[HN Gopher] Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint ...
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Microsoft is phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides
Author : memorable
Score : 640 points
Date : 2022-11-07 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rogermexico.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (rogermexico.bearblog.dev)
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| This seems kind of shocking, is MS really hoarding the trade
| secrets of like every Fortune 500 company on their servers?
| NicoleJO wrote:
| Microsft windows store does the same thing, but worse.
|
| Check out the developer panel to see for yourself.
|
| Windows store downloads are accompanied by mouse trackers,
| keyloggers, and more.
| dhruvdh wrote:
| PowerPoint has a feature where it uses machine learning to
| suggest layout and design changes for your content. This feature
| most likely can be turned off, but of course it needs some data
| on what's on your slide to suggest changes.
|
| I hope this submission is flagged and removed. Just because you
| don't like Microsoft doesn't mean such misrepresentation is okay.
| pjc50 wrote:
| So you agree that Microsoft sends the content of your
| Powerpoint slides (and, by extension, all DoD powerpoint
| slides, since they're notorious users of the application) to
| Microsoft?
| dislikedtom2 wrote:
| It's implied that he does not agree since he claims that the
| claim is misrepresentation.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > and, by extension, all DoD powerpoint slides, since they're
| notorious users of the application
|
| This is a pretty huge exaggeration here. Closed rooms exists
| and are used when appropriate.
|
| And just because something is enabled in the consumer version
| by default does not imply it's enabled and available in
| enterprise settings. Last time I dug through the office GPO
| templates - basically every phone home feature was easily
| disabled on an org level if desired.
|
| Further - what do you think something like Google Slides is
| doing with your data? It's _ALL_ stored on Google 's servers
| by default.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Right; when I saw title I assumed Designer was going to be the
| context. I've also observed that Designer only works when I'm
| online, so I figured out that it uses external servers to
| generate suggestions.
|
| I suppose it could/should be more obvious/explicit on the
| Designer pane itself, something like "This is an online feature
| that uses Microsoft's servers to generate recommendations", or
| a more user-friendly language.
|
| Note however that the article is light on details; does it send
| a full content of slides? Some hash of text and images? A non-
| identifiable abstraction of layers involved? This could be done
| well or poorly.
|
| (I don't think the submission should be _flagged_ FWIW, but I
| agree that it 's not of good enough quality to deserve great
| ranking; but that's of course subjective:)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I don't really care that it has a feature that's the reason
| they're sending data off to Microsoft, I care that they're
| sending data off to Microsoft and it's not blatantly obvious to
| the user.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| When you turn on the feature it is VERY specific that it
| sends the data to external servers. There's a disclaimer and
| everything, right in front of the user.
|
| Now, is it a glaring red pop-up? No. But IT department's can
| also choose to disable the feature if they don't want their
| company to use it.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > The first time you try out Designer, it may ask your
| permission to get design ideas for you. If you want to use
| Designer, select Turn on.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/topic/53c77d7b-dc40-45c2...
|
| Considering it has to be explicitly enabled and includes a
| privacy policy, I'm going to say it's "blatantly obvious" to
| the user.
| planede wrote:
| > The first time you try out Designer, it may ask your
| permission to get design ideas for you.
|
| I don't know the wording for the dialog itself, so I will
| comment on this wording instead.
|
| Asking permission to "get design ideas for you" is
| absolutely wrong. They are asking permission for the wrong
| thing. They should be asking permission to "collect content
| from your slides". They can then explain that the upside is
| that in return you get access to design ideas.
|
| Depending on the context of the dialog an appropriate
| wording would be something along the lines of this: "In
| order to access design ideas, up-to-date slide contents
| need to be regularly sent to Microsoft servers. <Agree>
| <Cancel>".
|
| edit:
|
| - Would you like some chocolate sprinkles with that ice
| cream?
|
| - Sure!
|
| - Cool, <while sprinkling chocolate on your ice cream> it
| will cost $100 and your left kidney.
| pannSun wrote:
| > it may ask your permission to get design ideas for you.
|
| > get
|
| We're not worried about _get_ , but about _send_. Funny how
| they managed to omit the most worrisome term from their
| permission dialogue, huh?
| reitanqild wrote:
| > to get design ideas for you.
|
| This statement asks for permission to fetch data, not to
| upload my data.
|
| Uploading data based on this statement is a blantant
| violation of customer expectations, so obvious you don't
| need to be neither a ux expert nor a lawyer to see it, you
| just need to read carefully.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I am genuinely curious as to why the MacOS version says
| "The first time you try out Designer, it asks your
| permission to get design ideas for you." and the Windows
| version says "The first time you try out Designer, it may
| ask your permission to get design ideas for you."
|
| Can Microsoft use some other setting in Windows as
| justification for bypassing the permission step?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Maybe there's a Group Policy setting that can
| automatically enable it?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Funny, I would have read that page and said that it was
| blatantly not obvious what was going on except that the
| privacy policy call out was a red flag. I wouldn't have
| thought anything of it needing to be enabled, lots of
| features are things that you might not want enabled by
| default. And having a privacy policy is definitely a red
| flag but it still doesn't say "we're going to send the
| content of your slides to Microsoft for processing".
|
| In short, I pretty strongly disagree. I think that if you
| had a hundred users look at that page or click through
| enabling the feature, and then asked afterwards how many of
| them thought that the feature was going to send their
| slides to Microsoft, at least 50 of them would be very
| surprised.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| That is a help page guiding the user on how to use the
| feature. Of course it's going to be "hidden" when turning
| on the feature is the smallest step to using it.
|
| If to use the feature you are explicitly asked to turn it
| on, with an option to view a privacy policy, that is
| "blatantly obvious". It isn't hidden or buried under a
| dozen other settings when you install PowerPoint, it's
| done at time of use.
|
| How, exactly, would you want it to be more obvious? A big
| red box every time the feature is mentioned in the help
| site? Be realistic here; in terms of user consent this is
| perfectly fine.
| pavon wrote:
| IT has disabled the feature for us, and quick googling
| didn't turn up any screen shots, so I can't see the
| prompt myself, but given how it is described it doesn't
| seem adequate to me. When software asks permission it
| needs to say what it is asking permission for. Something
| like: "This feature will send your slide contents to
| Microsoft's cloud servers to search for relevant design
| ideas. See our Privacy Policy for more information on how
| we protect your data". It doesn't need red flashing
| lights, but the user shouldn't have to dig around to
| determine what/why the program is asking confirmation.
| pavon wrote:
| Okay, I found a screenshot of the request[1], and I don't
| think it is clearly communicating to the user what they
| are agreeing to. On the good side, they do clearly
| describe which information is involved (search terms and
| document content), but on the bad side it isn't clear
| about what is being done with that information. In
| particular, for over 20 years Microsoft had used "Office"
| to mean a piece of software running on your own computer,
| so saying that "Office" needs to "collect" information
| doesn't clearly convey the idea that your documents being
| sent over the internet.
|
| [1] https://slidehunter.com/how-to-automatically-design-
| slides-w...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > If to use the feature you are explicitly asked to turn
| it on, with an option to view a privacy policy, that is
| "blatantly obvious".
|
| I disagree.
|
| > How, exactly, would you want it to be more obvious? A
| big red box every time the feature is mentioned in the
| help site?
|
| Yes, more or less. I would be perfectly happy with a
| single red box at the top that says this feature sends
| the contents of your slide to Microsoft. I am _not_ okay
| with linking to a privacy policy that nobody 's going to
| read and pretending that that's informed consent.
| kenjackson wrote:
| > Yes, more or less. I would be perfectly happy with a
| single red box at the top that says this feature sends
| the contents of your slide to Microsoft.
|
| As a user I'd like the ability to opt-in/out of this. I
| much prefer a privacy policy that captures all of it for
| the app. Otherwise, I have red boxes showing up non-stop
| using most apps. Can you imagine the sheer number of red
| boxes you'd get for Netflix the first few times you use
| it!
| JadeNB wrote:
| > As a user I'd like the ability to opt-in/out of this. I
| much prefer a privacy policy that captures all of it for
| the app. Otherwise, I have red boxes showing up non-stop
| using most apps. Can you imagine the sheer number of red
| boxes you'd get for Netflix the first few times you use
| it!
|
| Of course it's impractical in today's environment, but I
| think we'd be in a much better place if we'd established
| early on the idea that a piece of software that massively
| violates your privacy (which is to say, all of them,
| nowadays) comes laden with a terrifying number of red
| boxes when you read its privacy policy.
| dagurp wrote:
| What's the misrepresentation? They pointed out that Microsoft
| is sending your data and you're not disputing that.
| noselasd wrote:
| I don't think he implied that your data gets sent out.
|
| We don't really know yet if your data/powerpoint content is
| sent to Microsoft, or if Powerpoint just goes out and looks
| for layouts, fonts, etc. without communicating any of your
| text.
| Justin_K wrote:
| This shouldn't be software behavior by default. Why should it
| be flagged?
| dhruvdh wrote:
| This is not default behavior, it lets you choose to enable
| this feature the first time you open the Design tab.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| The article has a low signal-to-noise ratio. It is just a
| single paragraph claim that doesn't delve into anything nor
| inform its audience of anything. Why shouldn't it be flagged?
|
| If this claim was posted as a HN comment without citation or
| further explanation it would likely get flagged, why are
| submissions held to a LOWER standard?
| rcarmo wrote:
| The entire blog is this one post, so that signal-to-noise
| ratio is... a singularity by now.
| mymyairduster wrote:
| Yeah..
| [deleted]
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It
| degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're
| worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look
| at the data.
