed and organized by the same entities from Microsoft, to prevent a real clone from emerging anywhere. Just look at ReactOS: never advanced. fossil OS, never functional, eternal alpha; all it's important kernel API's lacks function bodies, just filled up with a "NOT_IMPLEMENTED" declaration or some other useless stuff like that. I think they do that same thing (creating and controlling their own "enemy", creating their own dissidence) about everything important.
Part of me wishes you also compared that to Ubuntu, Arch Linux (a variant of it should be easier to install than vanilla) and Mac OS. I'm sure Linux would check updates first, but I wonder if Ubuntu's Amazon sponsorship is causing excessive data exchanges too.
IIRC ubuntu's amazon thing stopped years ago now. The community outrage over it (rightfully) got them to back off. I don't blame them for trying to be profitable, but there are ways to be profitable as a consumer-facing linux company without telemetry, spyware, or bloatware. They came out WAAAAY to hard with ubuntu touch, especially for trying to crowd fund it instead of taking the up-front investment themselves.
For those people who want to switch away from Windows to Linux but feel it can be a bit daunting. Linux Mint, Kubuntu and Debian are 3 flavours who are very Windows like in the UI. Yes it you may need to Google a little bit when using the system because the regular programs may have unique names. But it can run very stable, very well for yours without ever touching a Command Line Interface. If you ask questions on the internet regarding Linux, I found that many are willing to help if you ask nicely. But if you demand things, you are going to get very quickly told to fuck off. Happy Linuxing.
I WOULD recommend buying an applicable Linux distro book and guides and working through them. It is well worth it. I WOULD NOT recommend "googling" - unless you are already very familiar. You'll end up going round and round in circles across multiple sites, as most posters from all the various countries just; - contradict each other - or just make stuff up - or give irrelevant, cryptic answers that presume you already knew how to do something and had done it a millions times, already.
@@somo4227 I switched to Nobara os a year back and it's been very smooth sailing so far, so I dunno what you're on about. Every game I've wanted to play runs just fine, and the pc in general feels much smoother to use since it's not bloated like windows.
One question I have is whether or not this laptop was actually CLEANLY loaded with a bare copy of Windows 11, or if it was a brand new store bought laptop that came with Windows 11 pre-installed. Based on the commentary I suspect it is the latter, which would totally bias the test, as store bought OEM laptops from Dell, HP, et al typically come with a bunch of preloaded "bloatware" from various sources -- like McAfee, VPN trials, privacy software trials, game trials, etc. Basically, a lot of the requests that are being sent out to third parties may have nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to to with the OEM who built the laptop. So, was this laptop reloaded with a totally clean copy of Windows 11 downloaded directly from Microsoft and NOT the manufacturers recovery disk?
The fact that McAfee is there tells you this was not a clean install. As far as I know, Microsoft does not pre-install McAfee. Windows already includes built in anti-virus.
Bloatware explains all the non-Microsoft related DNS queries, it doesn't explain MSN, Bing, or Microsoft Store. I'd be willing to bet that even under a clean install of Windows 11 from Microsoft's website would still result in more unnecessary DNS queries than XP. Namely to any of the Microsoft services, some of which probably aren't technology/update related but advertiser related. It doesn't change much, though it'd have been interesting to see a OEM XP build, just to get a full picture of all the data collection that was happening back then too.
I would like to see a test of Windows 11 Telemetry enabled vs. Telemetry disabled using O&O or similar tools. But also, I would like to see an accompanying detailed Task Manager list, because you had reference to DNS results which were not discovered through my own brief testing. Makes it difficult to ascertain what kind of Windows 11 environment/version you were using for the purpose of this video.
MSFT tried to bake telemetry into their Visual C++ compiler. So, every C++ program ever written with Visual Studio would phone home. Obviously, developers got angry. I'll bet you anything it's still phoning home even after O&O since they've likewise built these modules into the OS itself. Even if you remove the spyware, remember that the EULA gives them the right to update your OS without your explicit consent, which means they can (and have) re-enabled telemetry that was blocked or removed. They can entirely legally install backdoors, too.
@@Mavendow We have a good reason to be paranoid, but the integrated telemetry of Windows 10/11 has actually been very well documented by this point. I'm not too worried about the EULA because we can forcibly disable Windows Updates both with group policy, and by blocking the relevant addresses. No matter what MS encourages, the community loves to band together and make things tolerable for the more private and security conscious. When Windows 10 initially launched, MS used to re-enable telemetry aggressively with smaller updates in the past, but I have noticed recently that this bad practice has been stifled, though I doubt it will stay that way. Post-update I have a habit of re-running O&O along with a few custom PowerShell scripts + StevenBlack's host file, and I haven't detected anything too concerning for the past year. BTW check out Rectify 11. It's a very cool project that physically removes the telemetry from Windows 11 and also attempts to revamp UX theming so that it is more akin to the days of Windows XP.
It would be great if a list of those domains was published so people could block them. Even better would be a guide showing the average user how to do that. Microsoft has made Windows so hostile to the user, I may finally switch to another OS after decades.
Actually there is a list of these sites, in a standard adblock format, that if you have either AdGuard or Pihole availible on your network, you can easily block these sites.
@@aycc-nbh7289 Anything Linux is more secure than M$ products. Linux does not spy on their users. I used to really like windows since 3.0 but every update brings more bloat / spyware and less config abilities.
@@Revenant483 > "anything LooNix^tm is le secure1!!" > probably doesn't know that a linux machine can be comprimised remotely using port 50060 because the kernel keeps opening that port for some reason since 4.10.52 that linus won't fix > every two(2) months, there's a new NSA backdoor found in the source tree (most of which is contributed by companies) > no firewall except some firewall made in python that likes to crash
Linux use to be good. And at this moment it's still ok. But every linux distribution recently switched to using SystemD instead of init. And then owner of SystemD accepted job position at Microsoft. So now Microsoft kind of owns part of Linux. Important part that controll everything else in Linux.
@@peterSobieraj Microsoft today isn’t the Ford Motor Company of yesteryear, so what makes them think they can dictate what their employees do in their spare time?
Yes it has. It's one of the reasons I switched over to Linux predominantly. I still have a windows install for software and hardware I still need to run, but generally use one Linux distro or another in day to day tasks.
More reason to deploy pihole or another open source DNS filter to block all this crap on your network. There's also custom adlists on Github with all the Windows telemetry domains if you want to block those manually.
Or you could just install Linux. I know it's beyond beating a dead horse... but it works. My entire Steam library works, and if there is something I need in Windows that's what VM's are for.
Ubuntu isn’t really a fair point of comparison when it comes to Linux and telemetry given not only their Amazon collaboration from back in the day, but also possible tracking from the Snap store (who they force packages from into you) and general usage statistics that while minimal, you have to manually opt out of. I’d say Fedora is a better contender, given that it is closest to upstream and hasn’t really had incidents similar to Ubuntu’s despite also being developed by a company.
"Ubuntu obviously would be accurate of the rest of distros" ROTFLMAO Ever hear of Snap? My (Ubuntu-based) distro has it disabled, Ubuntu has it enabled. Care to guess which distro doesn't force a bunch of unnecessary packages on you?
Oh yeah, it is definitely progress. I love how we live in a time where advertisers can stealthily collect data about every single thing we do, then use it to shove ads in our faces.
Thanks for this cool video! I'd like to see a similar video comparing the applications ("Programs and Features") and running services. And also to know what those odd-named things are doing, and what you can safely remove/kill.
I would love to see a similar comparison but between windows and linux. I believe we know the results, but I think seeing it first hand in a video would be more eye opening than just assumptions.
They've been taking ten steps back with every OS since XP. Not only you have all that bloat, they constantly remove useful features, tools and options in updates or next windows versions - usually because said tools can be used to disable their crap. This. This is exactly the reason why I want to smack the crap out of smoothbrains who try and tell me that "durr you should upgrade, why are you still running windows 7?"
I wish there was an alternative to windows I could just install and all my games and programs and hardware just worked. Now when I inevitably update my PC I'll have to find a way to block all of this nonsense. Thank you for bringing this to light though.
I would like to see this analysis on Windows Server. Servers are business critical systems, and I hope they are not pulling this crap with Server versions of Windows
@@user-uh6kq2wh9g Well, even if we ignore the ethical implications of spying on business systems, as I mentioned in my original post, servers are business critical. That means they serve a critical function for businesses. This type of crapware is generally not well written and can cause security and stability issues with the systems they run on. Obviously not ideal for systems classified as critical.
Moved to Linux several months ago. It's true that you pay in your time whilst learning it, but I've found a reasonably good replacement flow so far. I don't play many games though, which can still be quite an issue. I don't think Windows is going away anytime soon, nor will the small intrusions to privacy. It's only a matter of time where full pc scans will be sent to Microsoft to detect blacklisted files. Good video and analysis. Ty.
I wonder where Windows 7 fits in between these two, as possibly the oldest Windows operating system you could probably get away with using today (if being very careful if not avoiding the internet altogether). And then there’s the plethora of Linux distros. I wonder what kind if any data collection some of them do.
I started using Linux as my daily driver back in the Vista days. I have used Windows for work and school where necessary but I haven't looked back for personal use and I've even pushed to use Linux in my professional work as well. I still check in on windows so I can look at all the amazing "features" that microshaft added windows
When M$ force-updated my Win7 machine to Win10 was when i switched to Linux as a DD. Tbh, other than gaming (which I do on a dedicated machine now), the only things I'm missing from the M$ experience is the headaches and BS.
Tip: If you would like to remove the background bloatware, Use Chris Titus' Windows script or O&O Shut-up. In my experience, The CTT script removed more background processes on startup than O&O Shut-up. Enjoy a faster Windows install! :)
O&O is great. I will look at the CT script. I have an SSD and flash drive which has everything I need to clean and optimize/de-telemetry a fresh windows install in under an hour. Reformatting is a lot easier
Never mind speedups, I want something that kills the telemetry and lets me choose what "updates" to install. But then I also want to watch the public execution of the criminal spies that have taken command of Microsoft and Google.
