04.27.11
Forget About DPI, Microsoft Tracks Everywhere You Go, What You Do
Worst privacy offender ever
Summary: Microsoft is tracking people’s movement, collecting such sensitive information and sending this information back to Microsoft
UP UNTIL recently people believed that only their ISPs knew what was going on with data packets and only their mobile network providers could track their location (plus history) using triangulation between antennas. But following the Palm/WebOS fiasco and the recent hypePhone fiasco (which everyone you speak to seem to have learned about over the past week) the federal agents stepped in, revealing that Google does not log locations as badly as Apple does (data gets shredded quickly) and Microsoft, as usual. is just about as bad as one can get. Not only does Microsoft track users’ activity on Windows desktops (over the network or locally, for forensics). According to this news report, “Windows phones send user location to Microsoft” (anyone shocked?). To quote:
Add Microsoft Windows Phone 7 to the list of mobile operating systems that silently transmit the precise physical location of the device back to a central database.
CNET reported the location tracking on Monday, almost a week after reports of similar tracking in Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android mobile OS raised concerns that smartphones could be used by police, civil litigants, or abusive spouses to track an owner’s movements over extended periods of time.
Microsoft also has a data-sharing partnership with Facebook, so it knows everything that people do on that site.
Apple is meanwhile being sued, but why isn’t every user of Windows suing Microsoft for spying? It’s probably because the EULA, which everyone is pretty much forced to agree to when purchasing a new computer, somehow excuses Microsoft for such practices (which we covered here before). The funny thing is that Microsoft tries inciting everyone against Google based on grounds of "privacy". █