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| discretion22 wrote:
| > I hope this submission is flagged and removed. Just because
| you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean such misrepresentation is
| okay.
|
| I don't think we know the motivation of the submitter and we
| should not assume any motivation beyond introducing the link to
| the community to consider and discuss the content.
|
| The article is very brief and seems to highlight that the
| designer suggestion needs to submit your slide content to make
| the suggestion. The question as to whether we consented
| suggests that we have (through the usual click through), but,
| to me, it is really asking something like 'do we understand the
| implications of our decision to consent?'.
|
| I don't see anything being misrepresented nor do I infer there
| is some sort of anti-Microsoft (nor anti-anyone/anything) in
| the article. It does seem to suggest there is something for
| people to consider in that we often 'consent' without really
| thinking through the outcomes of what is supposed to be our
| willing, informed consent.
|
| Too often we split into binary extremes when we should really
| take time to be thoughtful and considerate of questions being
| posed and where that consideration takes us and helps us to
| find insights and opportunities to improve ourselves. I
| encourage people to not automatically jump to our 'team
| position' (whatever that is).
| dhruvdh wrote:
| It does not highlight that the designer suggestion needs to
| submit your slide content. "Designer" is the name of a tab on
| PowerPoint.
| rcarmo wrote:
| "Automatically show me design ideas" is a pretty visible option
| in Preferences (looking at my Mac here, can check Windows
| later, but I remember turning that off on my new laptop since I
| just never _use_ the suggestions and they came up when I was
| traveling and on slow Wi-Fi).
|
| I also believe it can be managed by policy.
|
| MS FTE here, I have no direct awareness of how the feature
| works and am not affiiliated with Office - but I'm sad that
| something meant to _help_ people (if this raises hackles, I
| don't want to see what the OP says about the accessibility
| checks) is used to bludgeon my colleagues publicly.
| pavon wrote:
| If that is the feature in question, neither the app itself,
| nor the online help shown when clicking "About PowerPoint
| Designer" give any indication that your slide contents data
| will be sent to MS.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Have you actually used the thing? Again, I'm an MS FTE and
| not privy to the internals, but it gives you _layouts_ with
| your local text filled in. It's a visual template
| suggestion engine, it doesn't _need_ your text to work.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| "We use MS products for our business because it provides
| enterprise level security"
| reaperducer wrote:
| About ten years ago, I worked at a company where we were
| prohibited from using any Microsoft products at all -- in the
| name of security.
|
| When I tell Windows-centric tech people that these days, they
| can't wrap their brains around it. There is no institutional
| memory of Microsoft's dumpster fire days.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| On Windows there is Glasswire[0] for blocking applications that
| phone home. Just find the offending process and block it. It's
| not a perfect solution though as Windows 10/11 has hundreds of
| things that phone home and blocking them has unintended side
| effects (things crash randomly if they can't talk to the
| Internet).
|
| [0] https://www.glasswire.com/
| ttrrooppeerr wrote:
| > Did we consent to this?
|
| I did. I guess the author didn't read the T&Cs.
| soganess wrote:
| Chief Justice(of the United States) John Roberts suggested that
| he doesn't read them.
|
| Trying to call people out for not doing so or not understanding
| the technological reason why data is sent doesn't seem
| productive.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| With all data stored on a sharepoint or onedrive, and powerpoint
| running in a browser... where's the news?
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| This isn't a black/white issue. How about we let each person
| evaluate it for themselves? I find this feature useful, but if I
| were a sysadmin, I'd probably block it. Not because I don't trust
| MS, but just that it opens up a vector that I would not want to
| manage.
| sheerun wrote:
| The next era will be of Offline Apps because of stuff like this
| vnorilo wrote:
| I'm kind or envisioning some young bright engineer realizing
| they could just store some files locally. "It's like.. we don't
| need a backend at all!"
| layer8 wrote:
| We are lucky that physics is limiting the latency and
| bandwidth of the internet, since otherwise local storage
| could truly disappear.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Happened the other day on HN. "Imagine we could use this to
| stream movies to astronauts on their way to Mars" / "well...
| you know local storage is a thing, right?".
|
| I don't have a link to that exchange handy, but this for the
| first time drove home to me the realization that we have a
| whole generation of people brought up on Internet streaming
| services, who may not even realize that it's not only
| _possible_ for the media to be stored locally on their
| machines, but it 's in fact _the natural state_ for data.
| itronitron wrote:
| And we'll need a programming language that we can write our
| application in once but will still run on the different
| operating systems.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Most programming languages are like that now.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| FOSS and offline-first is the future.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| 2023 is the year of Linux on the desktop?
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Every year is the year of the Linux desktop because the
| marketshare is ever growing. Linux is not a one-hit wonder.
| trelane wrote:
| It was quite some time ago. You didn't get the memo?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| "The future is already here - it's just not evenly
| distributed."
| snapcaster wrote:
| Yes, along with Beowulf clusters to run our infrastructure
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Joking aside I think we are getting close, Photon did a lot
| to bridge with Windows in terms of gaming, GUI is often
| times at least on par with Windows/MacOS, if not better
| (obviously thats subjective), and reliability/performance
| has already been there for a while.
|
| That being said, I still think theres more work to do, and
| arguably the hardest work is ahead.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| Linux is on par with Windows kind of but not really. It's
| a little ghetto
|
| For example, desktop environments are just wonky and
| buggy most the time, random games don't work, WINE is the
| worst piece of software on the planet, drivers suck,
| other random weird issues.
| Arnavion wrote:
| All of those are true of Windows too.
| gabrielgio wrote:
| > For example, desktop environments are just wonky and
| buggy most the time, random games don't work, WINE is the
| worst piece of software on the planet, drivers suck,
| other random weird issues.
|
| When was the last time you have tried linux? With
| exception of wine, which on its pure form is indeed
| annoying, nothing else is true. Gnome/KDE/Cinnamon are
| just fine (not my cup of tea but far from buggy/wonky). I
| have no problem gaming even on i3. For driver on many
| distro you can check a box to install the proprietary
| Nvidia driver.
|
| You can use lutris to easy the pain of wine, and if you
| use proton on steam you are just have to click install
| like windows. You can check here the compatibility:
|
| https://www.protondb.com/
|
| Also let's not pretend that windows is walk in the park.
| I have had my share of problems with drives/games not
| working on windows as well. That is just the nature of
| trying to run games on PC. It ain't never gonna be as
| easy as on consoles.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I think i've finally reached that point where the latest trend
| just doesn't make sense to me. In this day and age of ever
| increasing connectivity and bandwidth offline first web
| applications just don't make sense. Take an offline-first app
| running in your browser and then cover the address bar and
| buttons with a sheet of paper, now you have an Electron app.
| Why not just use Electron if a desktop/unconnected webapp is
| what you want to do? Actually, i suppose if the front-end guys
| just wanted to get rid of the back-end guys then an offline
| first trend would be a way to further that along haha.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| quite the opposite. the next era will be online-only SaaS apps
| accessed via rented thin clients tied to your real identity.
|
| and your dangerous general purpose legacy hardware will not
| save you from that, as it will be impossible to access the
| internet with a device that doesn't disclose your identity. to
| combat disinformation and hate speech, of course.
|
| you vill ovn nothing, und you vill be happy.
| trelane wrote:
| > as it will be impossible to access the internet with a
| device that doesn't disclose your identity.
|
| and prove the software that's supposed to be running is
| running.
| dougmwne wrote:
| This seems blindingly obvious? They use a cloud powered feature,
| then complain that information is sent to the cloud? According to
| this help article using designer for the first time will request
| permissions.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-profession...
| jsmith99 wrote:
| Yes, this is click bait. There is a message you have to approve
| to turn on 'connected experiences'.
| retox wrote:
| From the 'article'
|
| >Fire up PowerPoint. Turn off all the cloud options.
| dougmwne wrote:
| No, this is specifically a cloud feature and you are warned
| and asked for permissions when you access it for the first
| time.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I always assumed they built these features by scraping publicly
| available powerpoint presentations using their index from Bing.
| twstdzppr wrote:
| Y'all sound a little too paranoid. Chill
| CarbonCycles wrote:
| This is a fascinating multi-faceted problem...there is the
| outright concern of how much of the data is being exposed, but
| there is also a much more subtle action at play.
|
| It appears that MS is using our data to continuously train their
| large DL networks to provide these recommendations...so what is
| to prevent a bad actor from cunningly constructing an asset that
| may trick the recommender into leaking insights from another
| company (or possibly poisoning the network itself)? These
| adversarial attacks have been well documented in academia.
| dudeinhawaii wrote:
| This post seems to lack any useful information to come to the
| conclusion of "phoning home the content of PowerPoint slides".
| That said, if you use the tool in question, you'll notice that it
| only suggests layouts and these seem to be fairly generic. They
| don't seem to take into account the content so much as how the
| content is laid out.
|
| This could be as "simple" as Microsoft phoning home with the
| layout of the data (bullets vs title vs paragraph of text)
| combined with perhaps hash codes of any topical features (things
| that indicate technology vs food).
|
| I've never been "surprised" by the feature the way I am with
| Github Copilot where it sometimes feels like it's reading my
| mind. The Designer is just a simple way to click a button and get
| back 5+ recommendations on how you can layout the data.
|
| Without some kind of evidence, my explanation is just as valid as
| the blog. That which can be asserted without evidence can be
| dismissed without evidence.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| [deleted]
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| So when US politicians say TikTok needs to be banned because it's
| effectively spyware, why are they silent when the same happens
| from US companies
| Someone1234 wrote:
| This is a one paragraph claim that doesn't provide resources to
| show that their claim has basis. It could very well be entirely
| accurate, but there's no information contained here to know one
| way or the other.
|
| For example there have been numerous claims made previously that
| link ANY network traffic to a supposed invasion of privacy, but
| once you delve into the underlying traffic it isn't nearly as
| nefarious as it initially seemed.
|
| This article is telling you to "open up the network monitor of
| your choice" but network traffic and CONTENT are apples Vs.
| oranges, and yet we're meant to draw conclusions from that? We're
| meant to know Microsoft are taking your slide's content whole-
| hog? Isn't that yet to be determined?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Powerpoint indicates that message content is being used for
| design proposals in the consent prompt.
|
| The Microsoft website says it "analyses your data":
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/privacy/conne...
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| Can Wireshark render this in PCAP?
|
| Would it just be encoded and Wireshark could decode it out of
| the box?
| sammy2255 wrote:
| I was expecting at LEAST some screenshots lol
| throwaw20221107 wrote:
| Yes. OP's post doesn't present any evidence that those
| packets being sent actually contain your personal data. Show
| us some data from an actual packet or GTFO.
|
| That being said, I don't doubt that they do :)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Obtaining user data should be a horrifying prospect for
| companies. They should obsessively work for alternative ways to
| not need it for their goals. And when they need it, to be
| ridiculously careful about it. (you could substitute "user data"
| for "application state" here)
|
| But it's not because there aren't sufficient consequences. Memory
| leaks don't properly crash the company as they should.
| danuker wrote:
| > Memory leaks
|
| I suspect you mean data leaks, in the context of your comment.
| But memory leaks should be a thing of the past also - they hint
| at the quality of the underlying code.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > Memory leaks don't properly crash the company as they should.
|
| Typically, companies just worry about about liability leaks.
| Which they take seriously enough to dedicate a lot of lawyer
| time to plugging redundantly with innocuously vague disclosure
| wording, terms of service wording, difficult to find and
| inconvenient to use opt-out tools, etc.
| teekert wrote:
| I guess since we all use MS mostly for business purposes we don't
| care so much about privacy. It's something our managers sign off
| on, in the name of security, features and really nice value for
| money. But oh boy, do they know a lot about us and our
| businesses. I mean, my office apps have "LinkedIn services" on by
| default [0], so they are linking all the things to all the
| things.
|
| [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/linkedin-in-
| micro...
| Mo3 wrote:
| I wonder what the NSA or any other of these three-letter agencies
| think about that, I can remember much of the leaked information
| consisting of Powerpoint slides.
