Windows 10免费升级安全吗？

诸平

我对计算机不能说一窍不通，但必定不是学习计算机出身的，所以对于计算机充其量就是应用上略知一二罢了。最近看到Win7、Win8可以免费升级到Win10,我自己使用的不是这些系统，因此对于免费升级自然不感兴趣。但是，我感兴趣的是与此相关的新闻报道。截至2015年8月3日，Win10正式版已经发布5天了，短短的几天内，刷新了多项纪录，24小时安装用户达到1400万，成为安装用量增长最快的Windows系统。现在，这一增长势头还在延续。

根据美国网站通讯流量监测机构StatCounter的数据显示，在15亿桌面用户中，2015年8月3日已经有2.74%的用户已经装上了 Windows 10。而7月30日，Windows 10 在桌面系统中所占份额还仅为0.58%(但也超过了 Chrome 系统0.26%的份额)。其增长速度确实太过迅猛，看来微软 Win10 三年内装机量破10亿大关的目标也有望提前实现。

而在中国，Win10份额8月1日为1.91%，8月2日上升到2.08%，3日上升到2.09%，超过Mac OS X的占有率1.37%和Win8的占有率1.83%；当然Win7和Win XP在中国用户中占有率超过80%，分别继续以57.88%和22.43%主导市场份额。随着微软的继续推广，加之全新Windows 10 PC的上市，有报道称这一数据还将大幅上升。相比之前的Windows 8/8.1，Win10显然已经赢在了起跑线上。实际情况并非如此乐观，Win10免费升级需要你以支付自己的隐私为代价，更多信息请浏览澳大利亚西澳大学软件实践中心主任（Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice at University of Western Australia）大卫·格兰斯（David Glance），2015年8月4日在《对话》（The Conversation）网站发表的论文——David Glance. Windows 10 is not really free: you are paying for it with your privacy，The Conversation，August 4, 2015 12.44pm AEST

为了便于阅读，特摘引如下，供大家参考。

Windows 10 is not really free: you are paying for it with your privacy

David Glance

The Conversation，August 4, 2015 12.44pm AEST

Windows 10, it seems, is proving a hit with both the public and the technology press after its release last week. After two days, it had been installed on 67 million PCs. Of course, sceptics may argue that this may have simply been a reflection of how much people disliked Windows 8 and the fact that the upgrade was free.

For others, though, it is the very fact that the upgrade is free that has them concerned that Microsoft has adopted a new, “freemium” model for making money from its operating system.

They argue that, while Apple can make its upgrades free because it makes its money from the hardware it sells, Microsoft will have to find some way to make money from doing the same with its software. Given that there are only a few ways of doing this, it seems that Microsoft has taken a shotgun approach and adopted them all.

The question is whether it’s really ‘free’. Microsoft

Free upgrade

Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, has declared that Microsoft’s strategy is to “acquire, engage, enlist and monetise”. In other words, get people using the platform and then sell them other things like apps from the Microsoft App Store.

The trouble is, that isn’t the only strategy that Microsoft is taking. Microsoft is employing a unique “advertising ID” that is assigned to a user when Windows 10 is installed. This is used to target personalised ads at the user.

These ads will show up whilst using the web, and even in games that have been downloaded from the Microsoft App Store. In fact, the game where this grabbed most attention was Microsoft’s Solitaire, where users are shown video ads unless they are prepared to pay a US$9.99 a year subscription fee.

The advertising ID, along with a range of information about the user, can be used to target ads. The information that Microsoft will use includes:

[…] current location, search query, or the content you are viewing. […] likely interests or other information that we learn about you over time using demographic data, search queries, interests and favorites, usage data, and location data.

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft was attacking Google for similar features it now includes in Windows 10. Internet Archicve

It was not that long ago that Microsoft attacked Google for doing exactly this to its customers.

What Microsoft is prepared to share, though, doesn’t stop at the data it uses for advertising. Although it maintains that it won’t use personal communications, emails, photos, videos and files for advertising, it can and will share this information with third parties for a range of other reasons.

The most explicit of these reasons is sharing data in order to “comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies”. In other words, if a government or security agency asks for it, Microsoft will hand it over.

Meaningful transparency

In June, Horacio Gutiérrez, Deputy General Counsel & Corporate Vice President of Legal and Corporate Affairs at Microsoft, made a commitment to “providing a singular, straightforward resource for understanding Microsoft’s commitments for protecting individual privacy with these services”.

On the Microsoft blog, he stated:

In a world of more personalized computing, customers need meaningful transparency and privacy protections. And those aren’t possible unless we get the basics right. For consumer services, that starts with clear terms and policies that both respect individual privacy and don’t require a law degree to read.

This sits in contrast to Microsoft’s privacy statement, which is a 38 page, 17,000 word document. This suggests that Microsoft really didn’t want to make the basic issues of its implementation absolutely clear to users.

Likewise, the settings that allow a user to control all aspects of privacy in Windows 10 itself are spread over 13 separate screens.

Also buried in the privacy statement is the types of data Cortana – Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s Siri or Google Now – uses. This includes:

[…] device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device. Cortana also learns about you by collecting data about how you use your device and other Microsoft services, such as your music, alarm settings, whether the lock screen is on, what you view and purchase, your browse and Bing search history, and more.

Note that the “and more” statement basically covers everything that you do on a device. Nothing, in principle, is excluded.

Privacy by default

It is very difficult to trust any company that does not take a “security and privacy by default” approach to its products, and then makes it deliberately difficult to actually change settings in order to implement a user’s preferences for privacy settings.

This has manifested itself in another Windows 10 feature called WiFi Sensethat has had even experts confused about the default settings and its potential to be a security hole.

WiFi Sense allows a Windows 10 user to share access to their WiFi with their friends and contacts on Facebook, Skype and Outlook. The confusion has arisen because some of the settings are on by default, even though a user needs to explicitly choose a network to share and initiate the process.

Again, Microsoft has taken an approach in which the specific privacy and security dangers are hidden in a single setting. There is no way to possibly vet who, amongst several hundred contacts, you really wanted to share your network with.

There are steps users can take to mitigate the worst of the privacy issues with Windows 10, and these are highly recommended. Microsoft should have allowed users to pay a regular fee for the product in exchange for a guarantee of the levels of privacy its users deserve.