@@felicityc If you want a de-telemetry version of Windows, I know of AtlasOS and Windows 10 Ameliorated. But, I cannot vouch for the security or privacy of either .iso file. My personal favorite is the CTT script.
Certainly a good advice. Now please extend the advice by letting me know how to run company-specific .NET apps, a couple of games, MS Word, Logitech Gaming Center and other stuff on Linux without a negative impact on performance on a brand new hardware. I've been looking for ways to make Linux my main OS, but it's just not there yet (and it's nowhere close). It doesn't have the marketing or business power to make mass transition possible.
Oh this is awesome. I was really worried after I stopped using Facebook because I just found the environment toxic, my reasons for stopping using it didn't have much to do with privacy, but I was concerned because how else would I be telling all these services all this important details about me! Thank god this has been pushed down to the OS level!
Every Windows after XP that I have used spins the hard drive inexplicably when i'm doing nothing. Now with SSDs most people don't feel it, but I use old drives and they rattle all the time, and when i open the task manager to see the processes suddenly everything goes silent, they don't want me to see what they are doing. Android is the same story but there are no mechanical parts to hear.
I wouldn't say that "the system" is doing these requests, but rather Microsoft Edge, which has a feature turned on by default that automatically starts the browser in the background and loads the New Tab page, to launch faster when it's actually needed. That New Tab page contains the MSN News, along with the Privacy/Cookies popup that you see on all websites, which in this case is provided by OneTrust. Another entity making DNS requests could be the Widgets panel, or Search, which both have MSN and Microsoft 365 built in. You should have also mentioned if this is a clean install of Windows (Home? Pro? Education? MS Account LoggedIn/LoggedOut?), or if it's the image that was preinstalled by the laptop's manufacturer. In the latter case, I think the blame no longer falls 100% on Windows, but also on the manufacturer, who preinstalled other software (McAfee in this case) and licensed that software to you when you made the purchase of the laptop.
@@anidson2045 lol not even close. he didn't even test to see if his logic is correct (its not, disabling those settings in edge doesn't stop these requests)
I love when my windows 11 makes up random errors and problems to force a restart if it’s not updated in a long time, or when it randomly turns itself on in the middle on night
This has been enlightening. Although I already had no interest in switching from Win10 to Win11, I would love some insight as to what other 'spyware' URLs to block. Curious if there is anywhere near as many DNS calls in a fresh Win10 install as well.
The short answer if is privacy matters to you, you won't be able to be confident about it on an untrusted, unauditable OS. You can't necessarily know that all of the traffic and activity is visible on the computer in question. If you have a separate device monitoring traffic, then you'll know (such as a hardware firewall not running MS software) but it could all change with any given update (they can just change where the send stuff every update if they want or start sending more stuff to a "safe" address that you might allow for say updates or crash reports). It's going to come down to if you need Windows and what level of comfort you have with Microsoft having your data and your trust that they won't actively try to circumvent your mitigations. If Win 11 is a true no go for you, it might be time to test drive a linux install (or BSD or anything open and trustworthy).
The time you keep waiting to finally switch could be the time you could take to get used to your new Linux Distro. Switched in 2020 and never looked back.
I also want to do that, now I have two laptops, one's operating system is Windows 10, and the other one's operating system is Kubuntu. I haven't learned enough knowledge about Kubuntu, I only installed some Steam games and changed the format of my HDD from NTFS to ext4. I'll be familiar with Linux before Windows 10 support ends.
The correct thing it would be to have a starting page that asked your consent for these services and explained you which of them are required. I believe some of them you can disable if you dig enough at settings but still that is not transparent enough.
Ironically, one of the drawbacks to hardware advancements is that OS's don't need to be streamlined to run smoothly. There is plenty of room for background spyware.
Every half decade or so MS needs a class action law suit to get them back in line
every update or so it should be at the rythm it goes.
MS is virgin Mary in comparison with alphabet.
Lawsuit DOES NOT mean anything!!!! Even if they lose, their fine winds up being 3-10% of the revenue the generated by violating your rights & privacy, so it's just a business expense for them!!!! And of course the tax cattle don't just STOP using their product & REFUSE to do any business with them!!! ITS so out of control anymore ya better get used to saying: ALL HAIL THE PARTY!!! 2+2=5
If only that made a difference. Anyway that's why I use Linux instead of Windows. Ubuntu is good too. Made by users for users. No forced updates
@@Christoff070 Ubuntu is Linux! There are like over 50 Linux distro's. I am using EndeavourOS which is based on Arch Linux. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. I switched to Linux just as Microsoft tried to push Windows 10 on me (Every user thereof) by force! I read the EULA, and that was it:
I literally nuked Windows 7 and broke the disk and forced myself through Linux boot camp, so I would learn it for not having Windows to fall back on. I tried getting on board in the 90's when Linux first came out and several times in between, but having Windows always gave me a way to give up for sheer convenience and familiarity. Once I made the switch cold turkey I learned it faster than I thought I would, fell in love with Linux, and have been using it ever since. With the KDE Plasma desktop, it makes Windows look like the POS it really is.
With all of this data collection, the Windows license should be free or Microsoft should be paying me instead
de facto it is free for most people
but windows has always been free
That's why activators exist lmao
@@FakeMichau If you are buying a computer with windows, the price of windows is added to the price of the computer
@@RickRollMaster101 It's bold of you to assume that I do
In a slightly more reasonable world this kind of mass spying by corporations would be illegal.
And the people responsible should shake bars.
Es ilegal. Sólo que, el sistema es mentira❤
This is so true. Look at Edward Snowden, a CIA and NSA whistleblower who exposed the government for mass surveillance on thier citizens. Who do you think is got in trouble? Let me give you a guess, it wasn't the big 3 letter companies
Keep buyingvtheir sh-.. Uff.. Apple? Lololol. Not even dead.
So.. Linux be!
Sell out! We are the Product. The paying for it Product. Insane! 😒
wydm the software is free, you accept the conditions of the terms if you use their software. Simple just use another software :) Linux for example.
Its barely illegal, just highly unethical. If you accept these conditions you're simply making a deal with the devil. Your privacy for shitty software (but its free!!!!!! :o :o :o)
It all goes back in a day when Microsoft renamed "My computer" to "This PC", kinda showing that its not your computer anymore
Well, to be fair "my computer" would be a lie for any PC with more than one user.
@@RFC3514 I always found "My Computer" patronizing, like those silly "Oops!" error messages some places do. I assumed they changed it the verbiage to make things feel a bit more professional.
Yep
@@RFC3514for each one of those users it is actually "My computer". Nothing wrong with the wording there.
@@Druze_Tito - So when someone else checks their e-mail from a computer you bought, they take ownership of the computer?
I think this is why they removed the network activity indicator from the system tray years ago. They don't want people to realise that their machine is constantly phoning home.
Microsoft is a piece of shit company
More like phoning to everyone in the phone book.
@@zito88 good one. Definitely more accurate.
they removed the network indicator because it is useless nowadays. it was useful in the past because web apps werent really a thing and most people had metered connections where they were billed by traffic volume. nowadays this indicator would just be on all of the time. any communication/messenger app like slack/discord/signal has several standing websocket connections open at any time, many apps download updates automatically and so on. any time you want to know "is there network traffic right now?" the answer is yes. no need for an icon to tell you that ^^
@@LostMekka Besides the task manager still displays traffic in an useful chart
Would love to see a video showing the difference between turning telemetry off in the options V not turning it off just to see how effective it is.
That’s a good idea.
@@lussor1 how to install stuff like this?
Use simplewall. You decide exactly what gets on the wire.
@@Михаил-о8ш8щ The firewall options for Linux suck. It's basically just UFW, and that's it, unless you buy an Enterprise level program. MacOS had a bunch of Spyware as well, but it's not nearly as bad as Windows. You can use Hands Off or Little Snitch to monitor what is trying to go where.
@@lussor1does editing C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts work?
"This PC doesn't currently meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11"
Excellent.
Lol this is the same in windows 10
@@vectoralphaSec But i have dealt with the more primitive version...
Newer version = "Better Security" = More spying by Microsoft.
@@vectoralphaSec Yes. Windows 10 and 11 are the same, except 11 has even more peal.
My desktop is usually booted into Linux, unless I wanna game once or twice a month...
Dual-booting into Windows 10 provides me with 5 popups in a row, trying to trick me in getting Windows 11...
My work laptop is on Win11, ask the IT person how much I like it, I nagged his head off hoping to get my Linux distro of choice on my work machine!
Hehe, thats why im using ghost spectre win 11 hehe
A year or so ago I noticed that my Windows PC was working extremely high on CPU, even while idle. I decided to take a deeper look, and saw that the telemetry service was abusing my CPU, for no apparent reason. Digging in a little deeper, it turns out that my pihole was blocking all the telemetry requests so Windows was trying to locally store all the telemetry data in an SQL database in order to try and send it back to Microsoft later. Turns out there was a bug in the way they locally stored the data, so the database kept being re-created constantly, causing my CPU to spike.
Try to fake the url and make the system think it is working
Blackbird can disable all of that shit, or you could dump Windows and install a real operating system.
thanks@@Wren1 I've never heard of this software but it looks useful
@@Wren1people use windows not because its a good operating system, but just because others arent optimized with the same programs
Which of course uses more power, that you didn't authorize which gives you a bigger utility bill which also you should send Microsoft for their bullshit which does not benefit you in any way, shape, or form. The extreme end of this is that it maxing your CPU is wearing it out and causing you to have to buy a new machine faster.
I forgot how colorful XP is. Not only doesn't spy on you, but also looks nice and friendly. Good old days...
You can't connect to the internet on xp now can you ?
@@atommachine you still can, its just the internet explorer wont connect to most websites nowadays.
there are definitely other web browsers that still work on xp and you can use them perfectly nowadays if you still use xp for some reason.
@@atommachine you absolutely can
hell some modern wifi dongles still somehow have xp drivers available (from reputable manufacturers like tp-link too!)
