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Windows 10: The Great Conspiracy?

Remember the controversy when Windows 10 was first released, all the claims of spyware? Take a look back at Marc’s tongue-in-cheek response to the conspiracy theorists, which elicited quite a few interesting comments. What do you think?

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Who’s spying on you?

Spying is usually defined as secretly gaining information about a government, organisation, person(s) etc or to watch secretly, usually for hostile purposes. It’s been going on ever since we decided to take up arms against each other and some now say that the very definition has broadened greatly, to include you, me and everyone else who walks the earth. It’s common knowledge that in countries such as North Korea and the ex Soviet Union, the practice of spying on its citizens is and always has been state sponsored and pretty much accepted as a way of life, like it or not. Let’s not forget the resources that would have been thrown into this kind spying before the Internet came along; phone taps, covert surveillance and 007-style lapel cameras and the like were pretty much de rigueur. Before long, it all became highly sophisticated, we all got connected and made the spies’ job a heck of a lot easier in only a few years, so unless we’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, I don’t really need to repeat the spying stories related to the NSA, GCHQ and others to highlight the far reaching tentacles of the state, but an operating system spying on us is quite another thing altogether. Or is it? And what do they want? And why?

Is Windows 10 the great spy in the sky?

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Continuing with our Spy vs Spy theme and let’s face it, most conspiracy theories contain an element of farcical spyology in them, there’s a widely held belief that Microsoft and in particular Windows 10, the fancy new OS they released a few months ago, is the single most intrusive and spyworthy operating system yet released in the history of technology.

****Author pauses to switch to Windows 10 for added authenticity****

Ah, that’s better, now it feels like the real deal typing this on Microsoft spyware, knowing that my movements from the moment I woke up at 0814 (I overslept, sorry) are known to the Illuminati, New World Order, Zionists and maybe even the Moonies and Marmite Munchers too, who knows? And they will also be interested to discover that at 0820 I was enjoying a steaming mug of tea (English Breakfast) whilst reading about Keith Richards’ hallucinatory adventures whilst on tour with The Stones in 1972 and later at 0831, I became fully connected and resumed writing this drivel for the benefit of my spymasters, wherever they may lurk. Later, or possibly simultaneously, I posted some vitally important nonsense on a Buenos Aires expat forum asking which supermarket currently holds stock of plain, Greek style yoghurt, a much sought after commodity here south of the border, without which, life can be very tiresome indeed.

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Unbeknownst to me of course, my every movement was being tracked by some faceless, bespectacled operative in a windowless office buried deep below a fortress in Fort Meade, Cheltenham or possibly Redmond with the special designation of tracking fluffy kittens, God-loves-you memes and alternative Ratatouille recipes. My next stop and since I simply can’t help myself, was to check my like-count on Facebook for that video I posted only the night before of a squirrel stealing nuts from my next door neighbour’s birdhouse, which coincidentally he had spent nine months and five days constructing in his garden shed whilst hiding from his wife who suspected him of philandering with the cleaner who worked for them on Tuesdays and sometimes Fridays. Imagine my surprise then when I found I’d only received two likes, one of which was my own and the other was from my Mum. Mortified with rage, I set viciously about a person I’d never met who had posted a picture of a singer I’d never even heard of, who can’t even spell his own first name correctly called Kanye West or something like that, suggesting that he should be the next prime minister of Great Britain. You can’t imagine my fury and once I’d put him firmly in his place, I felt so much better, uploaded a picture of the Nespresso I’d just made (thanks George), that elicited zero likes, which put me in a further rage. So I decided then it was maybe time I read that article I’d received yonks ago entitled Windows 10: The New Zionists Revenge, which suggested, amongst other measures, to publicise all my passwords, bank account details and personal browsing history in the event of not joining their cause or signing their online petition, which calls for the immediate withdrawal of the operating system from the market, to be replaced by some operating system no one’s ever heard of called Linux Kenyatta v14.5.

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It’s a tempting choice indeed and one which my true masters, The New World Order, various lizards and others would be well advised to ignore at their peril. But, and this is a very big but, do I really want to dust off the abacus, commune with penguins, throw my games away and bang my head against the most obscure operating system in the sub-Saharan continent? Or would I be more content to mingle with religious nuts, dossier collectors and spymasters bent on world domination? It was a tough decision in the end and throwing my lot in with the great spy community in the sky seemed absurd on the face of it. But when I realised that the anti-Zionist threat was just a feint, all became clear to me as in some kind of divine intervention. My lords and masters at The World Council already know all my passwords, offshore bank accounts and the porn sites I had not visited. So, throwing caution to the wind, I rejected all thoughts of wacky petitions and penguins and threw myself back into a world which is familiar to me, knowing very well that the interns buried deep below the evil towers of Redmond, Fort Meade and Cheltenham would not miss their fix of me and I’d be only too happy to oblige.

Dumb, me? You betcha!

21 thoughts on “Windows 10: The Great Conspiracy?”

  1. Norbert Gostischa

    So if Siri does the “spying”, I guess that’s exceptable because it’s done by Apple. If Cortana does the same “spying”, it’s not acceptable ???

  2. Not funny, ever so predictable and, above all, unhelpful.

    If you don’t mind about your privacy, if you don’t have any secrets, some people do, and some people have. Actually, that’s most people on earth.

      1. It wasn’t helpful. It WAS amusing. 🙂

        I don’t buy into the conspiracy stuff . . . exactly. But times, they are a-changing, and not for the better.

  3. One of the single most stupidly written articles I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Not to mention it’s extremely naive.

