Thursday, July 30, 2015

Why the hell is Windows 10 sharing my wifi passwords?

Look, Microsoft. Just because I am Facebook friends with someone, doesn’t mean I want to share my wifi passwords with them.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens by default in Windows 10. Anyone who I’m Outlook.com contacts with (spammers), Skype friends with (webcam strippers), or Facebook friends with (high school buddies turned webcam strippers) can connect to wifi networks that I have the password for.

It’s part of a system called Wi-Fi Sense, which has been lurking in Windows Phone for a while now. It sends wifi passwords (encrypted; they never see the plaintext password) to your contacts, who can therefore connect to any wifi network that you have the password to. It’s turned on by default, and I had to dig around in a few levels of settings to disable it.

(There’s also a checkbox when you first connect to a wifi network, giving you the option not to share the network. But since Windows 10 helpfully keeps your saved passwords when you upgrade, all the networks you’ve previously connected to are shared by default. My bad — Win10 shares your saved Wi-Fi passwords with other devices signed into your Microsoft account by default, but not through Wi-Fi Sense.) Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Windows 10 might be free, but your privacy is priceless...
  2. Windows 10 to add facial recognition, iris scans and fingerprint reader...
  3. Windows 10's 'built-in keylogger'? Ha ha, says Microsoft ...
  4. China bars use of Windows 8 in government computers...
  5. Microsoft defends its right to read your email...
  6. Why I dropped Microsoft products like a bad habit and won't be going back...
  7. Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages...
  8. The NSA helped make Windows 7...

No comments:

Post a Comment