@@atommachine The biggest issues are 1) getting your certificate store updated so you can speak HTTPS; and 2) finding a browser that is still built with support for XP.
@@nickwallette6201 YT keeps shadowbanning my comments so I cant tell you how to get around.
Nice work. Back in the day, it was standard practice to check if installed software (nevermind the OS) was "phoning home." People were _outraged_ if violations of privacy/trust were found and said software was promptly publicly shamed and boycotted. Sadly, it didn't take long before the practice became so rampant that it was nearly impossible to track of all the transgressions, leading us to right where we are now.
Unfortunately, the problems started with "automatic updates". Before then, people relied on receiving regular update packages via post, or upgrades through various service packs. It also gave companies more incentive to actually get the software right first time.
Automatic updates normalised the idea of software "phoning home".
Those boycotts were possible in an age where most computer users were tech savvy and knew enough about the system to care. Now, widespread adoption has led to an era where everybody has a computer, most of whom don't know anything about the device in front of them. Those tech illiterate consumers comprise the bulk of the market now, and they don't know and don't care enough to ever join a boycott.
I refuse to update to 11 until I am forced to. I only installed 10 when I heard that 11 had been released, because I realized they might stop selling new licenses to 10. But I still use 7 on one of my PCs.
Anyway, point is, I always make a point to disable all automatic updates. This was easy on 7. It was a little more tricky on 10 but definitely doable. There's a registry setting that tells the OS that the machine is using an enterprise management configuration. That sort of configuration is used on PCs used by workers in corporate office environments, inside their secure networks, where all software installations typically are performed by IT or desktop support folks and any OS updates or security patches are rolled out across the network on a carefully managed schedule. Anyway, this registry setting prevents automatic updates on Windows 10. Hopefully something similar exists on 11.
Beyond that, I also go through all Windows settings and disable anything that involves telemetry, linking to online accounts, "smart assistants", or is used for "improving the product" or "personalized experiences" (which means collecting user activity data for ad targeting purposes). Likewise I disable any services that sound dicey or a waste of resources, like anything involving Xbox.
@@MrEdrftgyuji 100% I still feel that way about software phoning home. I consider my home PC workstations to be like my castles. If a process is using CPU cycles I want to know what it is and why it's running. The idea of the OS on these machines behaving like Android is simply unacceptable. Operating systems should be able to function entirely offline, they should never be trying to serve me ads, and they should never be sending any third parties my personally identifiable information, data about user activity, what's installed on the machine, local network configuration, or the file contents of any attached drive. Any attempt to send anything like that should require explicit approval from the user EVERY. TIME. And rejecting such requests should never cause any failure at the OS level.
@@rdean150 1: you should also refuse to use win10. i know its hard, i am not perfect myself and I'm not using linux nearly enough.
2: use windows debloater from chris titus tech
I always wondered why my old computer struggled with Windows 10 whenever I had an internet connection and it seemed to speed up significantly whenever I unplugged my network cable. Now I know why, it was just sending my soul to Microsoft.
that is true. when my laptop would connect to internet, windows telemetry and windows error report would both start up to collect and upload
Well, that, and Intel/Microsoft's old network drivers are balls. Plus the hardware back then did a lot less co-processing, offloading all your network traffic to the CPU.
Yes, maybe those same drivers functioned alright on XP, maybe even W7+, but the driver layer was changed in Win 10. It now emulates support for old hardware rather than giving direct hardware access. After upgrading to Windows 10, I had a Win 7 Virtual CD driver insert a 700mb CD as a ginormous 7gb protected file in System Volume Information. /facepalm
@@Mavendow is this why one of our work computers is soooooo terribly slow after updating to W10 we just stopped using it...?
The other computer that is running basically the same hardware but in Win7 (except I upgraded with a sata SSD) works just fine. It cant be that SSD made it go from snails pace to normal because that other machine takes like 5 seconds to respond from start bar menu commands, and 30 seconds to open chrome.. and there's almost nothing installed on it besides necessary work apps.
Has the performance really tanked so hard because of the change In the driver layer? Will the same happen on the other machine that Is begging us to upgrade? All I remember is that they're dual core CPUs
@@neocodexx Nope. I tried to explain but YT keeps deleting my comment.
So, short version: The GUI's memory is managed differently, which forces an old PC to use the pagefile. The pagefile thus pegs the HDD. If you run a dual SSD/HDD config, the same thing (occasionally) happens because the default config is to have the pagefile on every drive. Solution is basically to add a SSD and move the pagefile to that drive. Or install Linux which doesn't have a dumb memory manager. I do use Windows, however, IMHO Linux should be seriously considered since Windows is circling the drain.
I literally just updated my windows, and it breaks my machine, the reason why I did the update in the first place, was because my machine wasn't running super well, and that typically means that the timer has run out from the last update and it's forcing you to get the update whether you want or not.
Because of course planned obsolescence through updates that destroy your machine over time.
It's very easy to know whether or not there's some foul play afoot:
Microsoft: We collect telemetry data. It's just for diagnostic purposes.
Consumer: I am not comfortable with that. Can I turn it off?
Microsoft: Yes, click here.
Consumer: It didn't turn it off.
Microsoft: Shut up.
At least things like O&O ShutUp10++ exist.
*microshit
An Old Consumer : ever used DoNotSpy on windows so you can turn that shit off, and it is off its been out there for a long time you must be new to the internet
You technically can firewall all of them, but I don't even need it lol. I'm from Russia, 90% of this sht isn't even working there after Feb 24nd, 2022.
@@андрей_свиридов can you take a guess why
Just a small piece of advice: by capturing within the booted OS, you will loose traffic that has already been finished. To do this properly you would want to mirror a switch port and use wireshark on a separate system to actually capture everything on that switch port. But still a good way to bring the point across. Would love to see this for Windows XP -> Windows 11 and Linux / Mac OS. In a complete comparrision, to objectively see how other products fare.
You'd need to compare a large number of Linux distributions.
Unlike Mac OS and Windows, there isn't a standar Linux install to examine.
You'd need to compare multiple different base distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, etc. and multiple instances of each with different desktop environments installed.
Correct. These dns queries can be switched off in settings but kernel ones I don't think is possible
I think using ad block dns can block those spy traffic
@@sumuduranathunga yes that is possible but not what is intended. The idea is, that the normal standard user shoudn´t need to even have to do anything to protect their own personal space / data
Oooh I want to see that.
I miss XP and 7 which are my two favorite iterations of Windows which both felt more like a desktop OS and came without all the bloat that started showing up on Windows 8 and so forth. It feels like every operating system has gone down this route as of late and I'm tempted to just use linux once Windows 10 dies off.
For me I think when windows 10 dies I'm switching over to Linux. I've used it in the past & have it installed on many of my secondary computers.
I used tools like O&O Shutup 10, DestoryWindows10 Spying, etc. Hopefully this helps remove some of the stuff windows does but generally I find myself hating Microsoft these days after how they've been ruining Minecraft.
I will never give Microsoft a cent in the future, I will always have ad block on, I use my free OneDrive account with Crypomater so they can't spy on my data, etc. I am not gonna do my best to ensure they don't make money off me until they change their ways.
@@Enraiful Good on you for that, most people don't last half a year. Welcome to Linux
@@Enraiful yeah i installed fedora on this laptop a little while ago. definitely would recommend
@@ran_red Ouch, I only last for two months. I still haven't had time to start organizing my mess yet. Hope this time I can relly REALLY build my own NAS now.
I have had zero issues running Windows 7 this whole time...
Another misconception is when they used the term 'trusted' it does not mean they trust YOU. It means they trust your computer to act on their behalf, regardless of what you may want to do as the end user.
I rooted my android 10 and its now "orange state, your device can't be trusted". Oh, I trust it. It doesn't even have google services anymore, airplane mode really works and cuts off all wireless transmissions. I own this phone. However, I can't use google play store or official apps. Thats the trade off with big tech. You can run Linux and not get to use the best and latest software, or you can use windows and submit to authority.
*owner ... not "end user". I own the machine, i don't subscribe to it 🧐
@@lazertroll702 That's your delusion
Tbf there is some better reasoning here; 20 years ago you had tons of viruses going around because peoples PCs were unsafe, and they would easily spread malware over the network. So the question of if you can trust other PCs is actually more relevant than you might think, because of networks and internet.
These days security is way better, thats why we dont really got malware/virus waves like back in the day.
Doesnt mean Microsoft is pretty bad with a lot of stuff. In my family, the only time Ive seen corrupted profiles was with faulty MS updates.
An Antiviral Program found that Windows itself uses a backdoor to behave like malware.
It would be interesting to see an equivalent video on MacOS to see if Apple's marketing claims that they care more about your privacy actually hold.
Not sure if it would apply to Wireshark, but iirc Apple have specifically engineered their network stack to allow their own apps to bypass any installed VPN or firewall software. Chances are if they're doing something similar to Windows in this video, it would just be better hidden from the user - Microsoft really just doesn't care if we know at this point.
@@DanBennettUltragood luck for them to bypass a network filter that's between the machine and the internet
@@Noksusit’s how you know the person talking is a fool.
@@Noksus Yeah, obviously Mac being designed to let 1st party apps bypass on-device VPNs and firewalls won't let it bypass VPNs and firewalls installed on external hardware. But the vast, vast majority of users don't have separate hardware running their VPNs and firewalls, they install software on their computer to do the job if they even manually install one at all rather than relying on what's provided pre-installed on the device they bought. Particularly with portable devices like phones, tablets, and laptops, their purpose is to be taken with you to use wherever you are: school, coffee shops, a friend's house, or just about wherever you find yourself out of the house or office with a mobile data connection. I personally have dedicated hardware on my home network filtering all traffic, but people like us are the rare exceptions not the rule.
And in case you guys wonder, from what I know, there's telemetry data sent whenever you open an application on osx. :| In fact, there has been cases where apps open slow because Apple has had server issues, where the fix is to disconnect from internet, because somehow if you're online it's required to contact Apple whenever you open an application. I absolutely hate all of this bs.
