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My Windows 7 advice, which is based upon my testing at https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/care-to-join-a-win7-snooping-test/, is gentler, and each action in my advice can be individually undone at a later date if needed. That thread may seem a bit disjointed now because comment nesting levels were lost during Woody’s recent comment migration.

The first step in my advice is to turn off the operating system’s Customer Experience Improvement Program, as shown in Mr. Brinkmann’s article.

Turning off the operating system’s Customer Experience Improvement Program isn’t sufficient though; see https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/care-to-join-a-win7-snooping-test/#post-21467 for why. As a result, one should also do the actions at https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/care-to-join-a-win7-snooping-test/#post-21435 and https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/care-to-join-a-win7-snooping-test/#post-21451.

Note 1: My advice is in regards to only the “bad” Windows 7 updates KB2952664, KB3068708, and KB3080149.

Note 2: I haven’t yet tested the version of KB2952664 that was released on February 9, 2017. When available, test results will be posted at the first link mentioned in this message.

MrBrian

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On the heels of Günter Born’s discoveries about the just-reissued “snooping” Win7 and 8.1 patches KB 2952664 and KB 2976978, Martin Brinkmann at Ghack
[See the full post at: Martin Brinkmann’s deep dive into removing telemetry in Win7 and 8.1]

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Woody, Martin Brinkmann had a detailed write up of this utility a while ago in his blog… Here’s the link:

https://www.ghacks.net/2015/10/10/windows-update-minitool-is-a-third-party-client-for-updating-windows/

@ Elly ……. According to Martin Brinkmann at ghacks, OEM Win 7/8.1 Pro licenses r now going for less than US$10 each…
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/12/29/windows-7-to-windows-10-upgrades-still-free/

Woody has got a mention on Martin Brinkmann’s site, although Martin believes that the issue is related to the current patch. It is still too early to say where the problem lies.
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/12/10/windows-10-update-kb3201845/

I don’t think it was a provocative headline by Woody,

he didn’t publish it as a “journalistic” story to the general public (such as on InfoWorld or ComputerWorld) but rather as a blogpost on his personal blog that hundreds of people rather than hundreds of thousands probably had even read (that particular blogpost),

it was a decent question to ask on his own blog,
it was based on a report on Ghacks.net which was based on a very bold article published by IDG, which appears to be a mainstream IT publishing firm (they publish PCMag or something like that).

Woody was only mentioning the existence of those other articles, for the general knowledge of his blog participants (who are interested in this kind of thing).

He wasn’t fanning the flames of a false news story. He wasn’t using it to get “clicks” or further notoriety.

Woody said it might not be true, he said that he was seeking clarification and had put some questions to whomever and would know more later.

Woody’s original blogpost didn’t end oddly, it was a normal thing to say. His blog is a place where he writes with a conversational style.

Ed “please kill me” Bott is being a bit over-dramatic in his piece, in my view.

Many of the commenters on Woody’s blogpost mentioned that the story was not proven, and then some of them mentioned some ramifications of it and their likely reactions — if it might, in fact, turn out to be true, which it did not turn out to be (apparently).

IDG isn’t a fly-by-night publishing presence on the internet, so their fact-checking and extrapolations, and their belatedness in revising the story and in responding to the furore they whipped up, CAN all be squarely criticized.

Microsoft isn’t a lily-white adherent to both the letter and the spirit of their past user agreements, so just because something was not explicitly stated in one of their past user/customer/subject agreements is not reason enough in itself to assume that Microsoft must be completely innocent of any improprieties or overstepping of bounds.

If I recall correctly, Martin Brinkmann of GHacks was cautious about fully believing the story, Woody was even more cautious about taking it as gospel, and most of Woody’s commenters (who are the people he was having a “conversation” with on his personal blog about the IDG claims) did not automatically assume that the IDG claims were true, but were conjecturing about “what if”.

FireEye probably would be interested in that kind of data, it is naive to say that they would not value it or would not want it if they could get it.

Sadly, the chances are that Microsoft IS doing unethical stuff with telemetry / customers’ personal information and behaviors, even if it’s kept and shared only amongst their own companies (such as LinkedIn, Bing, Skype, etc.)

