[HN Gopher] Is Microsoft Stealing People's Bookmarks?
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Is Microsoft Stealing People's Bookmarks?
Author : thg
Score : 172 points
Date : 2021-11-20 10:31 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schneier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schneier.com)
| itronitron wrote:
| Anyone know if this sort of thing happens with enterprise users
| of Microsoft? Exfiltrating user data would create a shitstorm at
| one of my previous employers.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I wonder what Microsoft would think of all their employee
| bookmarks being uploaded?
| msla wrote:
| If Microsoft said it didn't happen, why would anyone believe
| them?
| pc86 wrote:
| Considering fraud is a crime, yes.
| johmue wrote:
| the big companies need to go away don't they?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| To a country where they can continue doing the same thing?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Because the Microsoft date sync it's web browser you want to
| wipe out trillions in value to the US economy, projects that
| could never be done outside of a large company filled with the
| best aligned talent (custom chips, google search), and hand it
| over to the next willing coordinated massive player with
| entirely different values and regulatory laws (China)?
|
| I think this is a very silly idea that would be super
| destructive and net negative for the world.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I think it is a very silly idea to think that breaking up big
| companies would wipe out trillions in value to the US
| economy.
|
| The whole reason there are anti-competition laws is because
| many smaller companies are better for an economy than one
| large company.
| remolacha wrote:
| Those anti-competition laws are only applicable when a
| company is using market dominance to exclude new entrants,
| distorting the free market. Not true in this case. Lots of
| small companies are not inherently economically better than
| big firms. It totally depends on the maturity of the market
| in question. Large firms gain economies of scale, and can
| pursue opportunities with large upfront capital
| requirements.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The point wasn't about the competition. The point is that
| many small companies are better for an economy than a
| single large company.
|
| Let me give you one small example: MediumCo and SmallCo
| each need 50 stenographers to get the office work done.
| When the two merge into MegaConHugeCo, it only needs 60
| stenographers to get the office work done. "Economies of
| scale" are great for the giant new company, but throw 40
| people into unemployment. That is bad for an economy.
|
| Multiply that by all of the functions of a company, and
| you understand why the federal government and politicians
| put so much attention and resources into helping small
| and medium businesses.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| If true, I don't understand how this is surprising. Google has
| been using all possible tactics to convince users to give them
| ("sync") all their data, including bookmarks and passwords. So
| from the point of view of Nadella, why should MS be any
| different?
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Google has been far more trustworthy. Is there any evidence
| they do anything with your data except match it to ads via
| algorithm?
|
| I've had Hotmail accounts hacked back in the day, never
| happened with Gmail. MS is insidious in trying to keep
| squeezing more from you and automatically adding your account
| to everything. Google just gives me useful stuff, and even
| takes away all ads on the products I've paid for. With MS
| there's still ads in paid products.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| It's possible to be OK sharing information with one company but
| but not another? Especially when MS has a large history of
| security f'ups.
| kps wrote:
| Chrome lets you locally encrypt sync'd data with a password.
| vadfa wrote:
| One more reason not to log in using your Microsoft account at
| all.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Sucks that Windows forcibly pairs your local account and
| Microsoft account every once in a while with no opt-out.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There is a solution to this even if you're on Windows, isn't
| there?
|
| Never create a Microsoft account. At all.
|
| At least until they stop allowing that for products you're
| already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if it hasn't
| already happened.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > At least until they stop allowing that for products
| you're already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if
| it hasn't already happened.
|
| I've been forced to enter a Microsoft account to log in to
| my computer after an update. No thought toward the
| possibility that I may need to use the computer I'm in
| front of to reset the password to that account. No
| Microsoft account, no getting past that screen.
|
| I had to boot into Linux to reset my microsoft account so I
| could log into windows. I don't even.
| beckingz wrote:
| This nearly bricked one of my laptops because it changed the
| local password login to use the microsoft account.
| [deleted]
| kop316 wrote:
| Microsoft makes this extremely difficult, even for an offline
| account.
|
| If you log into any Microsoft product (Office, Teams, Skype
| OneDrive, etc), Windows forces you to log into everything else.
