Windows 10: Activity may be recorded even if you disable it

[Karlston]

The Privacy dashboard on Microsoft's website lists recent activity, e.g. visited sites or started applications, even if Activity History is disabled on a Windows 10 device.

 

Recent versions of Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system support a feature called Activity History that is keeping track of some of the things that users are doing on the device so that they may "jump back".

 

 

Activity History powers the operating system's Timeline feature. Timeline, which you may invoke with the shortcut Windows-Tab, displays a timeline view of activity when opened.

 

Only some applications such as Microsoft Edge or Office applications support it at the time. The main idea behind the feature is to display a history to users similarly to browsing histories of web browsers.

 

It is easy to go back to a particular application or re-open a website using the feature.

 

Three main options are exposed to users and administrators in the Settings application:

• Store my activity history on this device.
• Send my activity history to Microsoft.
• Show activities for specific accounts.

 

The first keeps track of activity on the device, the second sends it to Microsoft.

 

Even if you disable all three options in Settings, activity may be listed on Microsoft's Privacy Dashboard website on the company's account.microsoft.com site.

 

A user on Reddit noticed this and published a question on the site about the issue. Sign in was done with a local account and a Microsoft Account was used only for the Store.

 

Even with all Activity History toggles disabled, Activity History was displayed on the Privacy Dashboard for the Microsoft account.

 

 

I verified the claim on a Windows 10 device. With Activity History disabled in the Settings application, Microsoft's Privacy Dashboard would still display records of activity on the device on which the change was made.

 

You can verify this as well by opening the Microsoft Privacy Dashboard website and selecting Activity History when it is loaded.

 

The disabling of Activity History in Windows' Group Policy did not change the collecting and display of data either.

1. Visit Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > OS Policies.
2. Disable "Allow publishing of User Activities.
3. Disable "Enables Activity Feed".
4. Disable "Allow upload of User Activities"

 

The changes have no effect on the collecting and display of activity data on the Microsoft Dashboard website under Activity History.

Closing Words

The leaking of Activity History data even when the feature is disabled is likely an, admittedly, serious bug.

 

Source: Windows 10: Activity may be recorded even if you disable it (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[BimBamSmash]

A quick look on the web shows that with respect to just about all tech companies, any options or toggles that have something to do with disabling user data collection don't behave the way they are expected most of the times.

[Pete 12]

Once a spy , always a spy.............?? 

[nir]

Windows 10 Said to Track User Activity Even When Told Not To

 

New privacy concerns caused by Windows 10

 

Windows 10 might ignore user settings and continue logging activity history even when the feature is specifically disabled, according to new user findings.

 

As reported on reddit, turning off the Activity History in Settings on Windows 10 doesn’t make any difference, as the data is still collected and uploaded to Microsoft.

 

And figuring out this happens is quite easy, all thanks to the way Activity History works.

 

Basically, Activity History is the engine that powers a new Windows 10 feature called Timeline. With Windows Timeline, users can save snapshots of their activity, including documents, tab browsers, and running apps, and restore them at any point within the next 30 days.

 

Users are allowed to disable Activity History from Settings > Privacy > Activity History, and Windows 10 offers three different options for those who want to keep it running by control their data: store activity history on the device, upload it to Microsoft, or only log data from specific accounts.

 

Data still uploaded despite feature being disabled

 

But as discovered in the said thread, even if all these options are disabled, which means that Activity History not only that shouldn’t collect any information, but it shouldn’t upload it to Microsoft’s servers either, user data is still sent to the software giant.

 

And oddly enough, there’s an easy way to see this. When logging in to the Microsoft Privacy Dashboardwebsite, which Microsoft is specifically offering on the account page in order to manage the data stored by the company, users can still see data uploaded by Activity History during the time it was supposed to be off.

 

At this point, it’s not yet clear why this feature is ignoring user settings, but without a doubt, it’s a privacy issue that Microsoft needs to resolve as soon as possible. Needless to say, the software giant hasn’t offered any information until now and everyone at Microsoft has remained tight-lipped, so it’ll be interesting to see how the company deals with privacy concerns this time.

 

Source

[BimBamSmash]

15 hours ago, nir said:

At this point, it’s not yet clear why this feature is ignoring user settings, but without a doubt, it’s a privacy issue that Microsoft needs to resolve as soon as possible.

 

At best they are going to have that web platform display only things users consented for them to gather. I doubt it changes what they collect.