I think Microsoft in general has some third party platforms that they work with.
But I think they should be upfront with everyone to tell us the platforms they are affiliated with or to and their purpose also.
We need to know the data that is been collected.
wdym you "think" ?? did you not watch the video? he goes over the 3rd parties
Read the EULA! But yeah, it's called loading MSN on the taskbar... when you boot a new XP and load internet explorer to download chrome for the first time... same thing
Not gonna happen, there's no need or fear for them to do it
@@Anti-FreedomD.P.R.ofSouthKorea ever heard of this little thing called the GDPR?
only thing i know to prevent it from sending that information is using safe mode.
This information should be transparent and accessible to every user, not just those with a bit of technological knowledge and third party software.
Yeah, they call information that can be accessed by anyone with the right technical knowledge "publicly available"... Same as how they say Elon Musk's private jet FAA number is publicly available. I tired to find it myself and it would have required a 10 hour deep dive into how to do it.
@@LANPOCALYPSE It's only "publicly available" when it's convenient (to them). Remember that hitting F12 in a browser and finding embarrassing contents you could be accused of corporate espionage. Another fun and closely-related topic is those cookie alerts that (in the EU) are required to have a "reject all" button as accessible by number of clicks as the "accept all" button, but of course it's almost always a much smaller button the same colour as the background, or an x in the corner, if you can find it at all.
Never gonna happen. People dont care enough
dude, the amount of ad-tracking is nuts. I run my network through pi-hole and it's got nearly 40,000 blocked queries since I reset the router a week ago. absolutely insane.
That equates to four a minute. But I’m guessing you’re also surfing the internet through that gateway too, so while it sounds like a lot compared to the amount of traffic that’s going through, it’s probably a minute percentage.
@@-_James_- the vast majority of them were from the 3 roku's on my network.
@@-_James_- even me surfing the net would rack up 15k a month
It's nuts
Poor little pi working its ass off to save you 🥲
@@youtubasoarus lol it died months ago. IDK why, most likely a Mikrotik bug. Oh well, was annoying having the manually restart the container every time the router cycled.
It's worth clarifying if this was a brand new off the shelf pc vs just a clean install of Windows because OEMs will also include their own bloat when they sell their units.
Gigabyte boards come with "McAfee service", right in the Bios level so there isn't a way for you to disable/opt out of that in the OS level, which also might be why in this video there was a ping to one of there websites. Or really, even if it's not the cause there still is nothing to be surprised of
Yeah, I was going to say… While Windows 10/11 is definitely doing stuff in the background, this comparison isn’t exactly fair. Off the shelf computers come with all kinds of extra junk installed - even in the XP days, there was extra software. I can imagine it would be hard to get a new old-stock XP PC to test with these days, but it would be trivial to do a bare installation of Windows 10/11 to at least make this test fair (even though the outcome would likely be the same)
@@Anti-FreedomD.P.R.ofSouthKorea damn I was about to buy a Gigabyte board because I can't find myself a Z790-F. Guess I'll just have to wait
@@Anti-FreedomD.P.R.ofSouthKorea When did they implement that? I had a Gigabyte X570 board and I never had McAfee pop up...
@@Anti-FreedomD.P.R.ofSouthKorea source? how in the world you have a service in bios level? hardware level?
I love when people take the time to SHOW how awful companies are getting about just prying open the doors to our information without even telling us or people knowing about it. So happy I've been migrating everything I can over to Linux.
I did distro-hopping since ~2010 to ~2015, and since ~2015 I am trying to fully migrate myself to Linux. It's still a half-baked OS. For the common people that just browses the web and some other things like that, it may be a good OS. But deeply, for people that mess with the internal of operating systems... is not. For example: No proper disassembler/debugger; I'm hard-working to pimp out Evans debugger (edb, the most decent debugger with GUI in Linux [tried each one in existence]; still that thing couldn't even select multiple lines of disassembly, a basic and necessary feature that I had to add, for example) for myself but every time I remember everything It's already done and working on Windows 7 (x64dbg) I have a hard time doing it. Browsers in Linux constantly crashes and have diverse video problems; they all require you to do things, mess with flag combinations and command line parameters to work properly... just to find you just broke another thing. So, you worked hard and made internal, binary modifications to a Linux software? Prepare yourself to lose it in 3 days in the next update. Is that, or you condemn yourself to skip updates for that software. Also, there is no proper equivalent to Windows' Process Hacker. The closest one is "qps", is a good piece of software but is still years behind... I'm also working on it, adding the features I need. Htop and other similar things running on the terminal are just not enough for me.
And the Wayland thing... it just slowing all Linux development, requiring most software to start from scratch, now to work to adapt all the apps to that new, unnecessary protocol/display server. It will take years, again, for the Linux software to reach a stable status. That duality X11/Wayland, GTK/Qt, and what other calls "flavors" (distros) are just Linux weaknesses, internal divisions.
And about Windows... after almost 2 years of trying to replace Windows 7 with Windows 10, I returned to Win7 and promised myself never to return to that slow, involved version of Windows, no to say "Windows 11". They moved all the spying to kernelmode and raised what they call "security" _(Patchguard, the thing they added so you cannot gain deep control of your own kernel, of your own system )_ so is now even harder to patch.
@@Braxton1981 "Browsers in Linux constantly crashes and have diverse video problems" i've never got a browser to constantly crash, it could be because you are using a NVIDIA GPU
"And the Wayland crap... it just slowing all Linux development, requiring most software to start from scratch, now to work on a new, unnecessary protocol/display server" Wayland were created because X is insecure and also a mess. With that I think you hate innovation in cost of being compatible with other applications like how Windows does.
So the distro you're looking for is Debian Stable lol.
People seem to love their $100+ spyware for some reason
Yeah, that's where we are at the moment. All these people collectively telling Microsoft "There is *absolutely nothing* you can do that will me stop using your product" so then, yeah, they will do whatever they want to you and your data. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything in order to switch to Linux, they won't sacrifice their time in order to learn how to use it or sacrifice some of their productivity while they migrate to different applications, etc.
This is insane, people will read guides and watch videos on how to edit the registry on Windows, install stuff to block telemetry, use debloating scripts, etc. but they won't apply the same effort to learn Linux, it's mind boggling
@@ran_red This, i went to Linux in the first place because i thought Linux could be faster than Windows on an old Phenom machine, the interface were nice after all but only OpenGL games worked better (because Vulkan wasn't support on the GPU i was using), like Minecraft, and then later i switched my laptop to Linux because Windows loved to install back the OEM drivers that weren't better at all.
Would've loved to have you test this with the tiny11 project to see how much telemetry can get stripped out of Windows without breaking functionality
Agree, I also want to see a comparison between this, Windows without microsfot account, and tiny11.
we need this
Why don't you do switch something else, instead of blackbox testing and patching broken pieces of binaries?
Yes Agreed. I’m running Ghost win 11 with o&o shutup.
It'd be great to see it for ReviOs10 or ReviOs11 too
short answer: YES
long answer: HELL YES
I know that it may seem "simple" or even silly to do, but it might be helpful to have a follow-up to this to show users "how you can make your Windows 11 traffic look more like XP" -- and highlighting exactly what User Experience "losses" or changes that it causes.
I honestly don't think this is even possible. Only solution would be to install Linux.
I don't know if it's correct or not, but a while back I saw a video that said that the Windows 11 EULA basically says that any file you put on your computer with Windows 11 is Microsofts property to do as they please with. They can basically also lock you out of your computer if they feel that that's what they would like to do and you can't do anything about it, because you accepted their EULA. Windows has become a gigantic pile of bloatware the last couple of versions and it's spying on you way more than you can imagine. On the other hand I guess Apple is no better than Microsoft.
@@longdashes what's up with these linux lobbers on every comment? this is very well possible and I do it with every Windows computer I own. As others suggested, there are tools as Spybot Anti-Beacon, Pihole etc.
@@freezEware Because also your weird 3rd party scripts, won't disable tracking entirely. Especially since Windows has a history of changing these settings back to "default", after updates.
The reality is, with Windows you cannot deactivate tracking entirely and Windows also violates the GPDR, which has been a topic for quite some time already in EU. At this point, Linux literally seems to be the only solution, sadly it won't fit everyone's needs.
@@longdashes this is why paid, subscription based immunizers are updated all the time, and you dont need to worry about re immunizing your pc manually. take a look
And yes, you can disable tracking 100% if you are tech savvy. I would imagine every avg linux user can do that
Remember when they decided to rename "My Computer" to "This PC", it was more than just a symbolic gesture.
This is one of the reasons why I'm on Mint and not Windows.
"We will allow you to use this pc" was too long a name.
If Mint was good at power user tasks or gaming I'd be there. It's great at just about everything else straight out of the box, I even use it as a server OS just for the convenience factor, it's the only Linux branch I recommend just because it's as user-friendly as Windows XP was.
I'm still stuck with Windows 10 personally, thankfully via ReviOS so most of this telemetry is gutted. Why? Because most of the information on virtualization for Mint is woefully out of date and has led to some boot-bricks, and the few games I play either don't run at all (Cyberpunk, Private Server MMOs, some oddball JP stuff), or aren't modable on Mint (Skyrim, FONV, FO4, etc) with Proton (as of last check on September 2022), and NEITHER of the 2 Linux-compatIble games I play run right either. Insurgency doesn't like how Mint handles graphics handovers so out of the box it complains about not getting exclusive controll of the Nvidia GPU and crashes on startup, or after a random time interval it'll crash without a message anyway with either of the 2 fixes I've seen recommended for the crash on start. Starbound after a random period of time will have a black triangle cover a section of the screen until restarted, this'll even happen on the title screen and persist into gameplay.
@@KiraSlith Any linux distro will be significantly better for actual power users than Windows. Windows is anti-power user. I could even make the argument that MacOS is better for power users than Windows
As for gaming, Proton has gotten 90% of the way there, but eventually the blame for platform lock has to be on the developers of the game and not the OS. Same applies to Nvidia, as they haven't open sourced their drivers like everyone else, linux engineers can only go so far.
