Public Service Announcement: 'Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW"

Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW

Microsoft

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

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

6 Replies to “Public Service Announcement: 'Why You Must Dump Microsoft NOW"”

  1. When I was looking for a laptop for travel purposes, I was sorely tempted to get Linux, which led me to the Purism Librem 15 which supposedly has a ‘pure’ system without mystery software, malware, adware and built to respect privacy. There’s only one problem: It uses an Intel processor.

    You wouldn’t think so, but using an I7 Intel processor is a HUGE security risk. Apparently, it has a BIOS which can collect info and secretly email that info to secret servers. Now to be fair, the company is trying to work with Intel to get around this problem, but since Intel holds the Intel Management Engine blob as highly secret and refuses to work with the company, there is no way around the potential security problems. Getting rid of everything Microsoft may help greatly in preserving your freedom to privacy, but there are other threats out there. Intel is one of them.

    And now the Europeans are struggling with Google. It just doesn’t just threaten your privacy, it actually upsells its own products by ranking them above the competitors. Getty Images is highly perturbed that Google Images presents stuff for free that Getty is selling. So you think, this isn’t really a problem because I don’t use Google. If you have an Android phone think again.

    Oh sure, you could go full on with Apple, but they have multiple issues as well.

    So maybe Linux is a good alternative: Just be aware that Microsoft isn’t the only dangerous Corporation out there following the pattern disclosed in Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall and The Corporation by Joel Bakan — the Corporate Psychopaths are everywhere and have taken over and it’s fact, not just paranoia.

  2. ‘the Corporate Psychopaths are everywhere and have taken over and it’s fact, not just paranoia.’

    And we who run this blog wish that everyone not take this lightly. If you value your privacy, protect it. You wouldn’t let a minister intrude into your life, why the hell would you allow some dirt bags at the NSA, Google, etc gain insight into your personally life and habits? Why do you think the republicans go along with obama? Blackmail comes to mind.

  3. The HWA- style fear rhetoric we’re all exposed to on a daily basis is becoming overwhelming.

    We can all be as careful or as responsible as is it is humanly possible to be as individuals, but because we function within the confines of a greater environment, which we cannot control, we are basically co-dependents to that environment. Whatever is happening in that greater environment is most likely to also affect you as well, no matter what you do.

    Ron Paul has sold out to one of the misery merchants and has lent his stature to forecasting the collapse of nearly everything. Gold merchants, for years, have said get out of the stock market and buy gold, but now, and in 2008, the commodities market declined along with everything else. In the present, oil, gold, and copper are actually leading the decline.

    There are warnings about your computer and Big Brother, but apparently if you want to be a functioning part of business and technology in the new millennium, there is no escape. If MSN and Intel don’t get you, your cell phone, rfid chips, satellite surveillance, or some drone will.

    The problem is that the fear rhetoric is all being used to get us to buy into some service or product that actually won’t resolve the perceived dire circumstance. HWA did his damage by scaring us all with events that were so big that there really could be no solutions for them. In his case, the solutions he offered were actually more exploitative, and worse than, the original problem.

    It is good to be able to take precautions, but basically life is a roll of the dice or a crap shoot from the minute we all do our three “s”es, or drink our first cup of coffee in the morning.

    BB

  4. The article is not about fear. It is about how to further limit the scum from collecting information. Bill Gates comes out with the most intrusive crap and it chafes my ass that he is contributing to a police state here in the land of his birth.

    Your right about Ron Paul. Collapse or not his hand is in the cookie jar. As to gold, it is not a commodity it is a store of value. By the way, look up iron ore prices to determine if the economy is actually expanding as claimed.

  5. Unfortunately, I have too much invested in Windows and it would be highly inconvenient to move to Linux. However, there are some precautions that should be taken:

    Windows 10… how you can protect yourself.

    I have upgraded to Windows 10. The Edge browser is edgy. I did a back while at Banned! and got the strangest ad that looked a lot like malware. There were also popups. I am hoping that the security measures I’ve taken thus far will remove the problem.

    While we’re on the topic, make sure Firefox is up to date.

    It isn’t clear why Microsoft is choosing to be so intrusive, but, of course, they are not alone. Google is taking things to the next level. Woe be to you if you try to use iTunes. Amazon.com is really intrusive. I don’t believe it is to purposely do damage to us, it’s just maximizing profits. Unfortunately, in the corporate world, often the effort to maximize profits is exactly what produces so much damage.

    Let us not forget the hacking on commercial servers. Luckily, I don’t use credit cards at Target (I hardly ever go there). My favorite is that Adobe got hacked and the hackers not only got people’s credit card info but since Adobe wasn’t very careful about updating their own products, apparently the hackers made off with the source code to all their products.

    Anyone of any persuasion, even Linux, who keeps their data in a cloud or clouds somewhere is at risk. Any number of cloud servers are being hacked right now and the hackers can slide right in.

    Yes, Byker Bob, as you say, Armstrongism prepped us for hyperbole. Unfortunately, unlike the Armstrongist hyperbole which never amounted to a hill of beans and all prognostications failed, the security threats in cyberworld are altogether too real. I know people who have suffered identity theft. It really sucks. We need to be vigilant.

    After all that is said and done, I am also convinced that we could, at any point in time, be three hours away from financial meltdown where all the banks close and no credit or debit cards are honored. It’s not worth worrying about because having cash in hand might not help that much to buy toilet paper (especially seeing as how interstate transport would be entirely crippled) nor will wielding bars of gold help much either. We should be as prudent as we can, guard against what we can, perform due diligence and apply our best efforts, but it is impossible to prepare for everything. And let’s not forget that Linux also has malware floating around out there. It will become less rare as more people move to Linux.

    Let’s just prepare for 80% of what can happen and hope we can work our way through the other 20% by applying 90% of our effort on the top 10% of the potential problems.

    And in the meantime, keep your anti malware up to date and apply the requisite patches (and upgrades) to your software in a timely manner as appropriate (continuing to use XP is a totally unnecessary risk).

  6. Mathematically speaking, Herbie will eventually be right about an economic collapse. He will also be right about a worldwide holocaust when the sun goes super-nova and burns the earth to a crisp creating a black-hole in around a billion years. One could say it is an environmental disaster! 🙂 Herbie being close to 90 years late in fulfillment, (false prophet) at this point it should be noted that fiat currencies take a run for about 100 years before collapsing. Sorry Herbie, you lied.

    Since the creation of a FEDERAL RESERVE CURRENCY (a private bank issuing a currency) it has been about 101 years. Keep in mind that the U.S. constitution has the U.S Treasury as the only legal entity that can print money The Federal reserve is not a government entity as you should know.

    As to the current times, if there is an economic collapse it will be a SHTF moment in which societal breakdown could occur. I believe in being prepared for such a moment and try to anticipate moves that will limit the damage on a personal level, all within balance. My family comes first, everyone else second.

    So as you can see dear reader, it is up to you to anticipate the current realities to your own situation. I could only hope that if the worse comes to past is that the governments of the world won”t take us to war which has been the model for past collapses. A fight for resources.

    Call me a fear monger if you wish. I have nothing to gain from you the reader. I am an atheist that runs this website as a work of charity. But I am also a realist. This crap has happened before and as goes history, it repeats. Basic human behavior does not change because it is self-limited by people who really don’t give a shit about you and I. It is about legacy’s. This is why history repeats. As humans go, we’re fucking stupid!

    Defaults: It has happened before. The U.S. stiffed the bond holders. http://tinyurl.com/us-default

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