| [deleted]
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| It sounds (from other comments in this thread) like there's an
| org-level way to disable it, so they probably just use that to
| force it off.
| newsclues wrote:
| They probably have access to the data feed.
| RajT88 wrote:
| This doesn't bother me too much (but it would if I worked at a
| different company - I'd have concerns over company secrets). It's
| the browsing history which is by default sent to GOOG/MSFT which
| bugs me. On by default, and I'd swear I've seen it get reset on
| Chrome.
|
| Chrome:
|
| Settings > Sync and Google Services > Make searches and browsing
| better
|
| Edge:
|
| Settings > Privacy, Search and services > Personalize your web
| experience
| dr-detroit wrote:
| nunobrito wrote:
| Office itself is a cloud service nowadays. That phoning home
| feature is part of the online saving so that you can resume work
| from a browser or contribute collaboratively with other users
| across the network like a google docs, but on the desktop.
|
| Does it beam home? Yes Do I like it? No
|
| We have LibreOffice for decades. Be the change.
| squokko wrote:
| Oh, the humanity! When you CLICK THE SLIDE DESIGNER button it
| sends your slides to a Slide Designer service? What hath God
| wrought?
| dagmx wrote:
| This post is dubious at best. It makes a "do your own research
| claim" without sharing anything concrete.
|
| Yet, this plays into people's own confirmation biases so it's
| already being taken verbatim by people here.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31727293
| Springtime wrote:
| I'd too be interested in further analysis (eg: ruling out
| false alarms, such as some update check) so that I can say to
| others with more certainty that something is of potential
| concern, rather than it being shot down later if someone does
| a more rigorous analysis.
|
| Just because one could say a company has done controversial
| things before doesn't mean there's no benefit in verifying
| claims.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's in their TOS and stated as a feature.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509159
|
| There's an expression, paraphrased as "when someone tells
| you who they are, believe them."
| Springtime wrote:
| I mean, it's fine if one is personally satisfied with not
| explicitly having evidence of the specific alleged data
| collection here, but speaking from experience when the
| time comes and people inevitably prod further for sources
| and only hand-wavy arguments can be produced I've found
| it's not the strongest/most compelling result for
| motivating a potential change of behavior.
|
| Anyone here _could_ believe this is occurring and it
| wouldn 't likely surprise them but actually knowing
| concretely can have the effect of changing things.
| Consider the difference between people assuming various
| things about the NSA pre-Snowden vs post leaks and how it
| affected change (or at the least a better basis for it).
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Agreed, yet it's not the first time but the hundredth.
| roody15 wrote:
| The future of personal computing is really dark these days. I
| just attended an apple event for education and government. The
| amount of data tracking and the standardization/normalization of
| this behavior is dystopian.
|
| What happened to computers being just fun and a source of
| exploration and freedom?
|
| Microsoft, Gooogle, Apple all constantly push their cloud based
| accounts ... where everything is tracked.
| chatterhead wrote:
| That was never a thing. It was always an illusion for the
| advancement of artificial intelligence.
|
| Why do you think they are going so hard on the Semantic Web
| shit? It's not for the disabled - it's for the blind, deaf and
| dumb AI that needs the entire content of the web to train on.
| eastbound wrote:
| On the other hand, Atlassian's stock lost 66% of its value, and
| it could be because investors notice that converting people to
| the Cloud is not currently working.
|
| Atlassian should have better bet on their Server solutions, but
| they really really wanted to be a cloud operator. "For
| strategic reasons." Maybe for governmental reasons, who knows.
| jsty wrote:
| > it could be because investors notice that converting people
| to the Cloud is not currently working
|
| Given the barn storming financial performance of other cloud
| operators and Atlassian's impressive record in
| (un)reliability, I think investors are quite aware that
| converting people to the cloud is going swimmingly most
| places that aren't Atlassian.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's a contentious issue in AppSec where most vendors want
| you to upload source code to their cloud for anything other
| than the most basic of scans. There are SLAs for how long the
| vendors can retain the source code they scan, but many
| clients are not aware of how much of these scans are
| performed manually behind the scenes by humans and how few of
| the vendors have their compliance audited. The possibility of
| a vendor failing to properly secure your source code is risky
| enough on its own, but it being accompanied by detailed
| reports of the security vulnerabilities in the code should
| cause some hair to stand on end.
| lolinder wrote:
| > What happened to computers being just fun and a source of
| exploration and freedom?
|
| Having this experience isn't any harder than it was in the old
| days, it's just that there are so many more people
| participating in computing in some form that it's harder to
| find the people who truly _own_ their computing experience.
|
| The companies that made "personal computing" easy enough for
| the masses want to profit off of that, and they've settled on
| strip mining data and robbing user control as the best way to
| make money. This leaves their mass-marketed version of
| "personal computing" a hollow shell of the original, but it
| doesn't remove the original.
|
| You can still install a privacy-friendly Linux or BSD with only
| FOSS software. You can still self-host your data and retain
| full control and privacy. What you _can 't_ do is benefit from
| the ease of use that mass-market computing provides while still
| retaining full individual control.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Friendly reminder that Apple shares their iCloud data (users'
| docs, pictures, messages, etc.) with the Chinese government in
| exchange for market access:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
| roody15 wrote:
| Apple shares icloud data with the US government as well.
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-
| guidelin...
| the_jeremy wrote:
| I think it's worth clarifying that this is just Chinese
| users, though that was probably clear to most. The Chinese
| and rest-of-the-world iClouds are completely separate.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's very comforting to know that they treat the data of
| their Chinese users with such respect. For a company that
| insists on privacy being a human right, they sure do seem
| to have a flexible definition of human!
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Take it up with the CCP.
|
| Not that I really disagree. I wish more companies would
| refuse to do business under those kinds of conditions.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| So, what is the best way to game the system? Make many offensive
| Power Point presentations or silly layouts and hope the system
| starts to recommend them to others?
| Terretta wrote:
| > _Did we consent to this?_
|
| Yes, explicitly, and not in 60 pages of legalese, in a dialog
| box.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Meanwhile half the slide decks I see are built on Google. You
| can't even get to the slides without phoning home.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Microsoft and Google have OneDrive and Google Drive where most
| slide decks are stored anyway so in some ways this is barely
| newsworthy, on the other hand I guess if someone purposefully
| selected Office instead of Google slides for their presentations
| and thought using an offline app which doesn't save the files to
| their OneDrive would keep them secret might get surprised by this
| feature.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well with Google Slides you know they'll be storing your data
| quite obviously right off the bat. The problem isn't so much
| the storing as the lying.
| ramon wrote:
| That is the price of AI, if you want you can move to an Amish
| town and give up on internet.
| msla wrote:
| And governments think Microsoft doesn't spy on them, that it's
| impossible to hide communications.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Is there any way to tell if your company has opted in? Mine makes
| a _huge_ show of classifying Office documents and barking about
| the policies of what can be shown to outside people. It would be
| hilarious to find out that they 've done this, and are letting
| Microsoft slurp up all the stuff that would get us fired if we
| sent it to an outside email address.
| pavon wrote:
| When I click "Design Ideas" (rightmost icon in Home ribbon), I
| get a prompt that says "This experience is unavailable. Your
| organization's admin has turned off the service required to use
| this experience."
|
| This is despite both the Privacy -> "Turn on Optional connected
| experiences" and "Automatically show me design ideas" options
| being modifiable by me (and give the same results whether
| enabled or not), so I guess the Group Policy options are more
| fine grained.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| In options (under General), I see there's a tick box for the
| feature, and it _is_ checked. I have a button that says
| "Designer," and it seems to work. Nice! Next time someone in
| IT tells me something as moronic as "all web application
| authentication code must be written in C," or that "SAML
| authentication happens by adding a key to the HTTP header,"
| -- both of which have actually happened -- I'll have a nice
| redirection to share.
| g_p wrote:
| I believe this is covered by the "Optional Connected
| Experiences" option. On Mac, this is accessible via the App's
| main menu > Preferences > Privacy.
|
| Looks like these instrucitons should help you check:
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/privacy/optio...
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I've raised this point repeatedly in different orgs. It's met
| with some combination of indifference and lack of understanding
| and not-my-responsibility-ism, but I'm sure that this will
| eventually blow up hard in some company's face - like 9-digit
| settlement for breach of contract, or worse things like breach of
| export control laws.
|
| Enterprise data security on the "MS Office level" at this point
| is like driving 60 mph on a road with no lane dividers. You just
| pray that you never meet a drunk driver or someone texting in
| oncoming traffic who suddenly swerves into your lane. You pray
| that none of your employees click the wrong button and bankrupt
| the company.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| After the issues with Github Copilot and copyrighted code, my
| mind is drawn towards similar inadvertent leaking of
| proprietary information via a model trained on that
| information.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I am surprised you believe the vast majority of power point
| users would be handling information that could even breach
| export laws, or that even the majority of users are making
| power points to present to people of other nations...
|
| I bet that is less than .01% of all power points created in the
| world
| hef19898 wrote:
| +1 for the export control stuff, even if I think it might be
| worse for MS than for the actual customer. At least I hope...
|
| Edit: As was pointed out elsewhere, the phoning home stuff can
| be turned off at org level. So MS will not be affected by any
| fallout of potential export control violations.
| real_dogbert wrote:
| Yeah, I'm surprised every healthcare related business doesn't
| either ban PowerPoint or block this "feature" somehow. HIPAA is
| a hell of a drug.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Powerpoint is the raison d'etre of an entire class of
| middling bureaucrats. They'll fight tooth and nail to protect
| their turf and preserve their role in society.
| ohbtvz wrote:
| Can you point to the provision of HIPAA that this is
| violating?
| AyyWS wrote:
| Yeah. The HIPAA data needs to be encrypted and you have to
| report everyone who has access and you need patient
| permission to share. HIPAA is bad, but ITAR violations put
| you in jail!