|
| This is especially infuriating with Office, as they make it
| extremely difficult to get a standalone product, they very
| aggressively push Office 364, so you are forced to log into
| Office to even use it.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Office 364
|
| I think you're using an old version ;)
| dotancohen wrote:
| No, he just had downtime on a day other than February 29th!
| concinds wrote:
| As of Windows 10 (haven't tried on 11) it asks if you want to
| log in with a single app, or the whole user account. I think
| that's great. Contrast that with Apple, that forces you to
| login to iCloud (and link your computer's serial with your
| iCloud account) whenever you log in to the App Store, and
| requires an Apple ID to download free apps from the App
| Store, AND enables all iCloud sync options on by default
| whenever you are logged into iCloud (i.e. you login to the
| app store, now by default your Stocks, Siri info, Contacts, a
| bunch of app preferences through iCloud Drive, now get synced
| without any consent).
| kop316 wrote:
| Hmm...I'll have to look into this, thanks! I did not see an
| option for that that was obvious to me.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Can confirm it's the same on 11 as well, "No, sign in to
| this app only" is the trick
| https://i.imgur.com/hm8tR9k.png. If you're using a
| personal account for the sign in I don't think the
| checkbox towards the top is there but otherwise the
| window is the same.
|
| As is right now I have a local unlinked windows account,
| a work account signed into Office, and a personal account
| signed into the store.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| The only common thing in all of those is Microsoft.
|
| I think the solution to the problem is obvious.
| nikanj wrote:
| There's another common thing in all of those: Computers.
|
| For many people, "Just stop using Microsoft" is about as
| useful as "Just stop using computers"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > For many people, "Just stop using Microsoft" is about
| as useful as "Just stop using computers"
|
| For many people, it isn't. All of those people should
| "just stop using Microsoft."
|
| That not only helps them, it's an act of solidarity with
| the people who are still stuck. Because then alternatives
| have more market share and vendors have to support
| platforms that aren't Microsoft, which helps the stuck
| people extricate themselves tomorrow.
|
| Do it if you can. Even if it's a little bit of work.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I've used Open Office, Go Office, and LibreOffice
| exclusively since 2005. It used to be a real hassle, but
| today it is far less so.
|
| MS Office's Excel is better than LibreOffice Calc, and
| Powerpoint is far, far better than LibreOffice Present.
| But LibreOffice Writer is much easier to use than MS
| Office Word. That's not just my opinion - everyone who
| tries it and does not need some esoteric Word-only
| functionality agrees. Except for one thing:
| collaboration. MS Word is, from what I'm told, still
| better for collaboration.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| go on welfare because the people telling you what
| applications to use as part of your day to day work want
| Microsoft!
| gruez wrote:
| >If you log into any Microsoft product (Office, Teams, Skype
| OneDrive, etc), Windows forces you to log into everything
| else.
|
| No? Unless something changed, I specifically remember it
| asking me whether I wanted to sign into the OS, or that app
| only.
| Borrible wrote:
| Of course they don't steal anything from you.
|
| They just preserve your precious little soul. To your best
| interest. Which may coincidentially be in their best interest. A
| friendly customer service, because you happen to honour them
| using their products. And, if you're lucky, even in the best
| interest of people that do protect you against evil forces out
| there in the dark. From time to time they may look into your
| precious little soul lying down on the ocean ground in an
| underwater Microsoft data center, to see if all is well with you.
|
| Think about it, sometimes you yourself don't know you're part of
| those forces, but Microsoft and those other people might know.
| And they can help you.
|
| They are like shepherds to their flock.
|
| Some may call it customer profiling, customer-retention or even
| vendor lock-in, mass surveillance and other ugly terms, but I
| tell you it is love.
|
| Yes, pure caring and love. You may not understand that at first.
| Like Apple had to learn bitterly recently. But I tell you, in the
| end, with their help, there will be just shiny happy people
| around you.
|
| Amen.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Where do "we" want to go today?
| anon9001 wrote:
| Developers! Developers! Developers!
| 1cvmask wrote:
| From the article:
|
| Has this happened to anyone else, or was this user error of some
| sort? If this is real, can some reporter write about it?
|
| (Not that "user error" is a good justification. Any system where
| making a simple mistake means that you've forever lost your
| privacy isn't a good one. We see this same situation with sharing
| contact lists with apps on smartphones. Apps will repeatedly ask,
| and only need you to accidentally click "okay" once.)
