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Windows 11 must be stopped

D

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I installed my Win10 without a Microsoft account and without approving calling home. You mean to say when I changeover to Win11 in some years before Win10 stops being supported that I have to have a MS account and allow calling home? That's rubbish! That and the sidebar cannot be used on the left side. :facepalm:

Win 10 calls home, whether you approve it or not. Win11 took it all the way to forcing you to have an MS Account.

I've attached a copy of TCPView from the Windows Sysinternals suite... fire it up and watch the network activity for a few minutes. You'll be surprised how much stuff is going on without telling you...

On Win7 ... I can get that down to 0 off-site connections when the system is idle.
 

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dadregga

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Nope ... sorry ... not buying it.
The security of this setup is today, exactly what it was 10 years ago ... no better and no worse.

It doesn't deteriorate with time. Sure someone may find a new exploit or write a better virus, but in the end this system is every bit as safe and stable today as it was the day I first installed it.

Sure someone may find a new exploit or write a better virus

As a computer professional I can assure you that there are countless someones that have been doing this since Windows 7 was released.


They haven't stopped finding those - but Microsoft has stopped fixing them when they're discovered. Which means you're just a sitting duck.

There are hundreds-to-thousands of CVEs and exploits on the books for every OS and they're being patched every day. This never changes. What changes is that eventually one side of this arms race gives up and stops patching old releases.

Privacy concerns are valid. Staying on old unpatched operating system versions like Windows 7 is not a solution or a mitigation of those privacy concerns, in the same way that "not going to the doctor" is not a mitigation of "bad health".
 

Doodski

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Win 10 calls home, whether you approve it or not. Win11 took it all the way to forcing you to have an MS Account.

I've attached a copy of TCPView from the Windows Sysinternals suite... fire it up and watch the network activity for a few minutes. You'll be surprised how much stuff is going on without telling you...

On Win7 ... I can get that down to 0 off-site connections when the system is idle.
Yeah that's many connections. Mostly Armoury Crate from ASUS (Gaming software stuff.), Bitdfender and Chrome. Interesting that the command [netstat -an] does not show as many connections as TCPview.
 
D

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As a computer professional I can assure you that there are countless someones that have been doing this since Windows 7 was released.


They haven't stopped finding those - but Microsoft has stopped fixing them when they're discovered. Which means you're just a sitting duck.

Okay... for the last time ... My systems are no more vulnerable today than they were 10 years ago. In all this time, not one virus, not one hack, not one crash and it still runs as smooth and fast as day 1 ... I sit behind a hardware firewall and I'm no sucker for Phishing or PiggyBacking ... so you tell me... how is anyone going to get into my systems? You can't even Ping them... if you did you wouldn't even know there's anything at the address.

Look ... in a corporate environment, yes an exposed server is a natural target ... But get real, the average Joe isn't going to attract any serious attempts... really what are they going to get... his wedding pictures? There's nothing there to warrant even the first minute of work.

This whole "sitting duck" thing is totally overblown...
 

Berwhale

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I've attached a copy of TCPView from the Windows Sysinternals suite... fire it up and watch the network activity for a few minutes. You'll be surprised how much stuff is going on without telling you...

I wouldn't be surprised, i've met the author of the tool, Mark Russinovich (Microsoft TechEd Europe 2005 in Amsterdam, we both stayed in the Okura hotel and met in the bar one evening) ;)
 

Berwhale

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Okay... for the last time ... My systems are no more vulnerable today than they were 10 years ago. In all this time, not one virus, not one hack, not one crash and it still runs as smooth and fast as day 1 ... I sit behind a hardware firewall and I'm no sucker for Phishing or PiggyBacking ... so you tell me... how is anyone going to get into my systems? You can't even Ping them... if you did you wouldn't even know there's anything at the address.

Uhuh.
 

