Microsoft Just Lost the Windows 10 Privacy FUD War (Premium)

Microsoft’s critics have seized on problems both real and imaginary in Windows 10. Most of these supposed complaints are overblown, but no matter: Now regulatory bodies are triggering real changes in the product. So even without antitrust action, governments are once again impacting the design of Windows.

I have a problem with this.

Oddly, I also have some issues with some of Microsoft’s overly-aggressive efforts in Windows 10.

More oddly, the issues I have with Windows 10 have nothing to do with the supposed privacy issues on which FUD masters and regulatory bodies are focused.

Let’s go back in time to the summer of 2015, when Windows 10 was fresh and new and ushering in a new era for Microsoft on the PC. It should have been a time for celebration, right? I mean, Windows 10 was—is—by all accounts a wonderful compromise that works equally well on old-school PCs and touch-first devices like tablets and 2-in-1s. Kind of a miracle, right?

But as I noted in the wake of the Windows 10 launch, this product also brought out the crazies.

With Windows 10 launching this week, the nutjobs have come flying out of the woodwork spouting nonsense, all of which, happily, is easily refuted. First, we were told that Microsoft’s “free” Windows 10 upgrade would come with subscription fees after 2-4 years, despite what Microsoft was saying. Nope: Windows 10 is free, not “free.” Then, we were told that a new Windows 10 feature (really a feature that debuted last year in Windows Phone 8.1) called Wi-Fi Sense would secretly let your PC share your secret Wi-Fi passcodes with friends. Nope: Wi-Fi Sense is opt-in and requires Windows 10 devices; no sharing of codes ever happens. And now we have the best one: privacy nuts are on fire because of a clause in the Windows 10 EULA which supposedly states that “you give Microsoft very broad power to collect things you do, say and create while using its software [and that] Windows 10 will be reporting back many things that you do, to the Microsoft servers back at Redmond.” Guys, seriously. Use Linux if you must. But don’t drag down the rest of us with your nonsense.

A week later, however, the FUD army latched onto a topic that has now proven to have legs: Privacy. I described these claims as “overblown” but noted, too, that perception matters. So prescient!

Most of the [Windows 10] complaints fall into two basic categories, those things that are in fact not new to Windows 10, and those things are really new but are being overblown by privacy fanatics. Regardless, these reports are tugging at our very human tendency to see conspiracy where there is none: Windows 10 is free for many, so Microsoft simply must be doing something underhanded as a result. After all, Microsoft would never really give away Windows 10 for free.

At the time, Kirsten Fiedler of the European Digital Rights told the UK’s Mail that “Microsoft basically grants itself the right to collect and process everything you do, say and write on your device – which is contrary to the fundamental right to privacy.”

That’s insane. But the issue here is that reality often trails perception, and that perception can ruin the reputation of a product like Windows 10 as well as the company that makes it. To this end, Microsoft will need to make some changes to Windows 10 that either make what’s happening more obvious or, more likely, actually de-tune some of these supposed privacy violations. This will in turn “prove” to the privacy nuts that they were right and, worse, will make Windows 10 harder to use for the regular people who are in fact benefiting from this functionality.

Those who care about privacy are free to configure the system as they please. I wish they’d just stop messing with the truth.

Faced with this insanity, I published Windows 10 Tip: Understand and Configure Privacy Settings so that users could find all of the privacy controls in Windows 10 and configure them to their needs. And we moved on, or tried to. For Microsoft followers like myself, the biggest problems with Windows 10 were not its non-existent privacy issues. It was that Microsoft was too-aggressively pushing Windows 10 on upgraders. And in some cases, it even silently upgraded PCs to Windows 10 whether their users wanted that or not.

This issue grabbed my attention for most of the first half of 2016. It was inexcusable, and Microsoft took far too long to correct it. In fact, by the time it eased up on the aggressive upgrade push, the free upgrade time period had basically elapsed. And Microsoft had already run the math on its plan to have 1 billion active Windows 10 devices with three years and realized it would never make it. The upgrade shenanigans had failed.

But the FUD about Windows 10 privacy had never died down. And these crazy people finally caught the attention of regulators in the EU (of course), Switzerland, and elsewhere. So in January, Microsoft announced that it would be changing Windows 10 Setup to be more transparent about its privacy settings. And it would create a web-based privacy dashboard so Microsoft account holders could manage their privacy settings across at Microsoft services in the cloud.

The changes to Windows 10 Setup first showed up in an Insider build in February. And while they are slightly more obvious than the previous way this was handled, my advice to those concerned about Windows 10 privacy remains unchanged from August 2015. That is, you will still need to know where to go to really configure how Windows 10 handles your privacy.

Which lead me to openly wonder on a recent podcast whether these changes were not the privacy version of the “security theater” we deal with at airports these days. That is, it’s not a real solution, but it gives the impression that someone is working on it. Privacy theater, if you will.

Well, I’m not the only one wondering about that, apparently. This week, the EU regulatory group responsible for enforcing data protection law on the continent informed Microsoft that the new system doesn’t go far enough.

“Even considering the proposed changes to Windows 10, the Working Party remains concerned about the level of protection of users’ personal data,” an EU statement notes.

Microsoft says it’s willing to cooperate. Which makes sense, given that it lost a full decade because of antitrust problems in the US, EU and elsewhere. But these changes are set to appear in the Creators Update, which should be complete in days or weeks. There’s not a lot of time left.

So here’s the thing.

I agree with the EU that the privacy settings changes in Windows 10 Setup do not move the dial enough to address the complaints. In fact, I came to this decision independently, and before the EU ever complained.

But.

I do not agree that these changes need to be made. The privacy concerns about Windows 10 aren’t just overblown, they’re imagined. And all that worrying about this nonsense does is take our attention away from the real problems in Windows 10. Like the non-stop advertising. The bundled crapware. And the software upgrades that rain down on us like a tsunami, breaking PCs all around the world.

Windows 10 is great, yes. But it has issues. It’s just that privacy—sorry, folks—is not one of them.

Not that it matters. We are almost two years into the Windows 10 era, and we are still talking about Windows 10 privacy. Sorry, Microsoft. You’re going to have to fix this. Really fix this. So you—and all of us—can move on.