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm surprised every healthcare related business doesn't
| either ban PowerPoint or block this "feature" somehow._
|
| I work in healthcare, and the legal department bars me from
| using Google Analytics for HIPAA reasons.
|
| Meanwhile, IT made Chrome the only browser the employees are
| allowed to use on every Windows machine in the org.
| happythebob wrote:
| Did you read the article? I find your jaded sense of
| cynicism to be different than critical thought. I don't see
| any proof in the article posted about its claims. It's just
| very easy to get jaded, cynical people to support the right
| headlines on social media. Hacker News, be better.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| If you work in healthcare you know not to put HIPPA data in
| PowerPoint slides to begin with.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| HIPAA is prescriptive, not descriptive. It does not lay out
| specific standards to reach. Only overly vague and broad
| guidelines. Because of this the industry has more or less
| developed its own best practices that should be good enough.
|
| What this means is that healthcare providers have annual
| audits performed by third parties who check compliance with
| these "best practices" which may or may not have any relation
| to what the lawmakers intended. Its ultimately about checking
| boxes. yada yada security is hard. You can't write a law that
| describes a security posture and expect to be relevant for
| more than a year at most.
| criddell wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to ban putting HIPAA protected
| information into a PowerPoint? We don't ban telephones just
| because an employee can read patient records over the phone.
| real_dogbert wrote:
| Of course putting ePHI in PowerPoint presentations should
| be against policy. The thing is, when it _does_ happen, it
| 's almost always inadvertent. Unfortunately, the "oops, my
| bad" defense isn't valid against violations of the HIPAA
| privacy rule.
| kibwen wrote:
| PowerPoint should be banned for other reasons, we're just
| looking for an excuse. :)
| giaour wrote:
| If you're putting PHI in a presentation, you probably already
| have HIPAA problems.
| californical wrote:
| Sure, but a Word document seems much more likely
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Doctors routinely need to present cases to each other. It
| often involves pictures of the patient and other
| identifying information that is essential to describe the
| case in detail. They need _some_ way to do this.
| jayknight wrote:
| Any healthcare institution is going to have a Business
| Associate Agreement[1] with Microsoft. OneDrive is one of
| the allowed/suggested ways to transmit PHI where I work.
|
| [1] https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-
| entities...
| zmmmmm wrote:
| exactly .... people here suggesting that putting any PHI
| into an office document is intrinsically a HIPAA
| violation are bonkers.
| giaour wrote:
| Isn't the "Design Ideas" request going to the same
| Sharepoint server that is storing your doctor's OneDrive?
|
| I didn't capture and inspect the traffic myself, but http
| s://support.office.com/client/53c77d7b-dc40-45c2-b684-81.
| .. makes the feature sound like it's built into M365 and
| not sending data to some centralized web service.
| autoexec wrote:
| I can't believe how many companies in general are leaking
| massive amounts of sensitive data to Microsoft. With Outlook
| alone MS much have an incredible amount of data on nearly
| every business and an unprecedented amount of insight into
| what they are doing.
|
| Windows 10 has only made the problem worse. The last desktop
| PC I got from my company's IT department had windows 10 on it
| and it was configured to send every last keypress to MS. Why
| they had the Windows 10 keylogger enabled I'll never
| understand, but at least it was easy enough to disable.
| colechristensen wrote:
| HIPAA is tame compared to export control and classified
| information handling. Single occurrences can get you 7 or 8
| digit fines and prison sentences.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > worse things like breach of export control laws
|
| The entire Department of Defense runs on PowerPoint, along with
| all of their contractors. It is not at all uncommon to produce
| slide decks that are either classified or covered by ITAR; this
| is a disaster waiting to happen.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Do they run on the same infrastructure as the rest of us?
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| No. DOD/Gov projects can be hosted in completely secure
| locations, and Azure for Government follows all the
| required standards. Office365/Sharepoint supports FedRAMP
| High. Most agencies are in the process of finishing
| migrations so that both their desktop and online apps use
| the same data in secure cloud installations.
| ssteel wrote:
| Sometimes classified leaks onto unclassified networks via
| human mistake, coincidence, or ignorance. I've literally
| seen classified PowerPoint slides marked unclassified due
| to ignorance. This situation requires security to
| confiscate all machines the data may have leaked to.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| Oh, I've absolutely seen similar, and I don't doubt it's
| extremely commonplace.
|
| But Microsoft generally supports policies for enforced
| disabling features like the one referenced in the post.
| Similarly, data exfiltration from managed to non-managed
| devices is an entire cottage industry. And generally
| that's why govt employees are expected to use separate,
| locked down devices where their compliance-obsessed
| (hopefully, but not always in practice) admin has total
| root.
|
| And I don't believe you're implying this, but certainly I
| don't think it makes sense for companies to _not_ build
| internet/cloud-connected experiences and features just
| because there's a possibility that govt officials won't
| follow their own security policies and best practices.
| itsmillertime4u wrote:
| No they run in isolated networks. No classified DoD
| networks have any access to the internet.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| ITAR regulated information isn't only on the SIPR/High
| side.
|
| From the perspective of Classified Data this SHOULD not
| be a problem, but I highlight the "SHOULD" because
| sometimes these barriers get crossed unintentionally.
| Mission briefings, etc. may accidentally leak info, and
| those are almost all PowerPoint.
|
| For the ITAR data though, that's absolutely not only on
| isolated networks.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| I think the user met the same networks on Microsoft's
| end.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > is like driving 60 mph on a road with no lane dividers
|
| That's somewhat funny, because a Landesstrasse in Germany has
| no lane dividers and the speed limit is 100 km/h (about 60
| mp/h).
|
| Unless I'm misunderstanding and lane dividers mean the printed
| lines.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| the bar to drive in Germany is significantly higher than in
| the united states. Requirements for getting a drivers license
| in America is ridiculously lenient because the American
| lifestyle is completely car centric. taking someone's license
| away is tantamount to sentencing someone to poverty.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I think the other possible effect is the maintenance
| construction work in the Autobahn, which can create an
| upper speed limit anyway.
|
| Also, only about 70% have no speed limit.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn (ctrl+f "No speed
| limit" for a nice table)
| mmmpop wrote:
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Yeah, my point is not that such roads don't exist, they are
| relatively common, as you say.
|
| My point is that your only "defense" against oncoming drivers
| on such roads is to pray that they stay in their own lane.
| This mostly works because people are mostly sober and
| undistracted and not malicious. It is kind of terrifying when
| you start to think about it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| There are a lot of roads in the US with a 55MPH speed limit
| and no lane dividers. In many states, all rural roads with no
| posted speed-limit have an assumed speed limit of 55MPH.
| People drive 60 on such roads all the time.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Where I used to live in Texas, there were two-lane rural
| roads with 75MPH speed limits
| dont__panic wrote:
| Largely true, but worth noting that each state has its own
| speed limit. Vermont, for instance, sets the state non-
| highway speed limit at 50MPH, so you'll almost never find
| 55MPH undivided roads in that state. Colorado, on the other
| hand, has undivided roads with 65MPH speed limits. Much of
| the Midwest and the East Coast tend to set their limits at
| 55MPH, though.
| rjsw wrote:
| Same speed limit in the UK, and there are roads without
| painted lines.
| mavhc wrote:
| The speed limit and the speed you should be driving are
| different though
| lolinder wrote:
| In most of the western US, the speed limit is about 10
| mph _lower_ than the actual speed of traffic.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Depends. In Germany we try to set the speed limit at the
| speed you should be driving in clear and dry (or slightly
| wet) conditions. In Sweden in the other hand I've seen
| roads where no sane person should be going the posted
| speed limit
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Unless I'm misunderstanding and lane dividers mean the
| printed lines."
|
| Well, we also have plenty of really narrow roads on the
| countryside, with no lane divider, no printed lines and - no
| speed limit, where you could do 100 km/h, as well.
|
| (And well, some people do, but if you crash, it would be also
| legally your fault, for not having the adequate speed, even
| if there is no formal speed limit. Which is a nice
| counterexample to the usual, everything is forbidden unless
| it is explicitely allowed mentality)
| eloeffler wrote:
| Not so funny considering that more than half of fatal car
| accidents in Germany happen on exactly those streets (744 in
| 2021). Followed by Bundesstrassen (606 in 2021), which only
| sometimes have dividers and are usually limited to 100 km/h
| as well.
|
| In compare, on the Autobahn, which always has dividers but
| often has no speed limit at all and is not below 100 km/h
| under normal circumstances there were "only" 318 deaths.
|
| Source (German language, Federal Statistical Office):
| https://www-
| genesis.destatis.de/genesis/online?operation=abr...
| andylynch wrote:
| This kind of thing in particular should make banks' compliance
| departments more nervous than usual - Powerpoint is a really
| key tool for deal teams, and the behaviour is here might just
| be obscure enough to be missed by people tasked with stopping
| price-sensitive information slipping out the door.
| klyrs wrote:
| Well that's cool, it's just like Copilot but for confidential and
| proprietary information! I wonder if I can get a sneak peek into
| my competitor's quarterly reports using this suggestion
| feature...
| ZebusJesus wrote:
| NextDNS for the win, great filter lists for Microsoft and apple.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Like I said last time:
|
| > Did we consent to this?
|
| Yes, unless Microsoft doesn't ask for consent in whatever country
| the author is from. There's a consent popup that you need to
| click through that informs you that the content of your slides
| are shared with Microsoft. This is part of "intelligent services"
| in case you're looking for the details.
|
| The author should be able to turn this feature off easily, but
| yes, they did consent to this. They just might have done so
| months ago and forgotten about it.
|
| Find out more about the "intelligent services" that also send the
| contents of your document to the cloud if you click on their
| respective buttons here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/deployoffice/privacy/conne...
| layer8 wrote:
| At least in some countries, it legally may not constitute
| actual consent if the text is so unintelligible to a normal
| user that they don't understand what exactly they're consenting
| to. And we all know that most users just click "Agree" without
| understanding what exactly they're agreeing to because that's
| the only way they can get their work done.
| simiones wrote:
| The text on that page is extraordinarily misleading, if indeed
| "Connected experiences" are sending your data to MS servers.
| Nothing on the page is explicit about the apps sending your
| data to MS, the only hint that this is happening is the
| footnote that these "Connected experiences" do not work if you
| are not connected to the Internet.
|
| For example, here is the description of the first type of such
| experiences:
|
| > Connected experiences that analyze your content
|
| > Connected experiences that analyze your content are
| experiences that use your Office content to provide you with
| design recommendations, editing suggestions, data insights, and
| similar features. For example, PowerPoint Designer or
| Translator.
|
| > The following table provides a list of connected experiences
| that analyze your content and also provides links to more
| information about them.
|
| They are going to quite long lengths to avoid mentioning
| _where_ the data is analyzed.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| I don't even allow browser search suggestions; this is beyond the
| pale.
