Bonum Certa Men Certa

In Microsoft Windows the Police May Get Access to All the Files (and That's Almost Impossible to Stop, It's Very Difficult to Prevent This)

It takes a lot of technical work to remove OneDrive from Windows (how many people will even bother?)

How to remove OneDrive from Windows



Summary: As it turns out, it's incredibly hard to remove OneDrive from Windows; Microsoft is basically pulling copies of people's locally-stored files, which are then scanned by Microsoft for law enforcement purposes and maybe optimisation for advertising (in the same pass; it's cheaper)

SOMETIMES it feels like technology isn't being improved for the user but against the user (for those looking to subjugate users). This isn't even a controversial hypothesis; many out there can provide evidence to that effect.



"All Microsoft can do about it is issue a bunch of non-denying denials, hoping time will pass and people might forget about the whole thing."Over a decade ago we wrote a bunch of articles about how Microsoft had optimised Windows for snooping (or forensics by spooks and police). There's nothing thoroughly secretive about it; there are even codenames associated with it. Edward Snowden's NSA leaks provided a lot more evidence. All Microsoft can do about it is issue a bunch of non-denying denials, hoping time will pass and people might forget about the whole thing. Forget the warnings, don't be too alarmed, dear people, go back to normal and "act normal..."

Yesterday we published 3 posts about Google surveillance and cooperation with police [1, 2, 3]. Later on we stressed again the real motivation. Obviously we aren't defending wrongdoing; but in our view certain types of spying (on the innocent; the 'driftnet' approach) is itself a wrongdoing. Do we want to live in a society where privacy itself is a wrongdoing? Surely not...

"Obviously we aren't defending wrongdoing; but in our view certain types of spying (on the innocent; the 'driftnet' approach) is itself a wrongdoing."Over the years we've shown examples of European Patent Office (EPO) surveillance being leveraged against those who had exposed wrongdoing. Corrupt officials like António Campinos and Benoît Battistelli do not respect the privacy of those below them who can blow the whistle. That's also why they surround themselves with loyal allies/confidants (friends and family, not qualified managers). Clannish behaviour such as this is commonplace in police departments and other institutions that exercise power over others. Intense protests erupted in the US over this.

Fernando Cassia, the former Inquirer journalist (we loved his work there!), noted to me some hours that, based on a new thread ("Windows10: How do I uninstall OneDrive app via powershell?"):

You need a custom #powershell script and registry fiddling to completely remove #Microsoft #onedrive from #Windows10 #Vista10 Shocker! cc/@schestowitz

// old tricks to leverage mkt share, like "MSIE is an integral part of the O.S."


Well, it is even worse from a privacy standpoint given what we know and have hard evidence of. It's no secret that the same laws and regulations which apply to Google Drive also apply to OneDrive.

So, based on the above, Microsoft is increasingly integrating Windows into 'clown computing' and uploading people's files, which will then be scanned by Microsoft. Google, we learned yesterday, increasingly does the same with Android. So that's the trend. Does this seem acceptable to anyone? A sign of technological progress? Users are barely given a chance to change this behaviour (see the complexity of the above commands/howto).

"So, based on the above, Microsoft is increasingly integrating Windows into 'clown computing' and uploading people's files, which will then be scanned by Microsoft."For those who want to read some more rants about Vista 10 (a term that Mr. Cassia uses, even as a hashtag), IRC logs might do. This subject was discussed in IRC earlier tonight. "There was a program that went through ripping IE and stuff out of Windows 98 and putting in the Windows 95 B shell," Ryan recalled. "Worked better after you rebooted. It was best to do it on a clean install. So I did clean install, ran that, rebooted, installed my drivers and the web browser I wanted to use. Then patched up Windows 98 with whatever still applied, like the 47.5 day bug. It was really a big relief because most of the security patches applied to stuff I didn't even have anymore, including Trident/IE. When you're on dial up, that really helps. I had a system that came with XP and I ended up putting 98 SE on it and running that program again."

Ryan is a former Microsoft MVP; he moved to GNU/Linux a very long time ago. He uses Fedora now.

"Microsoft still plays games with their minimum system requirements," he added. "When they used the backdoor to foist Windows 10 on older PCs, a lot of them that it didn't just completely mess up came back up and were so slow they hardly worked anymore. It got so bad that Steve Gibson wrote a program called Never10 to toggle some registry bits and remove the "Get Windows 10" app. Most people, given a choice, will just keep using their computer the way it was, because Windows 10 is so much worse than Windows 7 ever was. So, you'd leave the computer on one evening and here's Windows 10. You didn't ask for it. It's just there now."