|
| EDITED TO ADD: It's actually worse than I thought. Edge urges
| users to store passwords, ID numbers, and even passport numbers,
| all of which get uploaded to Microsoft by default when synch is
| enabled.
|
| -
|
| But Microsoft at their build conference said they are a woke
| corporation:
|
| https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456344147103653889
|
| Or maybe the performative art of being a woke altruistic
| corporation is the subterfuge for being evil.
| jadbox wrote:
| Is it at least end to end encrypted?
| mgh2 wrote:
| All companies play politics to gain customer's hearts and minds
| ($$$). All FAANGs play this game masterfully.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Google's slogan was once: "Do no evil"
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| No, it was "don' be evil." You can do a lot of evil and
| still not _be_ evil if you adopt a utilitarian position and
| claim that the good you 've done outweighs it.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Why does the presenters describe their appearance and clothes?
| Is that supposed to be some sort of accessibility thing (for
| blind people)? If so, how does it help blind people to know
| that someones top is sleeveless and that they have dark hair?
| gruez wrote:
| >Is that supposed to be some sort of accessibility thing
|
| Probably. I remember being on some microsoft site a few
| months ago, and noticed all the photos had alt-text
| describing their contents.
| SahAssar wrote:
| For photos I can understand it (if they contain meaningful
| content), but to me this seems like a text-to-speech tool
| saying "a black button with white text, slightly rounded
| borders that sits close to the preceding text and slightly
| down from the menu above" instead of stating the buttons
| text or aria-label.
| hbarka wrote:
| I'm lamenting Google's decision to stop supporting Google
| Bookmarks. It was my personal search archive, simple and in the
| cloud.
| foobarbaz33 wrote:
| More firm than ever in my decision to store bookmarks in a
| simple, grep-able text file.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I like Firefox's bookmarks. You can add tags to each bookmark,
| which can make sorting and finding them much easier.
|
| I also use a default bookmark folder, so all new bookmarks just
| go into that one folder, with the most recent at the top of the
| folder. That means I'm relying more on the position, tags, and
| naming to find a bookmark, rather than a position in a
| hierarchy.
|
| I keep meaning to research how to extract/sync from the SQLite
| database that Firefox uses for bookmarks. I feel like there's a
| lot of unexplored personal value to one's bookmarks and
| history.
| dandanua wrote:
| Firefox bookmarks tagging is a killer feature for me. I even
| bookmark some local files through it. Too bad it doesn't work
| on mobile.
| bloopernova wrote:
| What I'd like to be able to do is unify the tags between
| Firefox and my Emacs org-roam/org-mode data. I think it
| could be useful to be able to see a view of which bookmarks
| have the same tags as the document I'm viewing, and vice-
| versa. Plus a timeline of tags/bookmarks/documents/pages
| could further bring to light some relationships between
| information. For instance, "around the time I was writing
| lots of stuff about AWS IAM roles, I bookmarked these
| pages, read these sites, browsed these tags".
|
| It's only a half-formed idea and unfortunately it'd require
| both lots of Emacs elisp work _and_ an extension in
| Firefox.
| gbrindisi wrote:
| I wanted to do the same, and in the end gave up in favour
| of a simpler approach: I drop the bookmarks in my notes,
| I can tag as I please, less moving parts and it's easier
| to search. But I would still like to see someone figuring
| this out!
| lswank wrote:
| I didn't know this before, but wow, now I really like
| Firefox's bookmarks. I feel like there's a lot of unexplored
| personal value to one's bookmarks and history. Thank you for
| your comment.
|
| I've been using Firefox for years, but I've never paid
| attention too this before. I just tested this and yeah . . .
| I am going to be using this a lot.
|
| This comment was generated by GPT-3 because somehow signing
| up for the sandbox and telling it to rewrite my comment was
| more fulfilling than just typing a comment. I tried to get it
| to give you a generic thanks with specifics of how I would
| use this . . . but GPT-3 kinda sucks for this. Oh, well.
| Tagbert wrote:
| You can export your FF bookmarks to an html file and you can
| backup your FF bookmarks to a json file.
| depingus wrote:
| I switched to xBrowserSync a while back and its been a game
| changer. Your bookmarks are encrypted on the client before
| uploading and you can self-host your own server if you want. My
| bookmarks now live independently from my browser. Between that
| and BitWarden for passwords, I am no longer tied to any browser
| on any device. Its so easy to browser hop now. Also...turns out
| keeping scores of folders, inside folders, inside more folders
| is a terrible way to organize bookmarks; Tags w/ search is the
| way to go!