Don't forget "security updates" every 24 hours against threats that don't exist. Unless giving freedom to your user is the threat of course.
@@KiraSlith Yeah, I'm not saying Mint or linux in general is the best option for everyone, but for my specific use case it does a great job.
Lots of people are unfortunately stuck on Windows for one reason or another, I myself still have to use Windows at work.
Man I remember back in the day on dialup there would be the little network activity icon on the taskbar of two computers, one would blink for uploading, one for downloading and you could kind of tell if you had spyware or something on your computer because they'd be blinking away showing activity even if you weren't actively browsing. When your system was clean and you weren't doing anything they'd stay quiet also.
And they got rid of any animations and you gotta get a widget or taskbr applet
makes some sense but I think with modern day systems, and what little I know about programming, the cpu has to even keep thinking things like don't fall asleep until(whenever). just like a human. All kinds of functions are happening without obvious signs of any ones control.
@@zerronoah3851 To be fair they had a lot of that back in XP days too. I suspect Microsoft just decided no one cared about that feedback and removed it for a cleaner look.
"Scorecardresearch" through "Fullcircle studios", belongs to Comscore, which is HQ'd in Reston, VA, a cluster for US tech/defense companies.
DISA wannabes without even a song and dance that they want to be...
It would be interesting to see if changing the thousands of options that you can tweak in windows to improve privacy actually change anything.
An analysis like this of MacOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, FreeBSD or the SteamOS would also be nice.
@@paulbarclay4114 Yeah I guess that makes sense. But some options are strict enough to kill Cortana, for example. Some spyware will remain, for sure, but do you think that those options change absolutely nothing?
@@paulbarclay4114 Not sure about Windows 11, but you can definitely prevent updates in Windows 10. My computer is still running the version of Windows 10 that came installed on it, all that needed to be done, and I imagine it's the same in Windows 11, is to disable the Windows Update recovery and Windows Update services. Ta'da now Windows can't update and it can't turn update back on because the repair tool is turned off. (From a quick google this for sure works with Windows 11 as well.)
Yes that takes messing with the services on your computer, but given how user friendly the UI is it's fairly hard to screw it up.
@@Mojo_DK My guess would be that as long as you make sure the services for these things are disabled and not set to turn back on the moment the computer is restarted you should be able to get rid of most of the spyware. Failing that with some know how you can make a custom iso for installing Windows 11 that basically removes all the bloatware and spyware, or just use Ghost Spectre's custom install though as that is fully 3rd party there could be stuff hidden in the iso that we wouldn't know about so use Ghost Spectre at your own risk.
You can still block similar services on Win 11 as well but everything is moving in that direction. They may me more difficult to keep from getting turned back on but there's always a solution until Microsoft goes full 1984 on us which is going to happen sooner than later. I suspect at least the Home versions will eventually always be free and behave like stock Android on phones that can't get rooted.
@@paulbarclay4114 You could block the ip's/url's in windows 10. There is software like anti-beacon that does this in one swoop. I assume its not available as an option in window 11?
Windows is now “free-to-play” where you are the product. Then they push their “battle pass” at you with Microsoft 365.
Would be interesting to see what a fresh Ubuntu and MacOS setup does in comparison.
Also try Debian.
@@johndododoe1411 arch, open suse,Fedora ecc.. so all distros
And free or open bsd
Windows still isn’t free you pay for it when you buy the computer. Next time you are looking at computers select no OS and watch the price drop $100
The pushing of 365 is especially annoyingly if you already purchased Office. Why the hell would I pay a subscription for a product essentially identical to a product *I already purchased from you*?!
Would be interesting to see a comparison between Win11 out of the box (maybe after a reboot or two) and Win11 after being neutered by utilities that promise to disable most of the useless services (like O&O ShutUp10+)
@@Vercusgames this is completely false. Both systems perform within margin of error (with updated windows 11, not release win 11 with ryzen and intel cpu bugs) as evidence by literally every benchmark on youtube ever.
What is this O&O ShutUp10+?
Never heard of this program. Thank you.
@Vercusgames With Linus I assume you mean Linus Tech Tips? In that case, they're often wrong and mainly just an entertainment channel having fun with IT. There are much better channels out there if you want correct and useful advise.
I've been running Windows 10 and Windows 11, both from the very first technical preview. I've been running them on multiple machines, yet still a very low sample size.
It's very hard to say, this OS suffers from bla, bla, and this OS is the best out there... LTT even showed how bad they are at using Linux. Making stupid mistakes again and again, blaming the OS and not their own stupidity.
Linux requires that you have some technical knowledge or at least are willing to learn... Well, unless all you do is open the browser, then most distros would be fine.
I was personally very surprised with Windows 10, even during it's initial technical previews. After release I've been on and off the technical preview branch on my main PC, but I always kept at least one machine in preview.
Now all my machines are running Windows 11, and the only issues I've know with preview builds have been audio issues. My main PC is still running the release branch to be as stable as it can be, and I see no lag spikes, performance is great, and if you ignore the graphical changes and the new thread scheduler, it feels just like Windows 10.
But this is all just my luck... All my machines run Intel CPUs, say what you want about that, but in this case, it's to my benefit.
Windows 11 came with a new thread scheduler that supported Intel's new big-little (big-bigger if you ask Intel) design.
Many advancements are happening in the hardware industry, we're no longer just seeing higher clocks and more cores. This all puts a lot of strain on the operating systems thread scheduler/director, meaning it's hit or miss when you buy new hardware.
Just because someone is running Windows 11 without issues doesn't mean that the case is the same for you. And it also goes the other way...
@@TiroDvD A script that removes a lot of typically unwanted software and services from windows.
Just look it up, there's a list of changes it makes.
Id be interested in seeing one of these tests done on Windows 10 After running Windows10 debloater, there is an option that apparently disables telemetry, it would be interesting to see if it actually does
retired IT guy here. i've been out of the loop for a few decades. it's gotten to the point that i can't keep up with all the crap that's being thrown at me (us) by systems today. it never ceases to amaze me the amount of BS we are now forced to endure just to do simple tasks that were so much easier in the past. (back when a computer that i bought was actually mine and i was allowed to control it.)
You've just described the state of modern day living. Something that once worked well, was balanced, was easy to understand and did what it said on the tin has now been resigned to a shadow of its former self. IMO the Internet started it all, leading the 'modern world' into a civilization of people who sit in their houses and interact, communicate and consume through an RJ45 cable.
Haha over the last decades we've been told that it's unwise to reinvent the wheel in development
Maybe it's about time to do it all over again 😁
in my opinion its just part of the package to water down or simply extinguish the "i own this this thing or a copy of this software"
a few months ago i did a bit of work on an old laptop first for fun then just to see how far i can push it. if you are working in an office environment and old machine from 20 years ago is still perfectly usable and fit for purpose, do the things email the thing -> profit. The issue in this case is the "cloud" (aka someone else's computer), that can eat tons of resources on an older system for the simple reason that most of the stuff can be run in a browser window. another issue is the copious amount of java script that every website uses to make the experience smoother and friendlier, no issue there until you run out of resources.
personally i am glad the days of 110bps or 75/1200bps dialup are long gone. but it's just gotten ludicrous with (what seems like) all software moving to what they are calling a "subscription model" but i just call my monthly mugging. 😐
@@JohnLeePettimoreIII software monthly subscriptions??? What on earth are you paying for?
Maybe compare Windows 10 LTSC. The truly strip down version of Windows and see what it is doing. I feel that Windows is pretty loud on ethernet when running, and if you try to block those connections using a firewall it breaks functionality in Windows. I wish they were more transparent on what each connection is really sharing. But there isn’t really another platform that has the software support that Windows has. So we are kind of stuck at the moment.
Look up "simplewall" (by Henry++) and "O&O ShutUp10" (by oo-software). Great tools that let you re-take ownership and control of your OS.
@@gabe_0x alternatively, you could just be the system administrator.
depends on your need, internet and googling?, use linux based OS
It's a chicken or the egg scenario. Linux is usable, and alternatives exist. If we invest time and money into privacy-respecting platforms, they'll flourish. Been using it for years.
Have you tried looking into Ghost Spectre? It's Windows with telemetry removed.
What bothers me more than anything is that, by default, anything you type into the Start Menu gets sent to a search engine.
not only does it annoy me, it also goes to microsoft bing on ms edge instead of the one i set
@@theplayer12312 yeah god win 10 is hot trash and inefficient for tablet using morans, I don't know how people like it
When I type a localIP (192.168...) it automatically goes to the internet and then tells me " not found".
I have to use InternetExplorer to be successful.
The ways in which it tries to reset you to using Edge ... and / or Bing search ... got to admire their sheer diligence on this. It's a huge game of Whack-a-mole to kick it back under the carpet for a bit
Yeah and I love how it can't find a program installed with the exact name I type and instead takes me to a web page.
I wish XP was still supported. I loved that operating system. So easy to use, compared to Windows 10, and it seemed stronger. I also miss the Windows Movie Maker from that time/system.
Windows XP was super cool, but I don't miss the crashes, viruses, etc...
LTSC might still get security updates.... or windows 7. Also very good system.
Sadly none of them support DX12
Windows XP doesn't yet have the newer desktop compositor, the new way of handling audio, UAC, and the driver situation was horrible. Makes win7 much more viable choice.
I wish 7 was still supported
There is One Core API, which provides support of modern Windows apps for XP. You can run latest Chrome version on XP for example
I used comodo firewall on a windows 11 computer and I couldn't understand why so many windows stuff were being blocked by it. At first I thought they were all false positive (and of course some were) but later I understood that was windows doing as always fishy stuff.
You should go into Settings then privacy then turn off the telemetry in there
Imagine paying $150 to Microsoft to get your Windows activated, but you still see those suspicious system stuff all over again
I miss the time where Windows actually give its users a true premium experience. No ads, no bloatware, and no suspicious system activities
@@sihamhamda47 Ikr? I seriously fucking miss Windows 7
@@kanjakan I did MSCA and E on windows 7 and absolutely wish it was still current. I still run a Server 2003 install that is isolated from the net for a file server.