      1. Maybe not. Have you ever met Parry Hotter?
        Me, I think it is a brilliant piece of writing.
        Ta-
        Mum

  4. Best thing I have read all day 🙂 I am sick and tired of paranoid people fear-mongering all over the place.
    I would have ‘liked’ your nespresso had I seen it. Don’t tell me George has been tricked again – will he never lean !
    (Cortana has not reached my country yet so one less thing to worry about.)

      1. Obviously I meant will George never ‘learn’ 🙂

        Instead of installing Linux Kenyatta anyone can just use O&O ShutUp10
        https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
        All it costs is a few minutes of time, providing some is left over from worryworting about the whole privacy thing.

        My Doctor has all my medical records, the IRD knows my income and my bank knows how I spend it. The postman delivering my snail mail knows who I get letters from too !
        No-one is forcing me to use Windows- no individual, no government. I can live without it, I did for more then half my life. I also lived without a smart phone and credit cards. I don’t intend any time soon to give up any of them just in case something bad happens, any more than I intend to never cross a road in case I get run over.

        As for penguins – there is a colony of them not 5 minutes drive away from where I live – cute little things, great to observe but I don’t want to be one.

        1. I’m glad for you. However, a great number of people need to use Windows and even are forced to use Windows (by their employer, for instance). Or need to have credit cards. Or a smart phone. Or even a portable phone.

          I used to live without one. Then, my bank wouldn’t let me access my account without knowing my portable phone number. So I had to buy one.

          Be grateful that your postman knows who sends you letters — and doesn’t use that information to hurt you. I live in a country where postal workers routinely steal from parcels, letters, you name it — and the Post Office does not care.

          I looked up the software you advised, and it shows exactly what is wrong with Microsoft’s approach. It says :

          “Microsoft uses most data to display personalized information to you that is aimed at making your computer life easier. As an example, Windows 10 can remind you to set off to the airport 30 minutes earlier due to traffic en route. In order to deliver this information to you, however, Windows 10 has to access your calendar entries, your mails (i.e. the airline confirmation email), your location and it has to have access to the internet to get traffic news.”

          What would you need that for ? What happened with the concept of you deciding to check the traffic news, because you know that you’ve got a plane to catch, and generally being in charge of your life ?

          But no, Microsoft would rather have us put our faith in an unreliable automated process — because all this Cortana thing might work or not this time –, instead of us taking that very simple and easy decision to check the traffic news.

          So it’s not only a question of protecting secrets you might think you don’t have, or even of protecting your privacy you might think you don’t care for (because you haven’t yet suffered the consequences of relinquishing it) ; it goes even further.

          Microsoft wants to be in charge of your life, instead of you being in charge.

          Once you’ve relinquished that — because it’s “cool” at first sight — there’s no telling where it may lead you.

          In the past, personal computing was about empowering the user. Now, it’s about big technology corporations taking away from the user the power they had over their lives before personal computing even existed. The regression is staggering.

          Microsoft is not alone in this. Evrybody is doing it. Facebook, Google, you name it. Anti-virus software companies such as Avast or AVG are doing it. Vendors of PDF readers such as Foxit are doing it. The whole cloud concept takes away from you the freedom that the Internet-connected PC had brought to you.

          And no, it’s not “paranoïa” and “tinfoil hattery”, as the smart-alecs of this world would like us to think. It’s avery real trend, and a very worrying one.

          Of course, if you need O&O software to protect you from Microsoft, it means that Microsoft can de-activate O&O any time it pleases. They’ve already done that with something as un-threatening to them as C-Cleaner.

        2. Well, as I said before I don’t have Cortana. Even if I could have it I would probably disable it.
          All of the configurations in O&OShutUp10 can be done manually. When I installed it I had already done most of it. It is just a time saver, nothing more so there is no reason for MS to de-activate it. It is not protecting me from MS, it is simply using MS’s own settings. The lazy way to do it, for people who can’t be bothered to do it themselves.
          I am curious to know what has been done to C-Cleaner. I am using it with no problems on two Windows 10 machines.
          I don’t see what ‘having’ to use Windows in a work environment has to do with personal computing. I use it at my workplace but we work there, the computers are not for personal use. MS is not in charge of my life. I choose to use MS Windows. I have that choice. No-one is forcing me or anyone else. People use it because they want to and if they don’t like it all they need to do is cross over to Apple or Linux – easy. Like it or lump it. Or dump it.
          No one is forcing me to use the cloud either, and I don’t.

  5. Everything connected to and on the internet spies on you in one way or another and yes that includes Microsoft, it all depends on how tech savvy you are and how much of that information you let out.

  6. Privacy never matters until suddenly it does and the Government can weaponise the lack of it against you.
    In England right now, a so-called bastion of democracy, people are now being arrested for Facebook posts that the UK Government doesn’t like.
    Try telling people that would have been the case just five years ago. No-one would have believed you ! They would have called you a conspiracy theorist.
    So Marc, maybe privacy does matter !

    1. Hey Reg,

      Marc’s away right now on a well earned holiday. Mate, this piece is pure satire, never meant to be taken seriously.

      That said, when Windows 10 was first released it was the subject of some seriously outrageous claims.

      Cheers… Jim

      1. Peter Thompson

        Oh the first comment about Siri is so true.

        I remember people complaining about how Cortana needed to know details to recommend stuff yet their phone knew stuff and they didn’t mind. Personalised information, the clue is in the name.

        However a lot of these companies probably do take more than they tell and sell it on

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