Google does similar things with Chrome OS by the way, but the imposed changes are nowhere as radical. Maybe because the base operating system is so lean and simplified (all the workflow is in the 'cloud', just like personal files). There's barely even local storage available (likely by intention).

Going back to Ryan...

"Google does similar things with Chrome OS by the way, but the imposed changes are nowhere as radical.""They got some management that was somewhat serious about cleaning up the Vista mess and things improved for a short time," he said, "but then "orders from on high" to start packing it full of crap that is nothing that any user would have asked for. Then they have "gimmick SKUs" that hide the real price of the computer "Windows 10 S", you know. You get it home and then it wants $100 more dollars so you can run real programs. Simple extortion. "S" was a Trojan horse, so they started backing off from the demands for more money and called it a "mode" that could "prevent viruses" (along with most programs, but hey!). Microsoft thought it could pull a fast one. "Oh, what a nice laptop, and only $899 with decent hardware?". S MODE! Suddenly the smoke begins to clear and you realize you have a $1,000 laptop. It's just a bad idea to run Windows for so many reasons. There's the viruses, the bloat. The fact that mandatory "upgrades" remove features you were using and move them to a more expensive SKU they just made up that you have to pay for again. Spyware built in. You can't really hide from the updates without breaking the operating system on purpose with Windows 10. Eventually it tries to force them in even if you're on a metered connection. It's the most horrible OS there's ever been. So people break the OS to hide from the updates, which would probably break their OS. Then you won't get security updates, and the real fun begins. Pretty much. It's like living on quicksand. They have something like an LTS that is much more conservative about updates and doesn't break as often, but that's only for "Enterprise" customers. If you use the normal release channel (everything listed as a Consumer SKU does) you're getting updates that have not been tested almost as fast as they're being compiled by Microsoft. So that's why it's breaking almost every month. There were many bugs in Windows XP where there was a hotfix, but they made it aggravating to get at, because they didn't want to test them with the usual QA (which was not great) and it might break some program. Over the support lifecycle of XP, there were nearly 200 of these that I counted. Now they just shovel everything they wrote that month into a mega patch of death and you have no idea what it does or why, and you reboot and hope it reboots... so you can find out if it broke something. It's depressing that people will even put up with this, and that's a lot of the reason why desktop Linux at least tripled since Windows 10 and more people are buying Chromebooks and Macs trying to get away from it. [...] eventually only businesses stuck with Windows applications and gamers stuck in the Windows ecosystem of malware will be the ones who will use it. Microsoft desperately wants a sub $300 PC with Windows 10, but they always fail and sometimes take out the company that partnered with them in the process. I guess Kano is next. Nobody wants to constantly be dealing with unplanned downtime, but that's what Windows 10 is, and pretending it's anything else is foolish and the stuff that only the paid media would even pretend. I haven't met a single real user who put Windows 10 on something/bought a computer with it, and liked it. The first thing my dad did with it was go "Oh, gross." and replaced it with Ubuntu. He used to use Windows XP and then went to Linux full time with Vista."

Psydroid replied, "the constant changes and updates are because Microsoft is now a headless chicken and doesn't know what to do to stop the bleeding from happening anyway so they throw in everything and the kitchen sink in the hope that some of it will stick around?"

"I thought that Microsoft was getting their house in order with Windows 7 because it wasn't terribly unreliable as Windows goes [but] Windows 8/10 are just sprawl," Ryan continued. "It's like the decaying shopping malls of COVID-19 America, packed into an OS. Rusting shopping carts and everything. Nobody at Microsoft is interested in cleaning it up. It just gets worse. They spent a lot of money and development resources on the entire "Windows Runtime"/Metro stuff, and nobody wants it. Nobody wants to use it. They use it with what Microsoft now calls "Classic Apps", which are still basically all the applications written for Windows. Even if they can't access most of the new APIs, the people writing them and using them don't care."

"The way we see it, Windows is a "burning platform" (to borrow Elop's words)."Psydroid finally added that "no one wants to develop new software with Microsoft technologies, which pretty much guarantees the eventual death of the entire platform..."