@@JBSbass Server 2003 is based on the XP codebase, why are you running an outdated, ineficcient and filled with RCE exploits SMB 1.0 file server? Unless you have some specific needs, a Linux Samba server will acomplish the same without all the security nightmares
you should let this run for 24 hours... you'd be surprised how much more stuff is going on in windows 10 / 11.
the scheduled tasks are full of regular phoning home.
so? you agree to all of it when you install the software. If you don't agree, it won't install.
@@mrbubetube People like you is why these companies are getting away with this things more and more.
@@francescoberta Roasted
@@mrbubetube
It should be a crime for ANY thing of a computer to not be "Opt-In" WITH an "Opt-Out" option.
These companies shouldn't be allowed to steal data from us when we PAY FOR a product.
@@FelixUmbra you opt in as soon as you accept the terms of use agreement when you install Windows. If you don't agree to it, you don't have to install it.
I think a very instructive anecdote is that I worry more about windows update bricking my machine than I do about malware. These days I think the impunity that "white hat" actors display in taking control of a pc that you are meant to own, is really no longer different to that of the hackers we are told to worry about. As the days go on I get more and more serious in assessing the alternatives to windows
do a debloat it will remove telemetry and free up tons of space
Im telling you, when SteamOS 3.0 for desktops is released, I am switching and never looking back.
what do you think about cubes OS? I'm not an IT pro but it sounds super secure 😁
@@jadedandbitter explain this
@@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070 The only reason I use Windows is video game compatibility. Every other program I need is available for linux. Steam OS 3.0 is a linux distro specifically built for compatibility of existing games, but which will also enjoy widespread future support as it is the OS of the Steamdeck. I.e. developers will ensure compatibility with the steamdeck for future releases, which means compatibility with Steam OS 3.0.
I'll be switching because it will be the point that I will no longer need Windows for the vidya-and that's the only reason I need Windows anymore, period.
This gave me the idea to compare LTSC builds with the more common Pro or Enterprise variants. Great work!
It also depends on manufacturers. I would have love to see a scrubbed system without all the mfnr installs (lke McAfee and so on). I tried it on an enterprise dell laptop, and I get a lot less. Even be tter, Win11 on dell pro/enterprise will not require a MS account. The default install is local user admin, which is not even easy to do on a fresh win1 iso
I love how it is now impossible to uninstall the Edge browser. It's so cool how it will eat up my memory and when I go to close the task it automatically disappears from the task manager, then it restarts after I close the task manager. These Microsoft products keep getting better and better!
Try suspending the task rather than ending it.
You can delete it using powershell
Don't even get me started on cortana. It uses ridiculous amounts of resources for something that should effectively do nothing unless you prompt it to
@@HadzabadZa you actually can't just like that nowadays
Hahahaaa
Modern windows is definitely spyware... But I think it would be fair to segregate what comes from Microsoft and what comes from the manufacturer, as you mentioned it was a brand new Laptop and the OEM image is heavily bloated.
Like Apple doesn’t))
Yeah, a fresh, new and clean Windows installation would be better.
@@Max_G4 Not that much tho
exactly! the McAfee thing for example was most likely manufacturer bloat than Microsoft spyware, I would like to see the result tested again on a fresh install from an official iso
@@Mmmm_tea McAfee can't be bad though, you know Intel has 49% of the shares, right?
I think an app that *genuinely* killed all these processes permanently without effecting any important stuff, might be very popular.
sorta O&O shutup10 right
quit using this s#it, use f.e linux
@@thicksy ''sorta 0&0 shutup10''
What in gods name does this mean?
@@vinnieg6161 it's a tool that removes most spy stuff from windows (yes, 0&0 shutup 10 is the actual name)
@@iamkneel517 Oooh now I get it thanks
I remember all the way back, lots of people were talking about how when you make a new installation of Windows XP, the first thing you really have to do is to run the XP-Anti-Spy tool.
As some people already mentioned, would be cool to check other Windows versions, from Vista till 8.1.
Also, if possible, interesting to see same thing on MacOS and different Linux distributions!
Thanks for the video!
After watching this, would really like to see a tutorial with your take on how to setup a "clean" Win10 install with minimal inbuilt spyware
Install ntlite and make your own “clean” iso in comments earlier I wrote what I was able to remove and what not (almost everything exept edge and internet explorer)
@@DaxyGameryou can set only security updates with christitus tech toolkit
Windows IS the Spyware
Reminds me of the nLite tool during the Windows XP days.
@cooltexture yep, someone said to tinker with the windows iso, bro at that point just use linux
Always been a fan of network analysis on Wireshark. It just points out everything that comes n goes through the network. Reminds me of the good old days as a teenager. I am looking forward to seeing the same analysis on macOS machines.
What were you doing in the good old days with Wireshark :D ? I got myself a small linux laptop and had lots of fun with messing packets up in my local network. Never stepped more than pranks on family though
@@____.__._.._ I was into cybersecurity and networking mostly. I remember using Backtrack Linux (Kali Linux now) to access all these network security tools. I had a wifi router with the WPS encryption key, and I used Wireshark and other tools for packet sniffing. I remember that I found out brute forcing was a much better approach :D
@@Behianoa yeah and then all of a sudden people started using those wpa psk. at least we managed to do sth before it become obsolete. now to get into some wifi I prefer social techniques tbh
This is a fantastic video, it's wild how much gets sent just by the laptop being on and existing.
I'd love to see comparisons between windows 11 traffic for machines that opted out of telemetry vs. the default configuration (which of course is telemetry being on). I'd be willing to bet there is still sketchy activity on machines that have opted out.
it's kind of weird that they're using XP 64bit though because that was kind of a flop and if i remmber correctly, the last version of 64bit XP was released before XP 32bit SP3
I mean we all suspected that, but looking at deep analysis is very interesting
Problem is his deep analysis wasn't done properly. Most of the websites where he was going off about where from software that wasn't from a clean install, but programs like McAfee etc. who are added to laptops by manufacturers.
We also don't know what settings he used during install etc.
It would be nice to see a comparison between completely clean installs from an ISO of the same build level (Home, Pro, Enterprise) and not a preconfigured laptop with bloatware on it. Not that Win 11 isn't spyware, but an apples to apples comparison.
Windows has been spyware since windows 8. They really ramped it up for win10. No doubt windows 11 is worse. I know a lot of technicians who still use win7 despite ongoing loss of support.
windows 11 is pretty much windows with integrated bloatware. so at the worst case it will just be bloatware on top of more bloatware, but since they made a deal with most bloatware provider, they got it shipped with the OS itself.
You can't compare apples to apples because mapple is a proprietary thing. I was trying to be funny. Lol
simple fact is that majority of users aren't installing from ISOs
@FredyR.S. It would be to test Windows itself, though. It doesn't matter if that's not how most users are installing it. If you want an accurate comparison between Windows versions, then comparing the ISOs is the way to go.
That's why we need to buy more powerful and expensive PCs, to give more info to companies we've never heard of.
there are two reasons on why never updated my windows 7
1. performance loss
2. privacy issues
I’d love a video comparing a regular install with opting out of telemetry, using a strict firewall like SimpleWall, using a DNS sinkhole like PiHole and an app like O&O ShutUp 10++
I was thinking this too.
So many attempts at workarounds to Microsoft's BS when you could just install Linux.
@@bingusbongus1656 Stop preaching. Most people don't want Linux and it's not for everybody. Most Windows haters will rather use MacOS.
@@CelesteOnRUclips This is beyond preaching. I don't even like Linux, can't stand the command line BS, but it's still infinitely better than what windows have become. So I transitioned 12 of our family's machines to various flavors of Linux. No reason for the different ones, was more like I had no clue what to go with. All seem to work satisfactory. An immediate positive is way less ads all over the place.
@@CelesteOnRUclips Most people don't know enough about Linux to know if they want to use it or not. My wife was the same way, didn't want Linux at all. Then she started noticing Microsoft's and Google's BS a few years ago and asked if she could try Linux Mint (keep in mind she knows nothing about computers, much less Linux).
She has never gone back to Windows, uses Mint on a daily basis with zero issues.
"Most people don't want Linux", most people don't even know what Linux is
Outstanding video. Techies have been calling Windows a piece of spyware for years and this really confirms it.
It was just a hidden Edge instance loading some lame news websites... Nothing about telemetry.
@@jik7864 are you just going to go from comment to comment and defend your infested OS? Seriously why do people not have better things to do 😂
My relative already said about Win 2k that it was spyware. Not sure what he meant by that as I was too young then to understand his reasons.
@@jik7864hidden web browser is very bloat
@@xhec Well to be frank I was about to ditch Windows 10 because it was real crap and switch to Linux, but Windows 11 arrived, and the interface is dope. Cannot say what happened to Microsoft for them to put tiles in the start menu.
I remember 20+ years on Windows Me we'd install something that showed a popup every time the computer was making a request to a new IP and we could allow/deny - effectively needing to whitelist every IP your PC could talk to manually. Cant imagine that even being possible now.
ummm... its called a firewall LMAO
@@n0rie9a yea it was a firewall. But the firewall that comes with windows wasn't as interactive.
simplewall does exactly what you described.
@@72pinkush thanks.ill look at getting that...🙏
comodo firewall had that function iirc
Thank you for doing this! Just found this channel and loving it already. I would love to see you continue this to a mini-series and do this with Mac and on a Linux distro (or several) as well. Also, it's probably not your turf, but many are probably thinking about moving away to some more safe and secure OS and might be interested to learn about all kinds of hurdles you might encounter on the way (have to say goodbye for some Win only software etc.)
I really like the sarcasm Tpsc makes about privacy in this informative content. It's because of these independent av testing labs that we are able to get the real and unbiased information about cyber security and concerning products. Thank you and please keep up the good work.