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Yes, you consented to this when you clicked through the TOS
| without reading it.
| taubek wrote:
| I don't have PowerPoint on my computer so I don't know if it
| works without Internet connection. Can someone tell me what
| happens if there is no network access?
| system2 wrote:
| This post is speculation at best. Likely written by a teenager
| learning about windows and task manager features recently.
| ZebusJesus wrote:
| This is one reason i use NextDNS, they have a list of Microsoft
| and apple servers ready to be blocked with a simple toggle.
| danuker wrote:
| LibreOffice FTW.
|
| https://libreoffice.org/
|
| It may be glitchy in some areas, but I've been using it since
| graduating high school, and I can do whatever I want with it.
| [deleted]
| squarefoot wrote:
| This. I've installed Linux+LO for years to a lot of people
| (also a couple times when it was in the earlier StarOffice
| incarnation, can't recall if under Windows or OS/2, certainly
| not Linux), being extremely clear on one thing: "this is not
| Microsoft Office, it's not as powerful as Microsoft Office and
| you may find some incompatibilities here and there (that was
| true especially during the old times), but the features 99% of
| users need are all here. Keep it for a while, and if it doesn't
| work for you, I'll install your Microsoft Office back for free
| and you lose nothing". It was a success almost everywhere, but
| it's extremely important for "normal" users to be comfortable
| with the different tool; remember that we value privacy, Open
| Source, etc. they don't. If something that they don't perceive
| as important requires a change in their workflow, they'll
| refuse that, so I don't even talk them about different file
| formats and just set it up to read/write in MS Office formats
| from scratch.
| acomjean wrote:
| If you deal with csv (or their tab separated cousins..) libre
| office sheets (spreadsheet) is really great.
|
| I'm on linux desktop now and this lets me read and write MS
| office files and works quite well.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| You did consent to it, in the fine print. Unfortunately.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Not even. It's an explicit feature that must be separately
| enabled, and requires Microsoft 365.
|
| > The first time you try out Designer, it may ask your
| permission to get design ideas for you. If you want to use
| Designer, select Turn on.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/53c77d7b-dc40-45c2...
| Semaphor wrote:
| > it may ask your permission
|
| I wonder when that is? Because I haven't used PP yet, and it
| didn't ask me. Of course, we use Office 365, and maybe my
| boss turned it on globally?
|
| Does anyone know where the setting is?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Have you used the Designer feature? That's what's being
| talked about. It should prompt you when you first use it.
|
| If you're on a work account, your admin may have enabled or
| disabled it already with GPO/MDM.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Have you used the Designer feature?
|
| Yes.
|
| > If you're on a work account, your admin may have
| enabled or disabled it already with GPO/MDM.
|
| It has to be a global Office 365 setting, my computer is
| not in the domain, I'm the only admin for it. That's why
| I'm asking where the setting for the permission is, so I
| can have a look at it (I'm secondary admin for the O365
| account) and potentially disable it.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Do you have Microsoft 365? It's a requirement for the
| feature.
|
| It's part of "connected experiences" so this is the
| article on GPO: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/deployoffice/privacy/manag...
|
| On a Mac, one thing to note is:
|
| > If the user has an Office 365 (or Microsoft 365)
| subscription and is signed in with a work or school
| account, or if the user has Office LTSC Standard for Mac
| 2021 or Office Standard 2019 for Mac, then the user can't
| turn off connected experiences that analyze content.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| It will ask you to turn on "Connected Experiences".
| CharlesW wrote:
| _Plus_ there are policies which allow admins to block
| PowerPoint Designer, as well as all Office 365 "Intelligent
| Services" (or "Intelligence Services", depending on your
| POV).
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Which is why GDPR has the concept of "informed consent", which
| is a fancy way of saying "consent hidden in the fine print
| doesn't count".
| deafpolygon wrote:
| When installing office, you are told in the fine print to go
| read: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
| ... it counts. The verbiage in there is quite disturbing.
| reitanqild wrote:
| It doesn't count anywhere that is protected by GDPR.
| hulitu wrote:
| > protected by GDPR
|
| This is like the firewall in windows 95: nice but
| useless.
| reitanqild wrote:
| Many companies have gotten their first fines already.
| Hundreds of millions of shareholder value down the drain
| because they blatantly ignored the rules.
|
| No, most companies don't get a massive fine in the first
| round, but I already see enough have gotten then that
| even Google now allows me to opt out with a single click
| :-}
| real_dogbert wrote:
| I wish I could disagree with you.
|
| GDPR technically _does_ have real teeth, to the extent
| that one _really_ shouldn 't want to raise the ire of an
| EU Data Protection Authority. Unfortunately, enforcement
| to date, and the resulting fines, have been lackluster at
| best. When will people learn that disincentives like
| fines and such have to actually _hurt_ to be effective in
| changing the behavior of corporations?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| And that the user may not have capacity to consent.
|
| That seems the salient issue today with regards to children
| and social media. Most of the giant social media companies
| profit from participants who cannot legally enrol.
| real_dogbert wrote:
| By "participants who cannot legally enrol," do you mean
| minors? I'm not tracking what the Venn diagram between
| those people and those who "may not have the capacity to
| consent" is.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| EDIT: I was talking about kids.
|
| But Dogbert's comment actually deserves a bit more than
| "try using common sense instead of set theory" :)
|
| I tried thinking of classes of adults who lack capacity,
| other than the mentally unfit, senile or criminally
| insane.
|
| There's a lot of young people who are "deemed to consent"
| (the passive weasel-words of filthy scoundrels) in higher
| education. I've written about Turnitin in the Times and
| the "very dodgy circumstances" in which students are
| inducted into university and then find themselves coerced
| into tacit agreement to use tools which massively violate
| their privacy and other rights. The same applies to
| Microsoft products where institutions block choice and
| force students use insecure products that they would
| refuse if exercising their better judgement.
| msla wrote:
| How willing would a government be to prosecute a company its
| IT infrastructure relies on?
|
| Even if you think Microsoft doesn't have kill switches, it
| still isn't obligated to do business with them.
| nmeagent wrote:
| If I have one hope for the future, it's that 'accepting' click-
| through corporate EULAs containing unconscionable terms that
| few read will no longer be considered _consent_.
| treesknees wrote:
| I can't say whether the blog is correct or not, as I haven't seen
| the actual network traffic, but there are privacy controls that
| the author probably hasn't configured [1]. If it was configured
| correctly, Designer wouldn't even be available. So it's not as
| though every user of PowerPoint will have their data collected by
| Microsoft.
|
| [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/deployoffice/privacy/manag...
| layer8 wrote:
| Still, Designer should display a notice that this is happening
| on first use (and until the user checks "Don't show this
| anymore", and maybe auto-turn that on again once a year),
| because a normal user doesn't necessarily realize that this is
| happening. You shouldn't have to be an IT/Office expert to have
| your privacy being respected.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| This is literally what it does today: the first time you use
| Designer or some other "intelligence" feature you get
| prompted to confirm that you're okay sending your data to
| Microsoft to use the feature, with a link to privacy policy
| and everything.
| bitwize wrote:
| Microsoft Office is, in general, straight up spyware now. It
| reports usage statistics back to your boss. Marietta can now see
| exactly how long YT's mom took to read that toilet paper memo,
| and make disciplinary decisions accordingly.
| MasterYoda wrote:
| I use "simplewall" [1], a firewall to windows. What I like about
| it is you get a popup window every time a new program want to
| send data out, then you could block or accept it or temporary
| accept it. It's crazy how many programs that wants to talk to the
| internet constantly.
|
| [1] https://www.henrypp.org/product/simplewall
| cm42 wrote:
| "Informed Consent is just a theory. Besides [other app] already
| spies on you so who cares? Whaddareya doing in PowerPoint that's
| so sekret?"
| mtgx wrote:
| I know it's sarcasm, but you don't have to have "big secrets"
| in order to want privacy. Everyone knows what you're doing in
| the restroom, doesn't mean you're ok to going to a see-through
| public restroom.
| Ninn wrote:
| In our companies slides we have tons of confidential slides
| containing info that could be misused for insider trading by MS
| engineers?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It would not be insider trading if done by people outside
| your company.
|
| Edit: Nvm, I think I am wrong.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/092616/how-i.
| ..
|
| >Another way that insider trading can occur is if non-company
| employees--such as those from government regulators or
| accounting firms, law firms, or brokerages--gain material
| nonpublic information from their clients and use that
| information for their personal gain.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| "Our AI is technically not an employee."
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| To that, I always reply with "I have nothing to hide but much
| to give".
| Izmaki wrote:
| "I have nothing to hide so why should I care?" is the worst,
| misinformed argument in the history of mankind.
| shmerl wrote:
| LibreOffice is an option.
| [deleted]
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Why doesn't this article include the packet capture or whatever
| data he has that shows exactly what's being sent?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| One possible reason is that the actual data that's being sent
| is a lot less nefarious than is being implied.
|
| I've seen people _vehemently_ argue that merely checking if a
| new version is available amounts to horrible invasive unethical
| tracking. You might want to turn that off for the truly
| paranoid situations, and that 's fair, but it's of course
| completely different than "sends all your data".
|
| I don't have a Windows machine and I certainly don't have
| PowerPoint, so I can't actually check anything myself. But I
| see a lot of confirmation biasing going on in this thread, and
| I bet most people didn't check anything either. All I can give
| this article is a shrug.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Many folks are aware MS has been all-in on telemetry for
| perhaps a decade now. They pioneered activation two decades
| ago. Explicitly in the TOS.
|
| Producing more evidence is left as an exercise at this point.
|
| Edit: no more posts allowed for me. Reply below:
|
| That's exactly what telemetry is, today. Grammarly built a
| whole business on this. Copilot, etc.
|
| Refusing to believe that times have changed because you've
| not been paying attention, is not a compelling argument.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| "Telemetry" is not "sending the contents of your documents"
| (or at least, not necessarily so). This comment kind of
| demonstrates my point about the complete lack of nuance in
| these conversations.
|
| And to reply to your reply:
|
| > That's exactly what telemetry is
|
| The common understanding of telemetry is sending metadata
| about how people are using software. That is, things like
| "this button was clicked", "this feature was used", etc.
| That is my understanding of the word anyway.
|
| Either way, this is a bit of a boring semantic discussion;
| my point is just that there is nuance to these things, and
| that this article doesn't really tell us anything concrete
| beyond "the network is used". Well, okay ... but for what,
| exactly? Because that _does_ matter.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| That's what it meant a few years ago to me as well. But
| has expanded in practice. Yes this is too much focus on a
| single word.
|
| The article states that text content is being sent, and
| that it makes sense according to the touted feature.
| Enough details given what we already know, though stingy.
|
| More info would be useful to folks less familiar with the
| subject however the core issue here is somewhat old news.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| > I've seen people vehemently argue that merely checking if a
| new version is available amounts to horrible invasive
| unethical tracking. You might want to turn that off for the
| truly paranoid situations, and that's fair, but it's of
| course completely different than "sends all your data".
|
| Hahaha, I've been there. And in an open-source code base, no
| less! We were using a closed-source library to actually send
| the version data up to the telemetry service we were using,
| but the payload and how we were handing it to that library
| were clearly defined in our own source. We even had to
| request a correction to a major IT news outlet because they
| had some vague language about "and no one could possibly know
| what kind of telemetry $BigCorp is sending, and it can't even
| be disabled". Both were demonstrably false: the payload was
| visible in OSS, and we had a well-documented env variable
| that you could use to disable the version telemetry before
| you first start of the application (which was linked from the
| graphical installers as well).
