Torrenting and piracy in general has always been frowned upon, it’s in fact a criminal act akin to stealing. That being said I doubt there’s any tech savvy individual who has not torrented some material or the other at some point in time. Much like the free pencils at IKEA, which we can’t resist the taking of more than one, individuals torrent to save on money and due to the ease and safety associated with torrenting. Regionally, another factor is of course the lack of available outlets (such as Netflix) which pushes people to torrent their favourite shows.
But if you’ve upgraded to Windows 10, you might find torrenting a bit more difficult now; a slew of torrent sites have blacklisted Windows 10 users. The reason: the growing claims that Microsoft is using Windows 10 to spy on its users and harvest data from their machines. While there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for the most worrying claims, they have picked up momentum in the wake of genuine concerns that Windows 10 is spying on it’s users. By default, the operating system has a range of privacy-impinging settings turned on — and even when they’re turned off, computers continue to send information to Microsoft.
Pirates have claimed in statements that “Windows 10 sends the contents of your local disks directly to one of their servers”, and that Microsoft has been working with a company called MarkMonitor to identify people who are downloading from the internet. Those concerns seem to overstate the amount of information that is being sent. Microsoft has been working with MarkMonitor for some time, using its technology to stop scams among other things.
The controversy initially began because of a line in Microsoft’s service agreement that allows the company to apply updates that will stop users “playing counterfeit games”, according to TorrentFreak.
Trackers are the servers that allow all of the computers downloading files using torrents to talk to one another, and allows them to find and request the files that they need. Those servers require staff to look after them, and it is those staff members that are banning Windows 10 computers from using the torrents.
So far, several torrent trackers including one major team known as iTS has banned the operating system. But other groups are set to do the same, according to TorrentFreak.
What do you think about Microsoft’s controversial policy to harvest data from Windows 10 users? Will this deter you from upgrading? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