I'd be real interested to learn what data is being sent, and also how this compares with the latest Mac OS.
You can. There's a diagnose data viewer app that you can install. It shows you the data that is being send and also the time it was being sent. However it takes 1GiB of disk space don't expect to understand it if you're not a programmer or someone who knows Windows to a deep level.
@@J0nes111 Interesting. Do you know what kind of data they send?
A bunch of marketing research companies compile information that they can use to sell more stuff to people, that's pretty much it. Like Google Trends, but a lot more invasive.@@Tokuto-kun
Waiting...@@J0nes111
We need more of this kind of analysis brought to the public. Fantastic job, please keep up the work, I drop a like for this anyday! Love your content.
We absolutely do not need this kind of analysis. It's absolute rubbish. He's taken a laptop that's come installed with all the bloatware laptop vendors put on and attributed that to Windows 11 when it has nothing to do with Windows 11. If you did a clean bare install of Windows 11 McAfee wouldn't be listed in the connections for a start.
I started out as a loyal Microsoft user in the days of MS-DOS, but my migration to Linux and FOSS started in 2009 and my recent experiences with Windows 11 have convinced me that Microsoft has lost me as a customer forever. This video was the last nail in the coffin.
do not act like Linux is any better just because it does not spy you
4:27 since the kernel for XP was released some time ago, I wonder if the community could create a fork that would modernize it, without all the spyware of today.
Its illegal
@@Galax2000 that’s stupid.
The closest we could ever have is ReactOS...
@@rubisetcie I really think that specific "project", it's roots (the ones leading it) was financed and organized by the same entities from Microsoft, to prevent a real clone from emerging anywhere. Just look at ReactOS: never advanced. fossil OS, never functional, eternal alpha; all it's important kernel API's lacks function bodies, just filled up with a "NOT_IMPLEMENTED" declaration or some other useless stuff like that. I think they do that same thing (creating and controlling their own "enemy", creating their own dissidence) about everything important.
but kernel development is pretty complex, hm kay
Ive been waiting for an indepth video like this for like 10 years.
Part of me wishes you also compared that to Ubuntu, Arch Linux (a variant of it should be easier to install than vanilla) and Mac OS. I'm sure Linux would check updates first, but I wonder if Ubuntu's Amazon sponsorship is causing excessive data exchanges too.
Arch probably doesn't have any network activity other than network time synchonization if that's enabled
I wouldn't touch Ubuntu. It's too mainstream.
IIRC ubuntu's amazon thing stopped years ago now. The community outrage over it (rightfully) got them to back off. I don't blame them for trying to be profitable, but there are ways to be profitable as a consumer-facing linux company without telemetry, spyware, or bloatware. They came out WAAAAY to hard with ubuntu touch, especially for trying to crowd fund it instead of taking the up-front investment themselves.
Do fedora too, it's basically the face of Linux imo. Stable and very well supported.
@@JamesXylight It'd likely be the same as none of these distros (except Ubuntu) enable telemetry
For those people who want to switch away from Windows to Linux but feel it can be a bit daunting.
Linux Mint, Kubuntu and Debian are 3 flavours who are very Windows like in the UI.
Yes it you may need to Google a little bit when using the system because the regular programs may have unique names.
But it can run very stable, very well for yours without ever touching a Command Line Interface.
If you ask questions on the internet regarding Linux, I found that many are willing to help if you ask nicely.
But if you demand things, you are going to get very quickly told to fuck off.
Happy Linuxing.
linux is annoying af to use
I WOULD recommend buying an applicable Linux distro book and guides and working through them. It is well worth it.
I WOULD NOT recommend "googling" - unless you are already very familiar.
You'll end up going round and round in circles across multiple sites, as most posters from all the various countries just;
- contradict each other
- or just make stuff up
- or give irrelevant, cryptic answers that presume you already knew how to do something and had done it a millions times, already.
@@somo4227 I switched to Nobara os a year back and it's been very smooth sailing so far, so I dunno what you're on about.
Every game I've wanted to play runs just fine, and the pc in general feels much smoother to use since it's not bloated like windows.
My choice is Zorin os
@@somo4227 not if your IQ is higher than a turnip
One question I have is whether or not this laptop was actually CLEANLY loaded with a bare copy of Windows 11, or if it was a brand new store bought laptop that came with Windows 11 pre-installed. Based on the commentary I suspect it is the latter, which would totally bias the test, as store bought OEM laptops from Dell, HP, et al typically come with a bunch of preloaded "bloatware" from various sources -- like McAfee, VPN trials, privacy software trials, game trials, etc. Basically, a lot of the requests that are being sent out to third parties may have nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to to with the OEM who built the laptop.
So, was this laptop reloaded with a totally clean copy of Windows 11 downloaded directly from Microsoft and NOT the manufacturers recovery disk?
I 100% agree with you. The preamble on test conditions needed to be way more detailed to draw any kind of conclusions from these tests.
The fact that McAfee is there tells you this was not a clean install. As far as I know, Microsoft does not pre-install McAfee. Windows already includes built in anti-virus.
Even so that's still very telling of the state of modern day computer usage.
Don't be silly, if you do a clean bare install of Windows 11 then most of the list he rattled off wouldn't exist so he'd have no video to make.
Bloatware explains all the non-Microsoft related DNS queries, it doesn't explain MSN, Bing, or Microsoft Store.
I'd be willing to bet that even under a clean install of Windows 11 from Microsoft's website would still result in more unnecessary DNS queries than XP. Namely to any of the Microsoft services, some of which probably aren't technology/update related but advertiser related.
It doesn't change much, though it'd have been interesting to see a OEM XP build, just to get a full picture of all the data collection that was happening back then too.
I would like to see a test of Windows 11 Telemetry enabled vs. Telemetry disabled using O&O or similar tools. But also, I would like to see an accompanying detailed Task Manager list, because you had reference to DNS results which were not discovered through my own brief testing. Makes it difficult to ascertain what kind of Windows 11 environment/version you were using for the purpose of this video.
MSFT tried to bake telemetry into their Visual C++ compiler. So, every C++ program ever written with Visual Studio would phone home. Obviously, developers got angry. I'll bet you anything it's still phoning home even after O&O since they've likewise built these modules into the OS itself. Even if you remove the spyware, remember that the EULA gives them the right to update your OS without your explicit consent, which means they can (and have) re-enabled telemetry that was blocked or removed. They can entirely legally install backdoors, too.
@@Mavendow We have a good reason to be paranoid, but the integrated telemetry of Windows 10/11 has actually been very well documented by this point. I'm not too worried about the EULA because we can forcibly disable Windows Updates both with group policy, and by blocking the relevant addresses. No matter what MS encourages, the community loves to band together and make things tolerable for the more private and security conscious. When Windows 10 initially launched, MS used to re-enable telemetry aggressively with smaller updates in the past, but I have noticed recently that this bad practice has been stifled, though I doubt it will stay that way. Post-update I have a habit of re-running O&O along with a few custom PowerShell scripts + StevenBlack's host file, and I haven't detected anything too concerning for the past year. BTW check out Rectify 11. It's a very cool project that physically removes the telemetry from Windows 11 and also attempts to revamp UX theming so that it is more akin to the days of Windows XP.
Thank you for doing this. Honestly I've been interested in learning Wireshark and these are the tests to be conducting.
Exactly, its not just affecting your privacy, its bloating your system and reducing potential performance.
would be nice if you tested some of those privacy/bloat removers
Yeah I use 2.
O&O Shut Up 10, & Destory Windows 10 Spying.
Also did whatever else Michael Bazzell recommended in his book
@@WitchMedusa Do they work with Win 11 ?
@@johnny2598 ;
ShutUp10 works on 11, it got an update a while ago
@@WitchMedusa Thanks
@@johnny2598 Yes I believe so.
It would be great if a list of those domains was published so people could block them. Even better would be a guide showing the average user how to do that. Microsoft has made Windows so hostile to the user, I may finally switch to another OS after decades.
Actually there is a list of these sites, in a standard adblock format, that if you have either AdGuard or Pihole availible on your network, you can easily block these sites.
Oh there are plenty of options already out there for solutions like pi-hole and adguard home, even for plain old hosts file blocklists.
It makes Linux look better and better!
Could CBL Mariner become the next popular OS, then?
@@aycc-nbh7289 Anything Linux is more secure than M$ products. Linux does not spy on their users. I used to really like windows since 3.0 but every update brings more bloat / spyware and less config abilities.
@@Revenant483 > "anything LooNix^tm is le secure1!!"
> probably doesn't know that a linux machine can be comprimised remotely using port 50060 because the kernel keeps opening that port for some reason since 4.10.52 that linus won't fix
> every two(2) months, there's a new NSA backdoor found in the source tree (most of which is contributed by companies)
> no firewall except some firewall made in python that likes to crash
Linux use to be good. And at this moment it's still ok.
But every linux distribution recently switched to using SystemD instead of init. And then owner of SystemD accepted job position at Microsoft.
So now Microsoft kind of owns part of Linux. Important part that controll everything else in Linux.
@@peterSobieraj Microsoft today isn’t the Ford Motor Company of yesteryear, so what makes them think they can dictate what their employees do in their spare time?
Yes it has. It's one of the reasons I switched over to Linux predominantly. I still have a windows install for software and hardware I still need to run, but generally use one Linux distro or another in day to day tasks.
I would be interested to see a comparison between Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux.
Ubuntu may have some minor telemetry but it is small compared to Windows.
Most of the linux one is just to aid in trouble shooting, not for ad usage.
@@IIGrayfoxII It's also optional.
@@AmyDaisy69 True
Ubuntu is most spyware GNU/Linux distro
@@speedytruck Which is why it would be interesting to compare to Linux' "worst" distro in terms of phoning home.
More reason to deploy pihole or another open source DNS filter to block all this crap on your network. There's also custom adlists on Github with all the Windows telemetry domains if you want to block those manually.
or move away from their OS
ya
NextDNS is god
@@lussor1 does it work with vpns ?