The way we see it, Windows is a "burning platform" (to borrow Elop's words). Microsoft cannot bribe everyone all the time to still impose Windows on every machine sold. And sure, Microsoft can take over GitHub to prop up some illusion of being relevant (how did the LinkedIn takeover work out?), but GitHub loses lots of money and Microsoft announces losses amid all these desperate moves. There are also layoffs.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Wayland is About Less Choice, About Removing Choices, It's Not About Freedom
IBM insists that it cares about "diversity"
Keeping Things Accessible
Gemini Protocol seems to be growing
Not Much Better Than LLM Slop: Linux Foundation-Funded 'News' Site Writes Linux Foundation 'News', Composed by Linux Foundation Operative, Quoting Linux Foundation Staff
...they get paid (sponsored) to produce this spam. Then they call it "journalism".
Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 22x) 'Bought' by Microsoft and Microsoft Exceeded Sponsorship Limits by Giving Double the Maximum Permitted Amount
When people get bribed they tend to forget how to utter a simple word: "No."
EPO Examiners Point Out to the Heads of Delegations in the Administrative Council of the EPO That the "AI Policy" of the Office is Illegal
"the Central Staff Committee (CSC) asks the Administrative Council to exert its supervisory role and instruct EPO management to enter into genuine dialogue with the staff representation on the AI Policy, to revise the “Leverage AI” target of 90% AI-automated classification in the SP2028 and to put in place the measures supported by staff in the resolution."
French Cities Dumping Microsoft Because They Recognise Software Freedom, Open Standards, GNU/Linux Autonomy
We hope that more French cities - maybe Paris - will follow Lyon.
 
