As soon as you read the headline of this entry, there will be someone who wonders, rhetorically, of course, when Windows has not been spyware. But the truth is that as the years go by and the versions of the Microsoft operating system follow one another, everything gets worse in this regard. Windows 11 is, therefore, the worst we have ever seen.
But this is not what I say. Or I’m not just saying it. However, before going into the matter, I would like to remind you of what the spyware, spyware. According to Wikipedia in the lead of its article dedicated to describing this concept:
Spyware (acronym for spyware) is software with malicious behavior that aims to collect information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user, for example, violating their privacy or endangering the security of your device. This behavior can be present in malware as well as legitimate software. […] Spyware is frequently associated with advertising […]. Because these behaviors are so common and can have non-harmful uses, providing a precise definition of spyware is a difficult task.
It is worth remembering, because it is very easy to resort to the «spyware it is software that spies” because although the description is correct, it falls far short when faced with a complex issue such as this. And it is that “violating privacy” can occur in many ways and not all are equally harmful.
For example, many people agree to lose some of their privacy in order to access products and services for free or cheaper, and this is not a calamity either. At least for now. But let’s go back to Windows, which is what concerns us… for the worse, according to experts from the British YouTube channel The PC Security Channel.
The question of whether Windows has become spyware in fact, it is theirs and they answer it with a analysis of outgoing traffic from Windows 11 with the system freshly installed, when the user has not even opened an application. Or as they say, what any user who buys a new PC with Windows 11 is going to find – without realizing it, of course.
In essence, the analysis they perform is well known and is based on filtering outgoing traffic from a computer. And what are found in a factory Windows are multiple and constant connections to all kinds of sites, from Microsoft’s own to Amazon, advertising sites, pages of security solutions distributors… A submachine gun of unsolicited connections unparalleled in the system’s history.
The test is interesting because to illustrate how things have evolved -for the worse, it is worth insisting- they repeat it with Windows XP, observing how the veteran connects only to Windows Update and a couple of other harmless services. From night to day, go; and although it can be argued that the comparison does not make sense due to everything that has changed over the years, it is an indication that we are getting worse.
Below you can see the full video, but if you can’t handle English, I’ll summarize it for you: indiscriminate connections to sites that will track you thanks to Windows 11 and all of this with hardly any use of it. Yes, most likely by accepting the conditions of use you have granted permission for them to do whatever they want, but…
