Telemetry Schedules - Why are companies monitoring us so vigorously ?!

nIGHTmAYOR · 25 Apr 2019

So today I was browsing task manager only to find a couple of null process running and refusing to shut down , i tried to investigate all possible means that could lead to firing these process which led me to task scheduler at one point .

So honestly I haven't checked it in ages but it did catch my interest . Almost 50% of the so many tasks I found inside for no reason were marked as Telemetry .

For those who do not know what these are , they are supposedly tasks that keep firing per scheduled time which collect and send out statistical data about your PC to owners of the task .

So yea Microsoft and Office has 8 of these , Intel has 2 , Nvidia has 7 , then comes the Antivirus that has 3 of these , Adobe has 2 & 16 others found from low life companies I installed their apps years ago and like forgot all about em .

Now the funnier trend is programs trying to check for updates , Google takes first place installing 4 tasks mind you 2 services that tries to check for updates just for Chrome ! then the Antivirus has 4 and 20 other programs from low life companies doing it as well .

I am not being skeptical here , but who can really analyse statistical data sent within 15 minutes frequency globally ? or what sort of a low life company tasks a daily schedule to check for updates , why don't they just keep it to when one fires their app if they ever like the good old days (mind you that I haven't had an alert from these about updates through out the years of installation!) ?

Now seriously why are we being sniffed so vigorously while I'm sure all these collected data end up down the drain while all there is to it are just the waste of processing power and internet quota ...

Faith · 25 Apr 2019

Because your information is valuable. User data is key to predict and refocus a company, especially if they are in the business to sell you products and services. More data the better. But some telemetries aren't necessarily collecting personal information, instead sends in crash reports, application settings and driver data to improve the user experience. As much as Microsoft has been in the spotlight a few times regarding privacy control and user collection, I'd like to think that some of that data has been used to improve Windows for the better with less frequent crashes at a faster pace. Maybe I'm too gullible to think that, but if the data is anonymous I don't want to fret too much about it.

Anything that operates as a service needs a form of data collection. And seeing that services are rising, we can expect more telemetry going forward. Will they be abused? Unfortunately yes. Do I think that they use up my internet data or processing power? I'm in luxury having no data cap, but I don't see them (the ones I have anyway) using anywhere near a percent of my overall usage. I do respect anyones opinion about this topic, it's interesting to read from all sides.

Callender · 25 Apr 2019

Just disable ones that you can safely disable:

Telemetry Schedules - Why are companies monitoring us so vigorously ?!-telemetry-scheduled-tasks.jpg

Block other stuff with your firewall.

Telemetry Schedules - Why are companies monitoring us so vigorously ?!-firewall.jpg

CraigHB · 25 Apr 2019

Yeah there's a lot of that kind of thing. I shut it off, delete it, or disable it wherever I can. I'm not into providing them who knows what information for their benefit. Besides I don't want that extra stuff running on my system anyway.

As far as my data improving the product, I don't really care about it. There's plenty of people running Windows box stock for them to get whatever data they want.