RickSanchez

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For anyone concerned about privacy -- whether that is related to browsing, the telemetry data from an OS, the telemetry data from IoT devices, etc. -- it is worth exploring Pihole. It's not plug-n-play; it requires a real investment of time and energy. But it provides:
  1. Visibility into what every device on your network is doing in regards to making external calls. (At least every device that you decide you want to run through Pihole.)
  2. Full control over what domains to allow vs. which ones to block.
Is it perfect? No. It's a DNS sinkhole, so in that regard it's a one-trick pony. It cannot stop, for example, browser fingerprinting. But as a solution it can increase your privacy without compromising your security.
 

phoenixdogfan

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Yes, I have a huge problem with Microsoft using their operating system to mine my personal data and monetize it. There ought to be laws protecting people from that kind of data theft (which is what it is)--but there aren't, and probably never will be. At least in the US.

My beef is more specific. The incessant in operating system pop ups for Microsoft Teams and the Weather Widget. I don't have to be on the internet, I just have to be on my PC. They pops up randomly and incessantly even after I've uninstalled Teams, and disabled notifications and widgets in Windows 11. Nothing stops either Teams or the Weather widget from popping up 3 times a minute. I'm going to buy an Apple Mac Mini M1 because of this issue, and NEVER use a Microsoft product again.

This is what it looks like: There are three panels which play in succession if I allow them. I have to hit a keystroke to clear the screen of the pop up. I've checked on the internet, there are absolutely no remedies. Pretty f*cked up if you ask me.

1652465641714.png
 
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Ron Texas

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PC Magazine has run several anti-Win 11 articles stating don't upgrade from Win 10. If you have a machine which is not Win 11 compatible, I sure wouldn't worry about it.
 

phoenixdogfan

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PC Magazine has run several anti-Win 11 articles stating don't upgrade from Win 10. If you have a machine which is not Win 11 compatible, I sure wouldn't worry about it.
What amazes me is the sheer volume of Youtube videos about trivial crap like whether the taskbar is center or left justified. While that stuff proliferates, practically no one talks about stuff like the Pop ups I'm having. Kinda like discussing whether you should take aspirin or an Nsaid to deal with the headache after you've been shot in the stomach.
 

Ron Texas

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What amazes me is the sheer volume of Youtube videos about trivial crap like whether the taskbar is center or left justified. While that stuff proliferates, practically no one talks about stuff like the Pop ups I'm having. Kinda like discussing whether you should take aspirin or an Nsaid to deal with the headache after you've been shot in the stomach.
There is a lot of nonsense. Please elaborate on the pop-ups. I run Win 11 and have not been disturbed by pop-ups.
 

BlackTalon

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Me neither and i've been running it since it became available on the beta channel on the Windows Insider programme.
We have two Win11 machines at home and neither have this issue, either.
 

EB1000

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This may be true for the average user but not for advanced users. You can easily modify the Win11 installation image to remove TMP, MS account dependancy, and hardware checks... I have successfully installed Windows 11 on an 8yo Haswell machine (i7-4700k)...
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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In all this time, not one virus, not one hack
That you are aware of. Not all hacks advertise themselves as easily as e.g.: a crypto miner (CPU taxation) or some "IMMA ENCRYPT EVERYTHING!!1" virus.

While I agree with you, that the average joe is to small a fish for any serious attacks and 99.9% of the lesser attacks need to be somehow initiated by the user himself, just because you never noticed it, does not mean that you were never compromised.
 

JeffS7444

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For anyone concerned about privacy -- whether that is related to browsing, the telemetry data from an OS, the telemetry data from IoT devices, etc. -- it is worth exploring Pihole. It's not plug-n-play; it requires a real investment of time and energy. But it provides:
  1. Visibility into what every device on your network is doing in regards to making external calls. (At least every device that you decide you want to run through Pihole.)
  2. Full control over what domains to allow vs. which ones to block.
Is it perfect? No. It's a DNS sinkhole, so in that regard it's a one-trick pony. It cannot stop, for example, browser fingerprinting. But as a solution it can increase your privacy without compromising your security.
At least from an ad-blocking perspective, one weakness that I discovered with Pi-Hole and AdGuard alike is that they don't touch IPv6, and quite a few ads were sneaking in that way. But since my computers don't need to reachable by the greater internet, I simply switched off IPv6 networking.

Curious thing I discovered though: I didn't relish the thought of having to manually disable v6 on every device, so I checked out DHCP settings on my Linksys modem and discovered that v6 couldn't be disabled separately! Finally had to switch DHCP off altogether on the modem, and serve up my IPv4 addresses from my AdGuardHome server.
 
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