Sure, bad reporting, terrible fact-checking, exaggerating, misreading situations: good journalists should aim higher.
But don’t cast aspersions on people like Martin and Woody who were just letting people know about the article (that appeared in what seems to be a legitimate source); they were not _vouching_ for the content and claims of the article, nor were they stirring up their blog readers’ reactions to those way-out claims.

Martin Brinkmann on gHacks is quoting a report from an Australian news magazine ARN that says: FireEye has recently struck a deal Microsoft, designed
[See the full post at: Is FireEye getting access to all Win10 telemetry data?]

Absolutely right on. That’s why I’ve long put off starting a forum – there are so many other fora around, how could AskWoody be any different?

There are three big reasons for grafting a forum onto the side of the blog:

> It’s become nearly impossible to find stuff. (Don’t laugh, but that’s one of the main reasons I got into the book writing biz. I couldn’t remember all of it.) The volume’s grown enormously – this site’s hit count has doubled since March.

> I don’t like what’s happened in the other places. Penton controls the old Windows Secrets forum. You saw what happened to me at sevenforums. MDL is a great forum, but it’s impossible to wade through the chaff. Microsoft Answers forum is wonderful if you want the Microsoft Party Line – but many moderators there are tearing their hair out because Microsoft won’t support them. Martin Brinkmann’s stuff is outstanding, but his forum(s) don’t cover many topics that concern me. Eileen’s Lounge is a tremendous resource, I’ve tried to funnel stuff there, but folks aren’t rolling over there in spades. Reddit makes me cringe. There are many, many Windows forums, but they’ve degenerated into the kind of “my stuff is better than your stuff” banality mentioned by another poster here, and the level of misinformation is astounding.

> The amount of work necessary to keep it all going has turned overwhelming. Part of that is because the quality of posts are generally so high. Part of it is just volume. Creating a forum won’t decrease the volume, but it should give people tools to get their points made in an accessible and understandable way.

I’m also a sucker for old-time genteel interactions among knowledgeable and tolerant individuals. Remains to be seen if that’ll happen, but I’d like to give it a shot.

Thanks to another AskWoody.com contributor who mentioned the following link,

I think the recently-discussed MSRT problem is what Ghacks.net’s editor Martin Brinkmann is talking about defending against in his October 20th, 2016 post:

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/20/disable-microsoft-windows-malicious-software-removal-tool-heartbeat-telemetry/

—-
A commenter there named “James Law” wrote,
“Just checked my mrt.log and it appears that this started in September with the release of v5.40.”

—-
A commenter there named “Gary” wrote the following, and I would agree:
“MS states that the Win malicious software removal tool is NOT a replacement / alternative for dedicated anti-malware and anti-virus software.
I have good anti-malware and anti-virus software installed.
Every month, since it first appeared, I have hidden this KB because, for me, it is irrelevant.
Now it is exposed as yet another MS telemetry tool.
I sympathize with users like Dave who have found out that it is flawed and not fit for purpose.”

—-
A commenter named “Henk” cautioned,
“It looks like this very month, Microsoft sneakily changed its telemetry server addresses in order to foil users who blocked such addresses in their hosts file.”

is it ok to hide the unwanted KB’s rather than simoly unchecking them?
Also, Martin Brinkmann has a nice article on disabling the MSRT “Heartbeat,” telemetry:
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/20/disable-microsoft-windows-malicious-software-removal-tool-heartbeat-telemetry/
thank you Woody, and all contributors

Yesterday I followed a link that Woody gave on this site to a ghacks.net article on the current Windows updating situation, and then I clicked on a few other articles that Martin Brinkmann had written recently about related issues.

One of the reader discussion threads under one of those articles contained a question from a Windows person about what it’s like to use a Mac, and a respondent gave a helpful overview of his impressions and experiences of Macs.

One of his warnings was that the operating system of Macs have built-in obsolescence, something like 4 years and then Apple won’t update it at all, and you can’t install a new Mac operating system on the machine
(like we can put Windows 10 on most machines that originally were sold as Windows 7 machines),
so you have to get new (pricey) hardware as well as a new OS at that point –
is my interpretation of what he said correct?

(He did say something about, if you get an x64 mac machine, that when the Mac OS that you purchased is obsolete in 4 or however-many years, you can install Linux or Windows on it instead and keep using the hardware as a non-Mac machine, but that is a side issue.)

