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Microsoft's Windows 10 has gotten its fair share of criticism regarding privacy violations. but that is not enough for world domination, so Microsoft has made two updates to make Windows 7 and Windows 8 phone home too.

These updates are...


KB3075249 and KB3080149

Naturally these are for your own good and - as always - Microsoft and the government know what that is; better than you.

In this case they trace your whereabouts or rather the whereabouts of your computer (telemetry).

Microsoft's explanations are rather blurry and make no sense regarding this.

This update adds telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels.

This is done by update KB3075249

KB3080149 makes sure that the tracking works on older systems.

The tech part:

The included service uses SSL (TCP Port 443) to download manifests and upload data to Microsoft when data is available for upload. The service uses the following DNS endpoints:
vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
settings-win.data.microsoft.com
This update contains the following two manifests that are occasionally updated by the Diagnostic Tracking Service:
telemetry.ASM-WindowsDefault.json
utc.app.json

You can remove both of those updates as regular software in the Control panel.

Both those Updates were in the optional update list (in addition to the important ones) so I simply did not download them (Windows 7)

More here

Thank you... vortex-win.data.microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com have been added to my block list. :-)
s.

Sound like Win-Win situation to me...

Great list! Lets make it as complete as possible.

My list is of course a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the MVP Hosts List, but I like to think it is helping. :-)
s.

viking60 wrote:KB3075249 and KB3080149

Good. I have neither.

Snorkasaurus wrote:my block list. :-)
s.

You block Soundcloud? For shame.

dedanna1029 wrote:You block Soundcloud? For shame.

I block any domain that serves ads, malware, or tracking. I don't recall specifically what got them listed, but I believe it may have been autoplay embedding without volume control.
s.

Oh. I just use Adblock Plus in my browser, with the Element Hiding Helper. I've not come across an ad in Soundcloud even without it; it is an open source place for indie musicians to try to get off the ground.

I just use my own volume control and don't worry about it.

viking60 wrote:This is done by update KB3075249

KB3080149 makes sure that the tracking works on older systems.

Every time there are updates for the laptop, I check this thread now and compare. It took time, but these updates finally came in. They prevented me from being able to boot to usb, Microsuck thought it was that important.

I have news. Out of the 31 updates listed, I unticked these two and went for it - I'll deal with how the updates prevented me from booting to usb when I'm set to boot to it first in BIOS, later.

Arseholes.

It's effing stupid enough that this crap OS even exists, much less that it's forced on us. It's driving me out of my mind. I seriously feel like shooting the lappy on several fronts, this thing is such crap and not user-friendly.

And to think it's all due to the black magic of overbloated bullshit.