|
| In this case, I think the entire content payload is probably
| being sent up--if you've ever used this PowerPoint feature,
| it's clear that they're suggesting icons and themes based on
| the words in your slide--but there's a clear as day prompt
| explaining what's going on when you first enable the feature.
|
| I'd _prefer_, of course, that Microsoft figure out how to
| bring the model onto the device so you _don't_ have to go
| off-box. Google managed to pull this off with the Now Playing
| feature on their newer Pixel devices[1]. But it is really
| hard, and I do somewhat understand the business aspect of
| "that's our secret sauce, we don't want to give it away".
|
| [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/if-your-pixel-cant-tell-
| what-s...
| Arnavion wrote:
| Because that would be more effort than posting clickbait.
| giaour wrote:
| I'm very curious to know if the traffic is going to a
| centralized web service or the user's Microsoft 365/Sharepoint
| installation.
| system2 wrote:
| The writer obviously doesn't know much about network traffic
| and technology. Wanna be hacker.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Just wondering along the lines of 'perhaps a cigar _really_ is a
| cigar '.
|
| What would Microsoft be doing with the text of every PowerPoint
| presentation once they have analysed the style/font/content
| information?
|
| Must be thousands of slides per hour 24/7 for years. How long is
| this information kept?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| What I am kinda waiting ( and it is coming ) is for someone to
| find out that Excel actually gathers all interesting data under
| guise of automatic analysis ( ala copilot ). The financial sector
| will tremble as almost the entire human population existing in
| the spreadsheets in one form or another ( as long as they are on
| o365_v2 ) will have their data harvested daily and banks will be
| unlikely do anything about it.
|
| Oh, look. We don't need enter Jenkins account. Everything auto
| populates. And we did not even map it yet...
| user3939382 wrote:
| What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS where
| every process, including all native ones, including UI apps, are
| blocked from network connectivity by default, and the user gets
| an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL inspection built
| in (you'd need some OS API to enable that).
|
| Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to
| declare which outgoing they have, a description/why, and allow
| inspection of the actual traffic.
|
| What Adobe CC, Google Chrome, MS Office, and macOS/Windows itself
| do with this background network connectivity is completely out of
| control and abusive to the user. They get away with it because
| the vast majority of users are non-technical and don't realize
| it's happening.
|
| I've profiled and decrypted the background traffic on a stock
| Android install and the volume was also appalling. Getting macOS
| to 0 background traffic involved blackholing large Apple IP
| blocks at the router, whereas some of their processes use random
| IPs from these ranges and don't use DNS.
|
| Just as the general public doesn't have the awareness or ability
| to fight for their privacy rights I doubt any of this will ever
| be remedied.
| dhaavi wrote:
| Ha, what a timing! Just 2 days ago on HN front page:
|
| Portmaster 1.0 - Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy
| Firewall https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33481518
|
| Disclaimer: I'm the CTO.
| exceptione wrote:
| What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the
| OS where every process,
|
| You cannot trust an OS you cannot build yourself. That's why I
| see Linux as the only option for professionals and privacy
| minded people.
| proee wrote:
| How do you know there are no outside efforts to log linux
| activities? There's a lot of source code to go through and is
| it possible there are callbacks even within OSS that most
| people are not aware of?
| LukeShu wrote:
| OSS is necessary, but (as you point out) not sufficient.
| dev_hugepages wrote:
| Well at least with open source, you CAN verify it. There
| are people and companies who do audit You're replacing a
| big and unstoppable problem with a smaller one that can be
| mitigated
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It all depends of course on the level of your
| paranoia/threat model.
|
| To prevent standard data leaking or rather stealing like in
| this case, linux is a quite solid choice.
|
| But if you think you are a high profile target, you should
| probably learn how to deactivate Intels ME and co.
|
| And if you are really paranoid, you should assume that
| there are hardware backdoors. But what do you do then?
| Build your computer from scratch?
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| I don't need to go through all the source code myself. The
| fact that Apple itself, for example, relies on Linux for
| most of its servers and has not raised any alarms about
| bits of Linux phoning home is a pretty powerful heuristic
| that it's relatively safe.
|
| Multiply that by all the multibillion dollar other
| companies, the tens of thousand open source focused smaller
| and large companies, the hobbyists, the enthusiasts, the CS
| professors, the CS undergrad and grad students, the PHD
| candidates who would be thrilled to discover a flaw on the
| basis of which they could write their thesis, etc. and I
| think one can have a fair degree of confidence.
|
| There's still a decent chance something would be missed.
| But it's much smaller than the chance that the proprietary
| OS owners, whom we know for a fact phone home and have been
| trying to collect increasing amounts of data, are sending
| stuff we may not know about.
| robocat wrote:
| > The fact that Apple itself relies on Linux for most of
| its servers is a pretty powerful heuristic that Linux is
| relatively safe [paraphrased by me]
|
| Many world-class companies depend on Windows, so does
| that mean you think Windows is safe?
|
| An individual does not have the same access to custom
| tools, and teams of competent people, that ensure their
| usage of the Linux ecology is secure.
|
| A recent example: I was investigating using CloudFlare
| Functions, because I think CloudFlare has world-class
| security and that "serverless" product avoids many
| security issues I might have with other solutions. Yet
| one setup step suggested piping in a script from curl to
| shell (commonly suggested for install steps!). Even
| worse, https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler2 is their
| CLI tool to help development, and Wrangler is based on
| the node ecology, which is completely insecurable as an
| individual developer IMHO (trillion dollar companies can
| probably secure the dev environment). I use a VM to
| provide some sandboxing, but it still leaves me feeling
| icky.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| At least its possible _in principal_ and many people out
| there can at least look at the code even if you can't dig
| through yourself. With Windows or OSX you're just out of
| luck.
| dagmx wrote:
| That assumes people actually have the capacity to examine the
| source to do so and make the requisite adjustments.
|
| The real answer IMHO is to control your networking stack
| outside of your computer instead. Firewall that and you have
| way better security
| three_seagrass wrote:
| How do you do packet inspection when they're all encrypted?
| M95D wrote:
| You install a proxy server that MITMs all connections and
| reencrypts data with your own certificate that you
| install in your system.
| [deleted]
| 05 wrote:
| TLS MITM. But you better be 100% sure your middle box is
| not compromised.
| Melatonic wrote:
| This. Not so hard to do and lots of corporations already
| do it.
|
| But yeah - whatever you are running on that box better be
| legit!
| dagmx wrote:
| You can still inspect whether you're having packets sent
| when you add text or just when you click on certain
| options
|
| You could add large amounts of text and see if the
| packets increase proportionally.
|
| You can perhaps analyze which apps or extensions are
| sending packets.
|
| This post doesn't provide enough information of value
| hardware2win wrote:
| With the compiler that you verified and built yourself :)
| II2II wrote:
| I believe this is a reference to:
| http://wiki.c2.com/?TheKenThompsonHack
| simpleintheory wrote:
| Itself built with a compiler you verified and built
| yourself.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| Yeah, this is a strange take to me. Akin to catching the fox
| guarding your hen house eating the hens and reacting by
| having the fox install and monitor a security camera for the
| hen house. The problem is still the fox and he'll just turn
| the camera off when he wants the hens.
| exceptione wrote:
| This analogy makes me smile, it's a good one!
| M95D wrote:
| In fact, you cannot trust an OS you DIDN'T build yourself.
| And there are only two of those: Linux from scratch and
| Gentoo.
| danieldk wrote:
| How do you know that the compiler that was used to compile
| your compiler was not backdoored (or binutils/glibc/bash)?
|
| You may instead want to look at the bootstrapping work done
| using stage0, m2-planet, GNU Mes, etc.
|
| https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Stage0
|
| https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Reduced-Binary-
| Seed...
|
| It starts with a hex monitor of less than 500 bytes and
| bootstraps all the way up to gcc, all from source.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _In fact, you cannot trust an OS you DIDN 'T build
| yourself_
|
| ... with a compiler you wrote yourself. In assem-- uh, in
| hexade... no. With toggle switches.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Isn't this what safing does basically?
| dhaavi wrote:
| Yes! For reference: https://safing.io/
| adrian_b wrote:
| I believe, even if I have not tried yet to do this, that you
| can do this in Linux if you create one or more virtual network
| interfaces in some namespaces, and you ensure that only that
| interface or those interfaces get IP addresses.
|
| Then any program that is not run inside the namespace with
| configured virtual network interfaces can see only unconfigured
| interfaces, so it will not be able to open and connect sockets.
|
| The Internet browser and any other program that needs network
| access, e.g. a NTP server, DHCP client, e-mail client etc., can
| be run inside the namespace with an IP-configured network
| interface.
|
| The same could be done in FreeBSD by using a jail for the
| programs that need network access.
|
| Obviously, this would not be enough to prevent network access
| for a program that would be aware of this configuration and
| would try to circumvent it, because such a program could list
| the network namespaces and try to execute itself, or another
| helping program, inside the network namespace. For complete
| isolation, all the programs for which network access is not
| desired would have to be executed inside a distinct namespace.
| That requires a more complex configuration.
| chrisgd wrote:
| I was just thinking about this- pair that with a iPad that sits
| on refrigerator and shows your grocery list and family
| calendar. Then it blocks your smart tv from sending data out
| and allows family to keep organized. Does 3 things very well
| and that's it
| sureglymop wrote:
| Would it be possible to develop something like this for Linux
| using eBPF?
| g_p wrote:
| I believe the Mac OS networking APIs go a little bit of the way
| there - in Lulu, an open source alternative to Little Snitch,
| the connection prompts tend to contain (and let you filter) by
| the URL visited (including the query after the domain name).
| This isn't done through TLS interception, but I believe it's
| through the network extension API on MacOS receiving the URL
| requested, as long as the request comes through the regular
| APIs.
|
| It's a long time since I looked, but I think some apps (mainly
| ones not using native APIs) only showed the hostname, rather
| than full URL/API endpoint path.
|
| This also didn't show you the content, or method type (POST vs
| GET), but to do that you'd really need to start doing proper
| SSL inspection as you suggested.
| IceWreck wrote:
| > What I want is Little Snitch on steroids built into the OS
| where every process, including all native ones, including UI
| apps, are blocked from network connectivity by default, and the
| user gets an easy monitor of outgoing traffic with TLS/SSL
| inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to enable that).
|
| If you want to you can do that with Linux.
|
| Sure you'd need to use the CLI, and a combination of tools but
| you can pinpoint every packet to an associated process and if
| you add your self made cert to trusted certs, then you can
| decrypt TLS as well in most cases.
| dathinab wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| For this to work well, all your apps need to run with not
| being able to do their own TLS, but to various (reasonable)
| reasons a lot of applications today do their own TLS.
|
| You also don't want to add self-signed certificates, but grab
| the traffic _before_ it gets encrypted IMHO.
