Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW

[Ronin Truth]

Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

· Aug 4th, 2015

I’ve written about dumping Microsoft before – and I stand by those comments – but the newest outrage from Redmond forces me to it again. I don’t care how “inconvenient” you think it may be, you have to stop enriching Microsoft. NOW.

Yes, I have serious issues with Apple too, but at least Wozniak and Jobs started out as real hackers. Gates was a political monopolist, and it still shows.

What’s Happening Now

As of August 1, 2015 (that is, a few days ago), Microsoft announced a new privacy policy and a new services agreement. In the words of one network professional, “Basically, they redefined their operating system to be spyware.”

The European Digital Rights organization examined these new policies in depth and concluded this:

Summing up these 45 pages, one can say that Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say, and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties. The company appears to be granting itself the right to share your data either with your consent “or as necessary.”

If you’d like to verify anything, you can find the privacy statement here and the services agreement here.

The Ugly Details

The first detail to mention is that this applies to “Bing, Cortana, MSN, Office, OneDrive, Outlook.com, Skype, Windows, Xbox, and other Microsoft services… Microsoft websites, apps, software, and devices.”

So, more or less anything of theirs that you touch.

And of course, they are doing all of this for you! Or at least they say so.

They collect… in their own words:

[Y]our first and last name, email address, postal address, phone number, … passwords, password hints, and similar security information, … your age, gender, country and preferred language, … your location, … the teams you follow, … the stocks you track, … favorite cities, … credit card number and the security code, … items you purchase, the web pages you visit, and the search terms you enter, … IP address, device identifiers, … your contacts and relationships, … your documents, photos, music or video you upload, … subject line and body of email, text or other content of an instant message, audio and video recording of a video message.

And so on.

Now, if you are prepared to jump through a lot of hoops, they say you can opt out of some of this… not that many people will ever do it.

I’m not going to bore you with everything, but I will add just a few more tidbits:

• Windows now has a device encryption feature, but they keep a copy of your recovery key, stored in their (very secure, trust us) “cloud.”
• The also grab “data about the networks you connect to.” I interpret that as, “All your networks are belong to us too.”
• “[W]e will access, disclose, and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications, or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.” (Their own words!) What that really means is, “We’ll listen in, record what you type, then store it or sell it as we see fit.”

Why Do They Do This?

Fundamentally, there are three reasons they do this:

People are suckers for ‘free.’ For reasons that I won’t go through here, the Internet has been overrun with an expectation that services should be free. That’s impossible, of course, but people want it all the same. So, clever people learned how to do make it possible: by trading in personal information.

And so, being an amoral, money-centric operation, Microsoft is running after the new model.

Anything for a buck.

Keeping up with the Zuckerbergs. Google and Facebook became famous, sexy, and powerful playing the “own their private data” game, and Microsoft doesn’t want to be an also-ran. They want to be and remain the big dog. They want their status.

To service their masters. As best I can tell, Microsoft has sucked up to spy agencies and governments from the beginning, and this is just more of the same. A year or so ago, the FBI was complaining about encryption, moaning that it would enable people to “go dark.” These new policies will ensure that it never happens to anyone who uses a Microsoft product. I’m sure the watchers are appreciative.

What Should I do?

Move to Linux. Now.

And no, it’s not too hard. Millions of people use Linux every day, including housewives, children, and grandparents.

The version of Linux I like best is Linux Mint. With it, you can run OpenOffice (also called LibreOffice), which does everything essential that MS Office does. Then get Firefox for a browser and Thunderbird for email, and you’re in business.

A Final Warning

The stealing of your personal data is a much bigger deal than you probably think it is. I devoted an entire issue of my subscription newsletter to this (FMP #59), and I won’t be able to cover it today, but it is a major threat to the future… and the near future.

Bonus

If you’re even thinking about getting Windows 10, please take a look at these annotated pages of Win 10 documentation. You can enlarge them.

Paul Rosenberg

www.freemansperspective.com

Related posts:

1. What You Need to Know About Microsoft’s Spying Ways
2. The New Era of Surveillance is Here
3. Digital Diversification: How to Do It

http://www.freemansperspective.com/must-dump-microsoft-now/

 

[DamianTV]

"Windows 10 is Free!"

NOTHING is FREE because you are the thing that is for sale.

 

[Ronin Truth]

I'm putting Win 10 on the back burner for a while.

I'm now investigating UNIX ....... again.

 

[VIDEODROME]

Well, I have Windows 10 for Steam Games. However, I'm dual booting with Linux Mint and I'm not using Cortana.

I'll second that Linux Mint is a good alternative and I like having it.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Well, I have Windows 10 for Steam Games. However, I'm dual booting with Linux Mint and I'm not using Cortana.

I'll second that Linux Mint is a good alternative and I like having it.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like a workable solution.

I was/am looking forward to having Cortana on at least one of my computers.

 

[DFF]

Well, I have Windows 10 for Steam Games. However, I'm dual booting with Linux Mint and I'm not using Cortana.

I'll second that Linux Mint is a good alternative and I like having it.