Links 27/06/2025: Journalists Under Fire and Microsoft Has Serious Slop Problems
Links for the day
X is Dying, But Not XServer/X11. Twitter X.com is Dying.
People or businesses or government officials (and departments) that still rely on Social Control Media are playing Russian Roulette with their future online
Escaping Colonialism (or 'Hegemony') Requires Abandoning GAFAM, Microsoft in Particular
Europe is already in the process of abandoning Microsoft
Microsoft Will Shut Down More Studios This Week, Its Media Operatives Will Tell Lies About the Magnitude of the Shutdowns and Layoffs (They Always Do)
Many people who get counted as "workforce" are "temps" or similar
What Linux Foundation 'Research' is: Paid Marketing
What is Linux Foundation 'Research'?
No, IBM Does Not Care About People With Disabilities
"Aktion T4" did not seem to bother Watson
Microsoft's Financial Problems Mean Shutdowns, Not Just Mass Layoffs
If the original rumour is true, then expect almost 30,000 Microsoft workers to be let go this year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 26, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Netherlands: GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High
Are any Dutch cities going to announce dumping Microsoft?
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: "Interstitial Existence" and Autocorrect
Links for the day
Technical People Need Technical Lawyers
Technical Litigants in Person (LIPs) have many real and concrete advantages
10,000+ Articles in About 20 Months (and How We Got Here)
More bloat does not beget efficiency and "bells and whistles" tend to have a hidden cost
Links 26/06/2025: Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC) Failing Scandinavia, K-Pop Agencies Abuse People
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/06/2025: AuraGem Twitch Proxy is Back and UI Sluggishness
Links for the day
LWN is a Voice of GAFAM (Through Linux Foundation, Their Front Group or Occupying Force Inside Linux)
remember who the chief editor works for and who sponsors many of the articles
Links 26/06/2025: Noise Pollution Considered High in Europe, Mass Layoffs Next Week in Microsoft Confirmed, Very Large in Scale and Scope
Links for the day
The 'Case' of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft is a Lot of Copypasta (Maybe Also LLM Slop) From the Matthew Garrett 'Case'
5RB deserves to know and the matter shall be properly reported in due course (when the time is right)
EPO Squeezing the Staff - Part II - Office Breaks Rules, Ignores Courts, Defies Justice
False promises everywhere
No, I Don't Want Your Latest XYZ, ThankYouVeryMuch...
Wayland is finally ready?
China Keeps Breaking Into Microsoft Systems, So for True Sovereignty, Nations Wary of China Need to Dump Microsoft
Looking at data from Taiwan (not China) and Maharlika (not Philippines, the king is dead and Spain is out), there are encouraging signs
Linux Journal Wants Ads on Its LLM Slop or Ads as 'Articles'
it's basically another BetaNews
How to Kill a Monopoly
in 10 simple steps
IBM - Like Microsoft - is a Dying Company and Perishing Brand ("AI" is a Lie and Decoy)
"Arvind is cutting costs (layoffs, PIPs, forced RTO, etc...) like crazy. IBM offices are closing all over the place in the US."
"Code of Conduct" Invoked When Fedora and Red Hat Users (Since the 1990s) Don't Want to Use Wayland
That is IBM "DEI"
Mozambique: GNU/Linux Rose From 0.5% Last Year to 3% This Year
what (or how) statCounter is measuring
Microsoft Layoffs Next Week: About 10% to be Laid Off in Microsoft Gaming (2 Days Before Independence Day), About 20%+ of XBox Staff
Microsoft is rapidly collapsing
Next Month Marks 11 Years Since Our In-Depth EPO Coverage
The same is happening to Microsoft right now
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Campaigns Against Vista 11, Adds 4 New Associate Members Per Day
If more people understood the underlying principles, more of them would flock to Free software overnight
Canonical Seems to Have Culled Some Sources of LLM Slop From Planet Ubuntu
It's like "junk food", it's not information
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 25, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 25, 2025
On "Weak Claims"
For the record, they sent me unjustified threats, repeatedly tried injunctions (censorship)
EPO Squeezing the Staff - Part I - Burnout and Family Health
more exceptional circumstances
This Month's Mail (MX) Server Survey Shows Microsoft at 0.20% "Market Share"
We need to remind people that desktops and laptops decline (in proportion to other client devices) and at the "back end" GNU/Linux is already dominant and has long been dominant
Links 26/06/2025: Filespooler Guide and Learning to Code
Links for the day
Why Techrights Cannot be Vilified (and Instead It Gets SLAPPed Repeatedly by Microsoft People)
Attack dogs are all "bark"; because they have no actual "bite"
Austrian GNU/Linux Usage Up to About 5% as More of Europe Abandons Microsoft
Since inauguration day the Austrian people have adopted more and more of GNU/Linux
Why the "Wayland People" and "Rust People" Will Lose Hearts and Minds (Same Reasons)
Wayland pushers are fast becoming like "Rust People"
5,600 Pages/Articles Per Year
So far this year we've kept all the promises
BetaNews Beginning to Show What Its True Goals Are
The 'new' BetaNews won't be about journalism. It's trying to sell things.
Microsoft Has Lost "The War"
We'll soon see the 9th or 10th wave of Microsoft layoffs in 2025 alone
Slopwatch: A Wreck and a Dreck, "Flooding the Zone With Dreck" or Flooding the Web With Junk
"Slopwatch" continues today because we have many new examples
Links 25/06/2025: Thwarting More Software Patents, Overlap Grows Between EPO Corruption and Illegal Kangaroo Patent Courts in EU
Links for the day
Links 25/06/2025: Elon Musk’s Lawyers Caught Lying, WhatsApp Faces More Bans
Links for the day
Wayland Pushers Lose the Argument, Use LLM Slop and Chatbots to Make Up Arguments for IBM
Another new low and low blow
Brian Fagioli Created Another Slopfarm Targeting "Linux" After BetaNews Became a Slopfarm of Phantom Accounts and Pseudonyms
Mr. Fagioli even had slop about a dead Torvalds (hypothetical) as clickbait
Wayland is Perfect, Nobody Can Escape Its Perfection! (Or Not)
Do not form on opinion on Wayland based on politics
What is "MATA"?
Think of it as GAFAM or "Meta"
Moral Duty for "Linux Sites" to Speak Out Against LLM Slop
My wife has long complained about "Linux bloggers" keeping quiet and thus passive about a growing problem: slop
In Recent Hours Google News Promoted at Least 3 Slopfarms That Relayed Linux Foundation Propaganda Made by Bots or LLM "Bullshit Generators" (as Dr. Stallman Dubbed Them)
Google is circling down the drain and Google News too is hopeless
Linux Journal is a Slopfarm, It's Experimenting With LLM 'Authors'
Is Slashdot next?
WebProNews is a Slopfarm
Please avoid linking to WebProNews
Microsoft LinkedIn is Dying and Many More Layoffs Are on the Way
LinkedIn is just a failed acquisition of Microsoft. It causes losses and debt.
Gemini Links 25/06/2025: Combinatorial Music and Self Hosting
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Coming Back to Europe This Autumn to Give More Talks
His last talk in Europe attracted about 400-450 people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 24, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Social Control Media, Technology & Catholicism: Synod on Synodality review and feedback
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
How Many More Women Will Managers at Microsoft Strangle and Tell to Kill Themselves (or Try to Kill)?
The world needs to know what happened
The New BetaNews: 7 New 'Articles', All of Them LLM Slop
BetaNews is basically defunct. Nobody writes there anymore.
Another "Told You So!": XBox Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Many Recent Reports Were Chaff and Spin), Many Other Divisions Affected
With mass layoffs at Microsoft the world would be much better