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Windows 10 users banned from torrenting by piracy sites because of worries that Microsoft spies on downloads

Hardcore torrenting sites have voiced concerns that Microsoft is sending ‘the contents of your local disks directly to one of their servers’, though there’s no evidence that is happening

Andrew Griffin
Monday 24 August 2015 15:53 BST
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Fans celebrate the launch of Windows 10 in Sydney
Fans celebrate the launch of Windows 10 in Sydney

Users of Windows 10 are being banned from using certain torrents, after hardcore pirates have suggested that the operating system is sending private and identifying information back to Microsoft.

Some hardcore piracy sites have banned users of the new operating system from using their trackers, meaning that torrents — the most popular way of pirating films, music and other media — won’t work.

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 and tracking its users.

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.

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.

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.

But they appear to have gained momentum because of the genuine concerns about tracking and spying in Windows 10. By default, the operating system has a range of privacy-impinging settings turned on — and even when they are turned off, computers continue to send information to Microsoft’s servers.

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.

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