New windows 'feature' will breach your wifi security

[Marcel]

Be aware: with windows 10 has a new feature: WIFI-sense. This feature will share your secure WIFI key with all your friends on Facebook, Hotmail, Skype etc. So not so secure. The bad thing is that when your friends have this key, it will be shared with their friends and wth their friend and with their friends and... you got the picture. With other words it turns your secure home network into a public WAN. Further more, it will connect you automaticly to any public WAN in the neighbourhood, don't bother to agree with the conditions, fill in your email account or whatever, wifi-sense will do it all for you. You will have no clue what you agreed with or where you left which email adres.

I guess Microsoft is paid by either the NSA or the Russian Maffia or both

On a serious note, be aware who you give access to your network and don't upgrade to Win10. If you have to, at least make sure you turned this option off and pray there is not a backdoor.

Info: Latest Windows 10 feature Wi-Fi Sense could be a privacy problem

 

[vikingBerserker]

Holy <BLEEP>! Thanks for the headsup!

 

[gumbyk]

It's a windows phone feature too, and has been around for a while.
Friends only get it when they're close enough to your network to see it, and AFAIK they are only able to get into it as a public network, so they don't have access

.

Its easy enough to turn off, and on my phone it was turned off by default.

 

[fubar57]

Good thing I don't have any friends. Thanks for the heads up Marcel.



Geo

 

[at6]

All the more reason to stick with my land line. Wireless anything sucks big time.

 

[Lucky13]

Friends??

 

[Marcel]

gumbyk, but the machines in your network are still in the same ip range as this 'foreign' machine, so there is no way for you to make sure this other guy doesn't have access to your NAS or other sensitive data sources. I don't think that is a security. Furthermore, MS stores your keyphrase on their servers. This while everybody warns you that you shouldn't store passwords in the cloud. Lastly, I can turn the feature off, but I'm never sure if my friends have turned it off as well. THis is a major security mistake that MS is making.

 

[at6]

Friends??

What the hell are those?

 

[Gnomey]

Not an ideal situation but no doubt enough of a fuss will be made so that it isn't as extreme in the production versions...

 

[Bucksnort101]

Can you say Ubuntu!!!

 

[Marcel]

Ubuntu is fine to a point but they also did their share of weird things, like sending your local search queries to Amazon. You were looking for a file and you ended up with an advertisement for a dishwasher. Luckily you could opt out, but an opt-in would have been better in the first place. I use Arch linux, making me the only one reponsible for the services on this computer. Granted, it's not for everyone and you have to be an expert to setup Arch but at least it is safe. But I think (X/K)Ubuntu of even better it's offsping Linux Mint is a good alternative for less experienced people who want to have a good, non-intrusive OS which is not involved with the NSA (no virusses is a plus, too).

 

[mikewint]

VISTA works JUST fine

 

[Marcel]

VISTA works JUST fine

Since when?

 

[mikewint]

After the usual 3 service packs fixing the problems Microsoft should have fixed BEFORE release. I'd still be using Millennium except newer software was not working.
IMHO: This "got to have the latest whiz-bang" is crepe
My cell phone is an actual cell phone not a home entertainment center, it makes telephone calls, period

 

[Wurger]

Since when?

Since I had it installed eight or nine years ago. I even didn't have to reinstall the OS. I wouldn't have had to do that at all if my HDD died. I have replaced the HDD with a new one and run the Vista OS again. No problem so far.

 

[Marcel]

I was joking Wojtek, I also have a vista installation, which works since 2007 without reinstalling. It still works okay, abeit rather slow.

 

[Wurger]

I see now. What service pack does your Vista have installed?

 

[Marcel]

Service pack 2. Although I hardly use Vista anymore, it's been eating up harddisk space since I installed it. It was already a whopping 20 GB back then, now it is over 40, even without installing much software. I have been trying to clean up, bit the WinSxS directory is growing and growing. I still sometimes update it, although windows update has always been annoying. I wonder why Microsoft is so concerned by userinterface (windows 8) while the basic functions like the updaing system is so crappy. Not that it improved in 8.1, I also have an 8.1 installation and it's update system is even more annoying. But I hardly use it anymore. I generally turned away from Windows a few years ago.

 

[Wurger]

SP2 same here. I found it working better than the SP1 with updatings. Also I agree on the OS growing and growing. It is a quite serious problem. However it may be limited by modification of the OS settings. But it can be a trouble for these whose don't have enough of the space on their hard disks.

 

[mikewint]

With 4 Tb drives about $125 space is not a question any longer