Or you could just install Linux. I know it's beyond beating a dead horse... but it works. My entire Steam library works, and if there is something I need in Windows that's what VM's are for.
I would love to see this compared to Linux. Also, Ubuntu obviously would be accurate of the rest of distros.
The Ubuntu that integrated an Amazon Search Bar into its base UI?
Ubuntu isn’t really a fair point of comparison when it comes to Linux and telemetry given not only their Amazon collaboration from back in the day, but also possible tracking from the Snap store (who they force packages from into you) and general usage statistics that while minimal, you have to manually opt out of.
I’d say Fedora is a better contender, given that it is closest to upstream and hasn’t really had incidents similar to Ubuntu’s despite also being developed by a company.
"Ubuntu obviously would be accurate of the rest of distros"
ROTFLMAO
Ever hear of Snap? My (Ubuntu-based) distro has it disabled, Ubuntu has it enabled.
Care to guess which distro doesn't force a bunch of unnecessary packages on you?
I love your sense of humor, it seems the only way to deal with this madness, thank und keep it up :)
Oh yeah, it is definitely progress. I love how we live in a time where advertisers can stealthily collect data about every single thing we do, then use it to shove ads in our faces.
Thanks for this cool video! I'd like to see a similar video comparing the applications ("Programs and Features") and running services. And also to know what those odd-named things are doing, and what you can safely remove/kill.
I would love to see a similar comparison but between windows and linux. I believe we know the results, but I think seeing it first hand in a video would be more eye opening than just assumptions.
They've been taking ten steps back with every OS since XP. Not only you have all that bloat, they constantly remove useful features, tools and options in updates or next windows versions - usually because said tools can be used to disable their crap.
This. This is exactly the reason why I want to smack the crap out of smoothbrains who try and tell me that "durr you should upgrade, why are you still running windows 7?"
I wish there was an alternative to windows I could just install and all my games and programs and hardware just worked. Now when I inevitably update my PC I'll have to find a way to block all of this nonsense. Thank you for bringing this to light though.
I can't say for certain about ALL of them, but most games and programs work on Linux nowadays through Steam Proton and Wine respectively
I would like to see this analysis on Windows Server. Servers are business critical systems, and I hope they are not pulling this crap with Server versions of Windows
but why not?
The chances are, that things that are going on on a windows server is a lot more valuable to spy on than average home computer.
@@user-uh6kq2wh9g
Well, even if we ignore the ethical implications of spying on business systems, as I mentioned in my original post, servers are business critical. That means they serve a critical function for businesses. This type of crapware is generally not well written and can cause security and stability issues with the systems they run on. Obviously not ideal for systems classified as critical.
Moved to Linux several months ago.
It's true that you pay in your time whilst learning it, but I've found a reasonably good replacement flow so far.
I don't play many games though, which can still be quite an issue.
I don't think Windows is going away anytime soon, nor will the small intrusions to privacy. It's only a matter of time where full pc scans will be sent to Microsoft to detect blacklisted files.
Good video and analysis. Ty.
Proton has solved the gaming problem pretty much, I'm not going back to windows
They already do. What do you think windows defender really does?
@@Cenot4ph nice! I hadn't heard of Proton, but it sounds like it'll be a game changer (pun intended) and gets me one step closer to ditching Windows.
Moved to Linux over 25 years ago, and before that was using Unix. Never used Windows or Mac.
@@divinecomedian2 The Steam Deck actually runs on Linux, giving developers a huge incentive to make things compatable.
Definitely a step back. Nicely done. Thanks. Would like to see your opinion on using Virtual OS's to obfuscate things.
I wonder where Windows 7 fits in between these two, as possibly the oldest Windows operating system you could probably get away with using today (if being very careful if not avoiding the internet altogether).
And then there’s the plethora of Linux distros. I wonder what kind if any data collection some of them do.
What about macOS that uses Unix (Linux is merely a cheap imitation of it)
I started using Linux as my daily driver back in the Vista days. I have used Windows for work and school where necessary but I haven't looked back for personal use and I've even pushed to use Linux in my professional work as well.
I still check in on windows so I can look at all the amazing "features" that microshaft added windows
"microshaft" has been my go-to when it comes to what I call them hahaha
When M$ force-updated my Win7 machine to Win10 was when i switched to Linux as a DD. Tbh, other than gaming (which I do on a dedicated machine now), the only things I'm missing from the M$ experience is the headaches and BS.
I would love to be able to use Linux at home (already using it a lot for work), but there is no actual good software for it for me :/
You're crazy. The only thing you can't get for Linux are most of the high end games. Everything else there is something for it.
Windoze.
Tip: If you would like to remove the background bloatware, Use Chris Titus' Windows script or O&O Shut-up. In my experience, The CTT script removed more background processes on startup than O&O Shut-up. Enjoy a faster Windows install! :)
O&O is great. I will look at the CT script. I have an SSD and flash drive which has everything I need to clean and optimize/de-telemetry a fresh windows install in under an hour. Reformatting is a lot easier
Never mind speedups, I want something that kills the telemetry and lets me choose what "updates" to install. But then I also want to watch the public execution of the criminal spies that have taken command of Microsoft and Google.
@@felicityc If you want a de-telemetry version of Windows, I know of AtlasOS and Windows 10 Ameliorated. But, I cannot vouch for the security or privacy of either .iso file. My personal favorite is the CTT script.
Great work on this. I will install it on my Mac to see the difference. I am subscribed now
99% of Windows 11 is BLOATED and SPYWARE as well. I am very aware of this issue, just use any distro of Linux instead.
😑
Certainly a good advice. Now please extend the advice by letting me know how to run company-specific .NET apps, a couple of games, MS Word, Logitech Gaming Center and other stuff on Linux without a negative impact on performance on a brand new hardware.
I've been looking for ways to make Linux my main OS, but it's just not there yet (and it's nowhere close). It doesn't have the marketing or business power to make mass transition possible.
It could be fun to see the trafic between windows 11 pro and windows 11 enterprise!
Oh this is awesome. I was really worried after I stopped using Facebook because I just found the environment toxic, my reasons for stopping using it didn't have much to do with privacy, but I was concerned because how else would I be telling all these services all this important details about me! Thank god this has been pushed down to the OS level!
you do relize your phone does that alone right? i have no hope for anyone anymore
Every Windows after XP that I have used spins the hard drive inexplicably when i'm doing nothing. Now with SSDs most people don't feel it, but I use old drives and they rattle all the time, and when i open the task manager to see the processes suddenly everything goes silent, they don't want me to see what they are doing. Android is the same story but there are no mechanical parts to hear.
I wouldn't say that "the system" is doing these requests, but rather Microsoft Edge, which has a feature turned on by default that automatically starts the browser in the background and loads the New Tab page, to launch faster when it's actually needed. That New Tab page contains the MSN News, along with the Privacy/Cookies popup that you see on all websites, which in this case is provided by OneTrust.
Another entity making DNS requests could be the Widgets panel, or Search, which both have MSN and Microsoft 365 built in.
You should have also mentioned if this is a clean install of Windows (Home? Pro? Education? MS Account LoggedIn/LoggedOut?), or if it's the image that was preinstalled by the laptop's manufacturer. In the latter case, I think the blame no longer falls 100% on Windows, but also on the manufacturer, who preinstalled other software (McAfee in this case) and licensed that software to you when you made the purchase of the laptop.
most logical comment
@@anidson2045 lol not even close. he didn't even test to see if his logic is correct (its not, disabling those settings in edge doesn't stop these requests)
Great video. Would love to see one comparing windows 11, mac osx and a linux OS(like Fedora or Mint)
Nice profile picture
@@the_expidition427 Same to you brother
I wonder if that score website is a facade for some spy agency 😅
I love when my windows 11 makes up random errors and problems to force a restart if it’s not updated in a long time, or when it randomly turns itself on in the middle on night
This has been enlightening. Although I already had no interest in switching from Win10 to Win11, I would love some insight as to what other 'spyware' URLs to block. Curious if there is anywhere near as many DNS calls in a fresh Win10 install as well.
Why ? What do you have to hide?
B
@@BoleDaPole Are you serious?
@@BoleDaPole you people are the reason ms got very confident with the privacy invasion
The short answer if is privacy matters to you, you won't be able to be confident about it on an untrusted, unauditable OS. You can't necessarily know that all of the traffic and activity is visible on the computer in question. If you have a separate device monitoring traffic, then you'll know (such as a hardware firewall not running MS software) but it could all change with any given update (they can just change where the send stuff every update if they want or start sending more stuff to a "safe" address that you might allow for say updates or crash reports).
It's going to come down to if you need Windows and what level of comfort you have with Microsoft having your data and your trust that they won't actively try to circumvent your mitigations. If Win 11 is a true no go for you, it might be time to test drive a linux install (or BSD or anything open and trustworthy).
Very interesting. I've been considering switching to Linux once W10 support ends, this only pushes me farther in that direction.
They just stopped allowing people to buy Windows 10 on Jan 31st...so...its coming.
It's supported until 2025.
Dual-booting a machine here, choice of Win Xp or Ubuntu on a Dell Optiplex ...
The time you keep waiting to finally switch could be the time you could take to get used to your new Linux Distro. Switched in 2020 and never looked back.
I also want to do that, now I have two laptops, one's operating system is Windows 10, and the other one's operating system is Kubuntu. I haven't learned enough knowledge about Kubuntu, I only installed some Steam games and changed the format of my HDD from NTFS to ext4. I'll be familiar with Linux before Windows 10 support ends.
Clean install of Enterprise edition behavior would be interesting to see.
It does a lot of the same unfortunately.
Best comparison for a cute down version would be server 2022
Yeah and a clean install this time and not the pre-installed windows by the manufacturer of the laptop/prebuilt..
The correct thing it would be to have a starting page that asked your consent for these services and explained you which of them are required. I believe some of them you can disable if you dig enough at settings but still that is not transparent enough.
Ironically, one of the drawbacks to hardware advancements is that OS's don't need to be streamlined to run smoothly. There is plenty of room for background spyware.