Very well said David, and I can see no rebuttle in my opinion.
What worries me is that you have found my real name and that I have a
Jennifer in my other life persona and are trying to interfere with our
relationship.
(anyone who doesn't know I'm kidding should step away from the computer and
play with blocks).
So I will go put the basic on for now and feel I have chosen a wise and
cautious path for all of mes.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-philly-comp-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-philly-comp-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Goldfield
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 7:43 AM
To: blind-philly-comp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-philly-comp] Re: New Version of Microsoft Security
Essentials 4.8 Released
Bill,
In all seriousness, my comfort level with this type of community-based
protection really depends on exactly what pieces of information are being
extracted from my PC by Microsoft. With a group of people providing
information, it's a different and more comfortable scenario.
If ten people are providing feedback on road conditions, those people are
helping everyone else by describing what they see from their current
location and they are choosing to only report the relevant facts without
revealing other irrelevant or personal pieces of information that they don't
want others to know. I think that this type of cloud-based protection
employs a similar approach.
From what I can tell from the very brief description in the window with the
MAPS options, the advanced membership can reveal the full path of a piece of
malware which was detected. The description reads
In addition to basic information, more detailed information is sent to
Microsoft about malware and potentially unwanted software, including the
full path to the software, and detailed information about how the software
has impacted your PC.
Suppose the malware that it finds just happens to be located in a path with
a name like c:\users\don morris\documents\love letters to jennifer So now
Microsoft, while they likely don't care, could examine this info and say
"oh, so the malware infected the computer belonging to someone named Don
Morris and he has a girlfriend named Jennifer."
They won't see Don's actual documents but the fact is that they now have
info that Don might not realize they actually have. Some could argue that
Don should know this because the MAPS window explains that the full path of
the malware can be sent to Microsoft and so, legally, Don has no real
recourse if he suddenly figures this out and wants to complain.
It also sends information on how the software has impacted your PC. This is
helpful to Microsoft because they can, for example, see that the software
rebooted the PC or the malware deleted a certain registry key or the malware
created a registry key which was set to perform a malicious action. On one
hand, this is extremely helpful as it will allow them to see what the
malware actually does, which, in theory, could help them to better control
or even defeat it. However, I would prefer to know exactly what information
they actually receive as to how it impacts my PC. .
Also, to say that the advanced membership sends Microsoft information with
the word "including" kind of implies that other data could be sent, along
with the data they have already specified.
In all honesty, the reason why I'm personally comfortable with enabling
advanced membership is this: if data was really being sent to Microsoft
above and beyond what should be sent, someone would quickly figure that out
and it would be the biggest story in the tech press which would cause them
no end of embarrassment. As an example, suppose that advanced membership
took snapshots of every Web site that you visited and sent that data to
Microsoft's malware protection center. This would be discovered very quickly
and it would be the biggest tech story of the year. However, if someone
isn't comfortable with this there is no reason why there is an obligation to
keep MAPS enabled. Disabling it still gives you protection; you're just not
choosing to share data about malware on your system with Microsoft. I do not
know how these options differ from the "enable cloud protection" checkbox,
which is new with 4.8. I'm hoping some savvy individual from the online
community will explain this. I do remember seeing a similar feature with AVG
and I would assume that many antivirus packages are employing this
capability.
Please read about the petition to allow Sister Diana Momenka, a persecuted
Iraqi Christian, to visit the United States http://bit.ly/1IYJjMu Feel free
to visit my Web site http://www.davidgoldfield.info
David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology Specialist
On 5/15/2015 7:15 AM, The New Vision Store wrote:
My thinking on this is as follows:
Please, for the more advanced user, advise with your opinions and basis.
I think if I'm going to rely on either M S E or malwarebytes which are
free, and still valid in their abilities (or why would I stay?) I
should give the pool of info as much as possible. I do not take
privacy lightly and actually think it should be in our constitution
(which it is not).
but, as far as basic, do think this is a feedback that could help all
users, and that means me, from what others will send them through that
feature.
Thoughts?
greedy,
On Thu, 14 May 2015, Merv Keck wrote:
Hi,
David and other users of MSE. I don't know how well you have explored
this Advanced setting along with MAPS in the new version of MSE. I
found it to be a bit frustrating with screen readers as well. I
played with it using both Jaws and NVDA. Admittedly, I am still a
beginner with NVDA so I may not be using it to the best of its
ability. However, I did bring up Magic 13, the latest build with
reverse contrast at 22 times magnification and give that a go. I
found this option to be very enlightening and I wondered what you
thought of this. In other words I wonder if this is of any benefit to
users of MSE. Personally I do have MAPS enabled. However, I currently
have the default basic membership selected rather than the advanced
membership option. I do feel they could have chosen better wording
for these options.
Basically you have three options here. You can turn off MAPS which
means that you choose not to send any information to Microsoft at
all. That is a radio button which is not all that accessible. I got
to it though with a little help from Magic. I'm sure I could have
found it with a screen reader and the radio button short cut although
I did not test that theory.
So maybe
I should change that to I hope you can get there that way.
The second option is Basic Membership which means that Microsoft
received information about software on your computer in order to help
them create future definitions. This may include URLs and partial
pathnames as well as basic information about malware and potentially
unwanted software on your computer.
The other option is advanced membership and is everything involved in
Basic membership plus full pathnames as well as more detailed
information including how the software has impacted your PC. Both
Basic and Advanced Membership also include whether or not the action
was successful which MSE has taken on your computer.
Hope that helps.
Merv