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Happened to me about a week ago. When I opened the browser, a
| notification popped up telling me "Your bookmarks are now being
| synced". There was an option to turn this off, which I did, but I
| have to assume that the bookmarks were already sent off to
| Microsoft.
|
| There's nothing remarkable in my bookmarks. I've never really
| found it to be a useful tool beyond a way of marking things I
| want to check out again soon. I don't use it for day to day
| links. I do recall going through this with Chrome and Firefox in
| the past when they pushed syncing as a huge wonderful benefit for
| me and I had no interest at all. I'm sure some people have
| bookmarks as part of their personal workflow and are grateful to
| have this syncing ability for multiple devices. That's great for
| them but all vendors need a very strick opt-in policy, not a
| "we're so sure you're going to love this that we turned it on for
| you" scheme.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be
| promoting me to do it on new installs.
| sharken wrote:
| One of the comments on that link has offered this URL where Force
| Sync is mentioned.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-p...
|
| To me it's absolutely mind boggling the amount of text in that
| link.
|
| There are nearly 100.000 words, which is the same as:
|
| A 100,000 word count will create about 200 pages single-spaced or
| 400 pages double-spaced when using normal margins (1'') and 12
| pt. Arial or Times New Roman font.
|
| Reference https://capitalizemytitle.com/page-count/100000-words/
| silverpepsi wrote:
| Seems a bit late to make hoopla about a much more minor
| infraction.
|
| With Onedrive I'm facing the nightmare that you are not allowed
| to configure it until syncing is in progress. If you pause
| syncing immediately on install, you're not allowed to change
| settings to prevent said syncing from happening.
|
| I have a mix of personal and business data on there. This has
| been the case for a few years now but recently got worse.
| Basically, I don't want my hard drive contaminated with this data
| when going through customs, that's why I am traveling with a
| FRESHLY FORMATTED AND REINSTALLED laptop. And what does MS do?
| Coerce me into all this data's metadata touching down on a drive
| I have no intention of ever letting touch it. Makes my blood
| boil. It's a well documented fact these idiots in customs will
| infringe your privacy for shits and giggles and harass you about
| stuff that has nothing to do with any valid legal concern. Thanks
| Microsoft.
| seized wrote:
| This isn't really a product issue. Separate your data properly,
| uninstall or disable the OneDrive client and use the web
| version if you need something, use a different product.... Not
| everything has to bend to your "unique" needs.
|
| And it's hard to take your complaint or needs seriously when it
| starts out with mixing personal and business data.
| tata71 wrote:
| > Be HN commenter
|
| > Try to avoid own data being on machine
|
| > Log into Microsoft cloud account
|
| > ???
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| I mean, Windows shouldn't be this user-hostile in the first
| place. Most of it is literally not designed for "HN
| commenters".
| mobilemidget wrote:
| I believe they scrape all links pasted in Skype conversations too
| tata71 wrote:
| and all filenames in the OS.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Everybody scrape all links. Mostly for the preview function.
| Just s3nd a unique url with some messengers or mail and look at
| the serverlogs.
|
| Thats also a reason to use even a simple login.
| rolph wrote:
| if they do scrape all the links in skype conversations, i have
| an idea that would keep them very busy, such as a bot that has
| extensive skype discussions about links
| lrem wrote:
| You would be neither the first nor the last with an idea how
| to DOS Microsoft. Being the receiving end of ideas like that
| is bread and butter for any of the tech megacorps.
| rolph wrote:
| i woudnt exactly say its a DOS, it would be an ^ample^
| collection of URLs provided to any skype user that
| requested it. If somescript scrapes every instance of that
| list everytime it shows up in a conversation, there had
| better be a limit to the bandwidth expended
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5837690
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