(and it’s just been picked up by Martin Brinkmann on ghacks. Thanks, CA!)

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In case it’s useful for anyone, I posted the following hyperlinks about Windows updates on AskWoody in December and in April.

[Note: I have no idea if these sites will be helpful in the future regarding Windows patching/updating, now that the system has changed.]

=====
quoted from: https://www.askwoody.com/2016/its-not-time-to-install-windows-or-office-updates/#comment-80672

” …You asked whether there were other sources of information on the patches, and I thought I’d mention a few links that I check out every month before deciding which patches to install. They are of varying usefulness, and certainly none of them have been as helpful to me as Woody’s reports have been, but at least it’s something.

A. Susan Bradley author archives at Windows Secret (it appears that one must have a subscription to read most articles, beyond the first couple of paragraphs)
http://windowssecrets.com/author/susan-bradley/

B. Susan Bradley’s fabled Excel spreadsheet of patches (which, like some commenters said below, I also find a little confusing/awkward to use – even though I’m comfortable with Excel – and for the last couple of months, there haven’t seemed to be many notes about the Windows 7 and 8 patches)
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=C756C44362CD94AD!2257&ithint=file%2cxlsx&app=Excel&authkey=!AIOQkIu7flF7lPE

C. Martin Brinkmann’s overview of monthly patches (this link is to Nov 2015 – for other months, click on the bolded “Microsoft” word next to the publication date to see all his blog entries on Microsoft)
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/10/microsoft-security-bulletins-for-november-2015/

D. Wilders Security Forum’s running thread about “Bork Tuesday”
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/bork-tuesday-any-problems-yet.370217/page-58

E. Windows Seven Forums’ subset of discussion threads on “windows updates and activation”
http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/

F. Softpedia’s articles by Bogdan Popa about Microsoft “patches and vulnerabilities”
http://news.softpedia.com/cat/Microsoft/Patches-and-Vulnerabilities/”
https://www.askwoody.com/2015/msdefcon-4-patch-watch-kb-3101488-clean/#comment-66301

Woody responded to that [in December], saying, “All of those are excellent sources…. ”

========

@abbodi86,

I’m not an I.T. person, I’m just a home user who is a smart and capable person but who doesn’t care much about the subject of computers in and of themselves,

and I’m afraid that I have found ALL of those sites I mentioned to be very useful to me in the last 2 years.

And they do what I said above that they do, which is “talk about what Windows patches contain, and if there are any to avoid.”

Martin Brinkmann at GHacks, Susan Bradley at Windows Secrets, Woody and colleagues at InfoWorld, several with-it people at WildersSecurity — I’ve appreciated their information and their generalized/personalized help, absolutely.

One has to be discerning and not believe every commenter on a public site, just like one can’t trust everything people say on AskWoody, even if they are giving advice with the best of intentions.

I was recommending those sites to other home users, not to top-level computer folks.

—-
I don’t know what the abbreviation MDL stands for, but I’m sure it’s a great resource, and if that’s where you operate, I’m sure that you give excellent information there.

Actually, I don’t even know what the abbreviation FUD stands for, but I realize it’s something disparaging. ha ha.

I remember that I tried Spybot Anti-Beacon a few years ago, but I’d had a problem with using it.
To see what that might have been, I looked at their Wikipedia entry just now, and I think it must have been because my third-party internet security/anti-virus program had refused to let Spybot Anti-Beacon on my computer. It seems that some third-party anti-virus programs did not like it a few years ago, due to a bug in Anti-Beacon that they later fixed, so it probably is compatible with them now.

I had also seen some more general concerns expressed about Spybot, at the time when I tried to give the Anti-Beacon a whirl. Don’t remember what, but it was likely about safety/security.

In the following discussion, there are a few concerns expressed about it, regarding using it for Windows 10:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/spybot-anti-beacon-for-windows-10.379000/

A short discussion of it here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30534607-Anti-Beacon-worth-installing

Long article (though a year old) from Martin Brinkmann here:
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-privacy-tools/

Here are some privacy tweaks that can apparently be done to Windows 7/8 (with or without using a specialized third-party program):
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/06/12/donotspy78-windows-privacy/