| ▲ | qurren 8 hours ago |
| > address Do not tell Microsoft where you sleep. IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information. Make sure you register mailing addresses with your credit card institutions in addition to your residential addresses, and make your mailing address your billing address so that you aren't forced to tell a thousand businesses like Microsoft where you sleep. |
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| ▲ | BitwiseFool 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Windows 11 effectively forces users to register with a Microsoft account. Once that's established, all it takes is for an unaware user to fill out an e-commerce form and save an address for auto-fill. |
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| ▲ | jborean93 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Windows 11 effectively forces users to register with a Microsoft account. While it's definitely a dark pattern that I 100% do not agree with, Pro editions still allow you to do a local account. No need for the oobe /bypass command, still can be done through the OOBE GUI setup by selecting a Work/School account option then selecting Sign in options to then specify a local account to create. | |
| ▲ | clear0250 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Windows 11 effectively forces users to register with a Microsoft account. It takes zero effort to bypass that with Rufus, if you set up your own pc. | | |
| ▲ | BitwiseFool 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My comment was in regard to the average PC user. The kinds of folks who would never install an operating system and would likely agree to use Edge while signed in to their Microsoft account. | | |
| ▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Microsoft has also been pushing hard for Recall and recording all local activity forever. Not impossible to imagine that anything looking like a home address “somehow” gets ingested in the telemetry. |
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| ▲ | AngryData 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A bypass existing is good, needing a bypass in the first place is still a problem. |
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| ▲ | cuu508 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Make sure you register mailing addresses with your credit card institutions Sorry for a dumb question but what would one use as a mailing address? Rent a PO box, or use a mail forwarding service, something like that? |
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| ▲ | qurren 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Any of a number of virtual mailbox services which can receive mail for you, e.g. anytimemailbox.com but there are several. You can either pick up in person, or they offer services like mail forwarding, opening and scanning, etc. Besides privacy against leaking your sleeping-address to businesses, they're also convenient for avoiding package theft if that's a problem in your area, and receiving/forwarding mail if you travel a lot for extended periods of time. I'd recommend against PO boxes because (1) they get rejected by some services (2) UPS and FedEx won't deliver to them. Because these businesses have to register as CMRAs and you have to sign a notarized form for them to legally receive mail for you, some services will still detect it and not let you use the address, but my experience for the most part has been that most US financial institutions let you enter a "residential/legal address" (no CMRAs allowed) and a "mailing address" (CMRAs allowed) separately, and the mailing address usually becomes your billing address. | | |
| ▲ | nekusar 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or.....Install Linux and bypass all this stupidity. They will move faster to track each and every one of you, all the while shoving ads and garbage down each of your respective machines... and you all pay for it?! | | |
| ▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Surely I am safe running VSCode on my Linux machine. No chance it would upload a bunch of personal telemetry without my say so. | | | |
| ▲ | nemomarx 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You still want the virtual mailing address for other reasons honestly. Even if your os isn't tracking you or leaking things giving your real address to any business could lead to it being leaked because no one cares about security, etc. If that's in your threat model you should be using a good proxy mailer | | |
| ▲ | nekusar 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps so. But the problem at hand here is that MS Windows has so lost the plot of being an OS for users, to ABUSING users. All these fixes and repairs ignore the fact that abusing people pays. Surveillance capitalism pays, and provides a revenue stream for Microsoft to further exploit. The only way to win is not to play. |
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| ▲ | rexpop 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal. |
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| ▲ | qurren 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > This is broadly impractical for the average citizen. No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. > A scalable solution would be to make this sort of thing illegal. I'm posting this in the genuine interest of people being able to maintain anonymity from data leaks, privacy leaks, and in general not needing to tell businesses more personal information than is necessary to render services. This is in a country that has no protection of personal safety whatsoever, and any business data leak could mean life or death to average citizens who are being threatened by criminals, stalkers, and more. It seems every time I post something of this flavor the same handful of you come out of the woods and want to make privacy illegal, and I'm not sure who you are trying to support. | | |
| ▲ | ygjb 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. Did you notice that it's an affordability crisis out there? An absolutely enormous number of people are skipping bills, taking on credit, and using predatory lenders to make end meets, and your recommendation is to add another fee on top of things. It's not practical or useful guidance for the vast majority of people. I strongly agree with supporting privacy, but this sort of behaviour (adding trackers, etc) to normal functions without a full disclosure and opt-out mechanism must be made illegal, otherwise we are just creating markets for "privacy preserving" technologies that are increasingly less likely to actually be effective for that purpose but sure do put on a good theatre of seeming that way. | | |
| ▲ | AbsurdCensor 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | At least in the US it's not even a good method either. Own a house? Boom, your information is publically available and you won't be able to remove it without a court order, which in most states is impossible to get. In most states, you don't even need to own a house, decide to vote? You information again is publically available. Tie your real name to a single account to purchase something, and you are trackable. Want privacy? You'd need to remove yourself from the internet, dump your phone, destroy your ID and work underground for cash. We can push against iot, and people have been forever, but at the end of the day the government will always they have a vested interest in being able to identify it's citizens. | | |
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| ▲ | autoexec 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. That isn't going to stop Microsoft from collecting your address by collecting your wifi info, or from the data you enter into websites or documents. When the maker of your OS is the enemy you will always lose. | | |
| ▲ | qurren an hour ago | parent [-] | | Technically true but I don't think their engineering is advanced enough that it actually happens that way. |
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| ▲ | nemomarx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think they meant make what Microsoft is doing illegal? or make it illegal to ask for address, etc. definitely a little more effective than mailboxes | | |
| ▲ | qurren 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ahhh okay if that's what they meant, then yes, I 100% agree and apologize in advance. I fully agree that businesses should not be asking for addresses. Non-financial businesses don't need to KYC in the first place, and financial institutions can KYC without needing to know where you sleep. I got triggered because people seem to always want to come out of the woods and say "addresses should be public record" or things of that sort and I vehemently disagree in the interest of privacy, in a country where a stalker can just look you up, terrorize you, and the police will do nothing about it. |
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| ▲ | Modified3019 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > No it's not. Sign up for a virtual mailbox for $15-$25/month. You are out of touch. | |
| ▲ | theideaofcoffee 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They (the ones wanting to make privacy illegal) are just the ones that want to develop the tools and consume the data for it because it'll be good for their resume or some bullshit, or they're just intrinsically broken humans. |
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| ▲ | mschuster91 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > IANAL but they are not a government or financial institution and do not have a right to that information. As soon as you purchase something from Microsoft - e.g. your Office 365 subscription - they have at the very least your billing address on file for the credit card. |
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| ▲ | drdexebtjl an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | We gotta stop normalizing that. Why do you need my address to receive my money? My birth date? Even in places with strong privacy regulations requiring businesses not to collect data they don’t need, businesses apparently get away with asking this. | |
| ▲ | sellmesoap 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seems to me that it's a challenge to make an apple account without adding a credit card to your account as well. A carfully chosen Linux distro (so many options!) is the way to avoid the brunt of these privacy issues, lots of open software calls home in some way or another so user beware! |
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