Is Linux Mint like Ubuntu? My step-brother's used it for years and loves it.

 

[TheTexan]

I'm ok with this, it makes a better user experience. They and anybody else can have my passwords because I don't have anything to hide.

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

I miss the internet in the late 90's/early 2000's. Heck, the government even tracks what books you take out at the library. I mean technically your local government obviously knows because they run it, but you know what I mean.

 

[TheTexan]

I miss the internet in the late 90's/early 2000's. Heck, the government even tracks what books you take out at the library. I mean technically your local government obviously knows because they run it, but you know what I mean.

Well if people are checking out books called "How to Jihad", "Bomb making for Dummies", "Anarcho-capitalism", don't you think the government should know about it

 

[The Northbreather]

No excuse for bs precrime. Censorship sucks

 

[VIDEODROME]

Is Linux Mint like Ubuntu? My step-brother's used it for years and loves it.

Linux Mint is actually built on top of Ubuntu. It uses some common resources and software repositories from Ubuntu, but IMO, it has a more user friendly interface.

 

[DFF]

Linux Mint is actually built on top of Ubuntu. It uses some common resources and software repositories from Ubuntu, but IMO, it has a more user friendly interface.

Yeah, I watched a youtube video on mint earlier today. It's looks a lot like Windows XP which is great because I liked XP a lot.

What about compatibility with popular software (photoshop for example)?

Does it work with most things or do you still find yourself needing to use windows a lot?

 

[VIDEODROME]

Well if people are checking out books called "How to Jihad", "Bomb making for Dummies", "Anarcho-capitalism", don't you think the government should know about it

Wish there was a simple answer. There could be many legit reasons to be reading those books such research by journalists or people generally studying the phenomenon of Islamic indoctrination in order to combat it. Or maybe a person is worried that a relative is coming under the influence of an extremist group and they want to read about it to understand it and educate themselves so they can talk someone out of making a mistake.

It's tempting to think flagging people for checking out certain books could be helpful, but most of the time it creates a stupid wasteful dragnet.

 

[VIDEODROME]

Yeah, I watched a youtube video on mint earlier today. It's looks a lot like Windows XP which is great because I liked XP a lot. What's mint's compatibility like with popular software (like photoshop for example)? Does it work with most things or do you frequently find yourself still needing to still use windows a lot?

Gonna be honest, I personally would not try to run Photoshop even with WINE tools. I always read that some programs are buggy as hell even if they do run. However, I hear there is a good alternative to Photoshop called Krita which I believe works in Linux natively. If I needed to do some photo editing, I would check that out.

 

[fisharmor]

Linux Mint is actually built on top of Ubuntu. It uses some common resources and software repositories from Ubuntu, but IMO, it has a more user friendly interface.

Well, to build on that... Ubuntu is a brand name and a repisitory.
Mint uses the same software repository as Ubuntu. If you are getting into Linux I recommend finding out which package manager/ repo system to use and then you have literally hundreds of totally compatible systems to chooe from.

Both Ubuntu and Mint use Debian package management systems. Debian goes back almost to the beginning. The biggest competing package mgmt sysyem to Debian's is Red Hat's, but RH is more in the server market.

As far as look and feel, with enough time and an internet comnection I could make Red Hat Enterprise Linux look and feel exactly like Ubuntu, all the way down to package management. The OS kernel is actually identical across all Linuxes, and everything else on top of it is just parts. All vendors really do is assemble the parts a little difderently and add clip art.

 

[VIDEODROME]

The OS kernel is actually identical across all Linuxes, and everything else on top of it is just parts. All vendors really do is assemble the parts a little difderently and add clip art.

I thought maybe there was a difference between distros that follow Stable LTS and those that go for the 'bleeding edge' on software packages and the most recent kernel version.

For a beginner, I'd still recommend MINT or one of the lite Ubuntu spinoffs like LUbuntu or LXLE.

 

[pcosmar]

I thought maybe there was a difference between distros that follow Stable LTS and those that go for the 'bleeding edge' on software packages and the most recent kernel version.

For a beginner, I'd still recommend MINT or one of the lite Ubuntu spinoffs like LUbuntu or LXLE.

That is the nice thing about Linux,, There are choices.. From minimal to Full Blown. Choice in Desktop UI,, Browsers,, File systems,, Media players,, etc.

I like PCLinuxOS. I have been using it for several years.. but I tried several.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/

 

[CPUd]

On linux distros:

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

Gonna be honest, I personally would not try to run Photoshop even with WINE tools. I always read that some programs are buggy as hell even if they do run. However, I hear there is a good alternative to Photoshop called Krita which I believe works in Linux natively. If I needed to do some photo editing, I would check that out.

Photoshop is such a piece of shit it's not even funny. If you get it to work it can be a powerful tool, but I never use photoshop unless there's a feature I absolutely need to use. On my old computer even the god damn thumbnail previews would crash my explorer.exe

 

[heavenlyboy34]

One o' these days, I must find a way to run Linux from a CD, as I've heard is possible.