|
| In some cases it's still quite viable, like if they dynamic
| link to OpenSSL (or similar) you could create a facade which
| allows grabbing traffic.
|
| But things get problematic when it's statically compiled in
| and not open source.
|
| Additionally there are quite a bunch of use-cases where the
| encryption is not TLS, like e.g. with some WebRTC
| applications it's not uncommon to have an encrypted channel
| we could access to a broker server but in that channel E2E
| encrypted messages are send e.g. using libsodium statically
| compiled in.
| return_to_monke wrote:
| While i partially agree, even DNS query/http headers (I'm
| not sure if that is encrypted with ssl?) Could be useful
| here. Told the software not to connect to cloud, still
| connects to cloud. Enough reason to complain.
| IceWreck wrote:
| > You also don't want to add self-signed certificates, but
| grab the traffic _before_ it gets encrypted IMHO.
|
| that would be ideal but self signed + added to trusted
| store works
|
| > Additionally there are quite a bunch of use-cases where
| the encryption is not TLS, like e.g. with some WebRTC
| applications it's not uncommon to have an encrypted channel
| we could access to a broker server but in that channel E2E
| encrypted messages are send e.g. using libsodium statically
| compiled in.
|
| yeah youre right.
|
| In other cases the only options we have are ld_preload to
| catch encryption lib. If that doesnt work we can still use
| ptrace to capture syscalls but encryption will be done in
| userspace so capturing network activity wont help us with
| encryption.
|
| Like the other guy said, the info we can gather is still
| useful.
|
| Reverse engineering + modyfing the binary is a possibility
| too but it gets complicated fast, especially if they
| intentionally try to protect it. I feel this isnt really an
| issue with jvm or interpreted langauges but with the others
| its hard especially if theyre statically linked. C/C++ have
| good enough decompilers that its still possible, I don't
| know about Go/Rust tho.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Nah, you can't. The issue is the "easy monitor outgoing
| traffic with TLS/SSL" part.
|
| It is not impossible but it is far from easy. If the
| application uses statically linked SSL client (as it should
| if it is commercially distributed) then you have to modify
| the application (for example in memory) to get a copy of
| everything that gets written to the SSL stream.
| kibwen wrote:
| You know how you can do Ctrl+Shift+K in Firefox to open up
| the browser console and inspect all the bits of the page,
| see the code (and fuck with it), see all the network
| traffic, and so on? I dream of being able to do that for
| arbitrary applications. Imagine having a Super+Ctrl+Shift+K
| that opened an OS-level GUI showing all the pertinent
| details of the running program.
| twawaaay wrote:
| You know that this only pertains to webapps and there is
| still a lot of software running on your machine that you
| have no idea what it does?
| kibwen wrote:
| I am specifically referring to the ability to have the
| same sort of interface with non-webapps as we do with
| webapps.
| NietzscheanNull wrote:
| I believe the parent commenter is aware of that - they're
| describing their wish for a tool that makes monitoring
| native application requests easy and transparent, similar
| to the experience of using browser devtools with web
| apps.
| hmmmmmm111 wrote:
| sbf501 wrote:
| > Kind of like granular oauth permissions, apps should have to
| declare which outgoing they have,
|
| Just like PayPal. There's a table you can bring up that lists
| everyone you ever engaged with on paypal for recurring pricing,
| and deactivate them.
|
| I've wanted exactly what you describe for years. Little Snitch
| taught me that there's just too much data that isn't organized
| properly. Even if you get down to the app level (like
| PowerPoint), it is still transceiving a lot of data. How do you
| tell what is necessary and what is dubious telemetry?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| We could go to our EU representatives and ask for them to make
| it mandatory. Though I suspect it'll go down the same way as
| the GDPR, at least at first.
|
| (Lessons have already been learned of course)
| nbzso wrote:
| Since 2014 I don't trust my macs. There is no Apple computer
| without LS installed on in my company. Actually, if LS is not
| available, I will not use Apple computers at all. Period.
| beermonster wrote:
| Why don't you trust your macs since 2014. Also why do you
| still use them if you don't trust them any longer?
| gtufano wrote:
| Not OP, but for me the answer to your question is: is a
| tool I need. I _could_ use Windows, and absolutely not
| Linux/BSD (for the programs/tools I need for work), and,
| frankly, I don't think Windows is better.
|
| Yes, I know that's not completely true. I _could_ use Linux
| (I even used Solaris on a notebook for 2 years in the past
| and I survived) but the cost in terms of effort, lost
| productivity would be higher than I'm ready to pay. It's a
| rational choice.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Work only allows Mac or Win to log in to their VPN.
| nvr219 wrote:
| What happened in 2014?
|
| Also someone told me here that LS should be considered
| harmful.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's complicated, but the 2013-2014 years were when the
| bulk of the Snowden leaks were hitting the internet, and
| people were starting to dig up really suspicious stuff
| relating to _all_ big tech companies, not just Apple.
| However, Apple was still among the companies compliant with
| PRISM, the NSA 's newly established surveillance/tracking
| effort that also roped in Microsoft, Google, AOL and any
| other major service provider you can think of.
|
| The implications of this are unclear. I like blowing these
| claims out of proportion, but in reality we genuinely have
| no idea what this means. It could simply signal that Apple
| is complicit with benign cloud-storage security procedures
| enforced by the USA. It could also mean that the US has
| carte-blanche access to iCloud data and decryption keys.
| You're free to draw your own conclusions, but the
| surrounding context seems to imply that Apple has an under-
| the-table relationship with our government (as does most of
| the tech industry, surprise surprise).
|
| Oh, and I don't really know/care if LS is harmful. You
| should be aware that it's not going to outsmart Apple if
| they want to collect your info, though. They have kernel-
| level networking access, which companies like Microsoft
| have abused in the past to collect telemetry on crafty
| users. It's probably not _harmful_ , per-se, but your
| perception of it as an impassible wall might be.
| nbzso wrote:
| LS is not the only solution that I use. But is a good
| start and limits the telemetry baked into the macOS
| significantly. On my Debian installs, I use Open Snitch.
| https://bit.ly/3t6VSCk
| Socket-232 wrote:
| Why do you trust Little Snitch? It's closed source and in
| the perfect position to steal information.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If worrying about closed-source threat models is
| something you spend a significant portion of your time
| doing, you shouldn't be using MacOS in the first place.
| smarkov wrote:
| For Windows, check out simplewall, it does (almost) exactly
| that.
|
| https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
| m0guz wrote:
| It has built-in support to block Windows
| Services/Apps/Updates without user interaction.
| M95D wrote:
| It uses the windows firewall. Do I trust Windows firewall to
| block itself? NO!
| ziml77 wrote:
| Even if it was a wrapper over Windows Firewall, why would
| that make you trust the filtering less? Like even if it was
| running fully custom ring 0 code, there's still also
| Windows kernel code running at the same level. Microsoft
| could make the kernel interfere however they want.
| autoexec wrote:
| Like how MS ignored the hosts file if you tried to use it
| to block windows update. Ultimately MS has final say on
| what you're allowed to do on windows and they can force
| updates that disable or enable any kind of behavior they
| want. It's their system.
|
| If you don't trust MS, don't use windows or at least
| never ever let connect to the internet. In a fight
| between you wanting to keep your privacy and an OS
| designed and determined to exploit you for profit, you
| will always lose.
| hu3 wrote:
| From the README:
|
| > Keep in mind, simplewall is not a control UI over Windows
| Firewall, and does not interact in any level with Windows
| Firewall.
|
| > It works over Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) which is a
| set of API and system services that provide a platform for
| creating network filtering applications. Windows Filtering
| Platform is a development technology and not a firewall
| itself, but simplewall is the tool that uses this
| technology.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| > It uses the windows firewall.
|
| No:
|
| "simplewall is not a control UI over Windows Firewall, and
| does not interact in any level with Windows Firewall"
| sbuk wrote:
| pf is built into macOS. There is a (paid) frontend -
| https://www.murusfirewall.com
| mumumu wrote:
| Have a look at firejail. Does this, and more.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Why not just disable the network interface and see what stops
| working.
|
| Why not set the Windows computer's gateway to a computer that
| the user can properly control, i.e., do not give the Windows
| computer direct access to the internet.
|
| Windows is an OS that was created before the public had access
| to the internet.
|
| It worked just fine "offline", i.e., connected to a LAN but not
| an internet.
|
| Same for the Mac.
|
| To be honest, I cannot think of many PowerPoints that needed
| internet access, at least not in the fields I have worked in.
|
| Obviously, "tech" companies want personal computers to be
| online for every waking moment of their owner's day.
| Neverthless it is in fact possible to "block", i.e., not assent
| to, much of this outgoing transfer of personal data/metadata to
| "tech" companies at the user's expense. I have been doing it
| for over 20 years. With few exceptions, I inspect all HTTPS
| traffic that I allow over the networks I control. The "tech"
| companies gathering this data do not pay for the user's
| internet or cellular service. The user covers the cost of the
| data transfer.
|
| Change begins with the people who know how to make it. For
| example, it is not difficult to stop PowerPoint from phoning
| home. Why go along with it. But when those with the requisite
| knowledge year after year make statements on HN how it is
| futile to thwart _any_ personal data mining because it is not
| 100% "perfect" solution,^1 I have been seeing these comments
| on HN for many years, then it is arguable this becomes a self-
| fulfilling prophecy.
|
| The "majority of people", "general public", etc., do not know
| they have a choice. They will use whatever is presented to
| them. What happens when those who _do_ know there is a choice
| go along with what "tech" companies present to them. They are
| in no position to blame "the majority".
|
| Certainly, those working at or investing in "tech" companies
| would welcome a lax attitude toward avoiding data collection.
| "Nothing is going to change because no one cares." Tell that to
| Zuckerberg after Apple let its customers block some of
| Facebook's data collection.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-priv...
|
| 1. All-or-nothing, black-and-white, binary style reasoning.
| squarefoot wrote:
| On Linux there is OpenSnitch that does its job nicely, although
| I experienced some occasional desktop slowdowns even after
| training it to open everything for trusted programs.
|
| https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch
|
| I still recall the old days of Windows when I tried Kerio
| Personal Firewall and realized how much software already phoned
| home two decades ago. That was the last wake up call that
| pushed me into getting rid of closed source software, possibly
| also hardware, especially when they connect to the internet.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Keep in mind, OpenSnitch is Linux-based and none of Linux
| firewalls can filter incoming packets by process ID like
| macOS/FreeBSD (Lil'Snitch) can.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I think iptables was supposed to be able to do this, right?
|
| https://linux.die.net/man/8/iptables
| --pid-owner processid Matches if the packet was
| created by a process with the given process id.
|
| But was disappointed by the note:
|
| > NOTE: pid, sid and command matching are broken on SMP
| yrro wrote:
| --pid-owner was removed from Linux some time in the 2.4
| days IIRC.
