Re: how to stop Win10 updates

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

On 26/2/16 8:54 AM, Kari Eveli wrote:

> After all, you are on the Win10 bandwagon. If you are not
> comfortable with this, maybe you should use another operating
> system.

MS seriously mis-fired with both Vista and 8.1. It is still early in
the day for Win10.

Moreover, a lot of people got burned more than once with earlier
iterations of Windows when service packs broke something which worked
before. I think it is a well-founded precaution to take a wait-and-see
attitude to Win10 updates. For those who take the plunge, watch the MS
user forums and if a particular update gets poor reviews or breaks
something, then don't let it install itself until MS fixes it.

Finally, I think there are well-founded security reasons to keep some
degree of end-user control over updates. A mandatory update system is
open to abuse. After Mr. Snowden's revelations, some people, myself
included, think it possible that certain govt agencies might try to
slip monitoring tools into cyber systems without the public's
knowledge, approval, or oversight--simply because they _can_ (viz the
current contention between the FBI and Apple). An OS which mandates
mandatory updates is wide open to being compromised in this way. The
NSA is technically capable of setting up rogue servers which pose as
genuine MS servers to propagate monitoring tools, and it only has to
succeed once to plant a monitoring tool on one device in a LAN. As
Win10 devices feed each other updates by default, such a monitoring
tool would propagate like a worm to other devices. There are foreign
govts and organized criminals who would try to exploit this as well
and I'm not sanguine about trusting MS alone to shut down the Chinese
and the Iranians and the Russians and No. Korea and ISIS and 'Spectre'
on this one. There have been major hacks into corporate giants, such
as Sony, which led to significant breaches of personal data security;
could happen to MS, too.