|
| That's a really outdated version of the man page. The
| current one is: https://ipset.netfilter.org/iptables-
| extensions.man.html
|
| Probably the closest thing these days is to use the
| cgroup match extension, together with something that
| makes sure separate apps are moved to their own cgroup.
| But that cgroup would be under a separate parent cgroup
| for each user so it's not ideal.
|
| I expect NFQUEUE or some EBPF magic is a better way to do
| things - you don't want to be constantly adding/removing
| per-process iptables rules.
| prmoustache wrote:
| From what I understand opensnitch use ebpf to match where
| the exiting packets are going. TCP being TCP, it is easy to
| know where the incoming answer will be delivered to as
| well.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Not sure if this would work also for connectionless
| protocols such as UDP. That is, if I open a socket and
| send some datagrams to an external address:port to
| exfiltrate users data, then close the socket and exit, I
| don't think it would be able to tell which program did
| that, unless it detects it live.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I believe opensnitch catches them.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I second OpenSnitch, I haven't face any shutdowns due to it
| yet. For those coming from LittleSnitch on macOS might have
| to look into the finer details of the connection in the
| Allow/Deny dialog on OS to get the best results.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Slowdowns, not shutdowns, luckily:) The desktop (XFCE under
| Debian if that helps) just hung for a while like it was
| waiting for me to allow some rules, but didn't show the
| requester to do so, also the timings were random, could
| have been from 2 seconds to 5 or more.
| bergenty wrote:
| I used little snitch for so many years but stopped using it a
| while ago for some reason. Is it still as good as it used to
| be?
| msla wrote:
| The Little Snitch would be asking the OS to please tell it
| about network traffic.
|
| Microsoft's OS.
|
| It would be asking Microsoft's OS to tell it about traffic
| Microsoft's software wants to keep secret.
|
| I'm sure there's a world where that isn't a laugh line, but I
| certainly don't live there.
| rrobukef wrote:
| I disagree. What's a worse look: not having this OR having
| this and being discovered subverting their own security?
| rougka wrote:
| OS network filtering APIs don't work that way and another
| unrelated and unimportant Microsoft team can't override it
| giaour wrote:
| What indication is there that Microsoft wants to keep this
| traffic secret? The OP was able to detect and inspect this
| traffic with standard network monitoring software.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > with TLS/SSL inspection built in (you'd need some OS API to
| enable that).
|
| I'm not sure of that. Provided you can add a cert to your OS,
| you should be able to get away with a piece of protocol
| downgrade network gear that you can then pipe to a different
| (ideally, offline other than UDP receive) computer for
| analysis.
|
| You'd need to disable HSTS, but other than that I think it
| should be the solution you're looking for. Oh, and for good
| measure, ethernet cable instead of wifi.
| kccqzy wrote:
| A well-designed OS API doesn't need to do MitM and therefore
| would work with HSTS or cert pinning enabled.
|
| Of course for obvious reasons, few commercial apps would
| actually use this API unless they have some other incentive.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Well, the original article was about Microsoft. Since
| they're the OS vendor too, I discounted that as being
| reliable for this use-case.
| Acinyx wrote:
| Any application that uses certificate pinning would fail in
| this situation as that's specifically what it is trying to
| prevent.
| moviuro wrote:
| You "just" need the key to the encrypted traffic. You don't
| have to change the handshake/negotiation, you just want a
| copy of the key so you can decrypt the traffic.
|
| In TLS, the client authenticates server, then they both
| agree to use a key for the session; the OS can get a hold
| of this key (this is usually a bad move because then any
| captured traffic frames could be later decrypted).
| winstonprivacy wrote:
| What you've described is none other than a Winston Privacy
| device (no longer available, alas).
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Just because it is phoning home data doesn't mean automatically
| it's sending your data - more than likely it's a block of stuff
| representing what is your data, because nobody wants to traffic
| in your copy/pasted email FW:FW:FW:FW graphic at 6MB you use on
| every slide for your company logo. It's just not practical to me,
| and if you don't like that generic thing, well, disable Design
| suggestions. Pretty sure there's a switch for that somewhere.
| Usually there is with Microsoft.
|
| Paint: having Admin rights when you can find it since Windows 95
| beckingz wrote:
| I look forward to the day when PowerPoint is banned due to
| enterprise security concerns.
| bnt wrote:
| How about Grammarly? Or G-suite? They have access to most of
| the companies out there. I find it terrifying people use
| Grammarly and it has access to every piece of confidential word
| written.
| real_dogbert wrote:
| G-Suite is a super interesting case in that you literally
| cannot use the product without handing over your data to
| Google. It certainly _seems_ like companies would hate that,
| particularly those with data protection obligations. Google
| does theoretically require a Business Associate Agreement
| (BAA) if your use case is subject to HIPAA and you intend to
| store or transmit PHI using their services, but I don 't know
| how they detect or enforce that. [1]
|
| ---
|
| [1]: https://support.google.com/a/answer/3407054?hl=en
| judge2020 wrote:
| Since when does complying with data protection mean "you
| must own your entire tech stack and run it on prem"?
| Google[0] states that they don't use your data for anything
| more than running the service, and there are multiple pages
| detailing how they secure data on their servers from both
| employees[1] and attackers[the rest of the document].
|
| 0: https://workspace.google.com/learn-
| more/security/security-wh...
|
| 1: https://workspace.google.com/learn-
| more/security/security-wh...
| ttrrooppeerr wrote:
| Grammarly and Hola VPN are the two browser extensions that
| any IT Admin should be ban straight away in corporate
| machines.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| You guys allow users to install browser extensions?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Grammarly should absolutely be banned. Their privacy policy
| is horrible.
|
| I'd suggest companies look into LanguageTool's "On-Premise"
| commercial offering or run the Java-based server themselves
| (with N-Grams). Is it as good as Grammarly? Nope, but it is
| "90%" as good and significantly more private.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| It will only happen if people in a position of power ( most of
| the PowerPoint users) start to use another tool by their own
| liking/organic decision.
|
| Which it's not going to happen anytime soon, so PowerPoint can
| literally be a bomb inside their organizations they'll still
| insist in using it.
|
| If these phone-home allegations are true it's one more case
| where you spend $50K in an hightech driveway gate but have no
| fence around the property.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Enterprises who care will just disable it via group policies.
| msla wrote:
| All closed-source software can do this, and so must be assumed
| to be doing this in any context where it matters.
| matternot wrote:
| How it was determined that it phones back the content of the
| slide ? From my understanding it's just exchanging some network
| packets.
| system2 wrote:
| Dear Lazy OP,
|
| Please use wireshark or something else to explain what those
| packages are. It might be downloading design features or some
| other data it requires.
|
| 100 word article really doesn't do it for me.
| [deleted]
| pradn wrote:
| There's a pervasive lack of precision in privacy discussions.
| There's a difference between a network request that does some
| computation on the server side, one that does the same but may
| log errors and increment counters, and one that actually stores
| the data temporarily or for a long time. And in the last case,
| there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible for
| internal employees to access (perhaps only used as input for
| other automated systems), and data with few controls. What about
| the ability of the user to invoke a delete for all their data on
| the server side? There's so many dimensions.
|
| This is not a useless feature. I can imagine it might help
| someone make a better presentation. We have to weigh the
| _potential_ privacy implications against that.
|
| And asking the user to consent for every little thing isn't the
| solution either. It's so annoying to be pin-pricked by dialogs.
| At work, this sorta thing should be decided at the organization
| level, by setting appropriate fine-grained org policies for
| Office.
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Do you make the same differentiation when it comes to what
| Chinese companies may collect from the computers of American
| companies? Especially this part:
|
| > there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible
| for internal employees to access (perhaps only used as input
| for other automated systems), and data with few controls.
| vachina wrote:
| This bias is very apparent in most of western media.
|
| A Chinese software vendor could do as much as sending your
| keystrokes for autocomplete you bet it will be front page
| news on Reddit and here with every comment reminding me about
| Xinjiang and 1989.
|
| But Microsoft could upload the entirety of your hard drive
| and we would find apologists like OP rationalizing away the
| behavior.
|
| I'm not convinced either governments are not in kahoots with
| private companies.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > I'm not convinced either governments are not in kahoots
| with private companies.
|
| By which you mean that we have plenty of evidence that both
| are?
| feanaro wrote:
| This is a useless feature.
|
| Source: I have this blocked and I'm not missing anything.
|
| If a feature needs to phone home, I don't need the feature.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > There's a pervasive lack of precision in privacy discussions.
| There's a difference between a network request that does some
| computation on the server side, one that does the same but may
| log errors and increment counters, and one that actually stores
| the data temporarily or for a long time. And in the last case,
| there's a difference between the data being nigh-impossible for
| internal employees to access (perhaps only used as input for
| other automated systems), and data with few controls.
|
| This seems like less of a "precision" issue and more of a
| "transparency and accountability" issue. Do you know how long
| this information is stored by Microsoft? Where it is stored?
| Who has access? What the process is for requesting that data is
| deleted or even for opting-out of it's collection? An opt-in
| prompt is a great place for organizations to provide access to
| resources that answer these questions.
|
| When we don't have the answers to the questions, (or don't
| trust the organization providing the answers to be truthful),
| we should assume the worst case, not the best as you seem to be
| implying.
|
| > And asking the user to consent for every little thing isn't
| the solution either.
|
| Prompts/permission can have varying and nested levels of
| granularity. This is absolutely not an excuse for not providing
| opt-in for data collection. (Edit: E.G. You can simply ask
| "Allow Us to Collect Data: Always, Never, Sometimes" and then
| you only need to show additional prompts if they select
| "Sometimes". If you are seeing to many people saying "Never"
| then you can do a better job of explaining the
| benefits/features, but you can't just ethically ignore the
| wishes of the user.)
|
| I see no problem with organizations pre-deciding this for their
| employees, (thus no need for a prompt), but this doesn't remove
| the need for individuals and members of less organized
| organizations to have the ability to not have their data
| collected.
| matternot wrote:
| how was it determined that it is phoning home the content of the
| slides? One thing is to exchange network packets with a remote
| server, and another thing is to claim that it's leaking slide
| content.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Is this why the default fonts in my office randomly changed the
| other week?
| didip wrote:
| Can you imagine, receiving all powerpoint content from your
| competitors (the rest of FAANG) in real time?
| kolbe wrote:
| I can't imagine powerpoint is a useful application to any org
| that hires mildly talented designers
| thfuran wrote:
| Big presentations at conferences may involve designers but
| there are surely many internal meetings at many levels that
| have a lot of PowerPoint and no designers.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| use Linux... it's free and doesn't spy on you
| kolbe wrote:
| If I were ever in a position to tell investment banks what to do,
| I would demand every pitch of theirs happen in a jupyter
| notebook.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Lol of course they are. Never change MS.
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