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Microsoft pulls Windows 10 update

by on25 November 2015


Stuffed up people’s privacy settings


Microsoft stopped downloads for its latest official edition of Windows 10, version 1511, after it meddled with people's privacy settings.

The update disappeared soon after it appeared last week. Microsoft had announced it was a major upgrade for Windows 10 so we waited to see what happened. It appeared that it never got beyond the MCT stage.

According to Redmond on Tuesday, "when the November update was installed, a few settings preferences may have inadvertently not been retained for advertising ID, Background apps, SmartScreen Filter, and Sync with devices."

The operating system allowed apps to access people's unique advertising ID numbers. It switched on the SmartScreen Filter that sent executables to Microsoft servers to analyse, software was allowed to run in the background and settings and passwords would be backed up the cloud. These are some of the things that security savvy people have been frantically disabling.

In other words version 1511 of Windows 10 via the MCT on Windows 10 machines overwrote the user's privacy settings. Opps

Redmond has fixed it and future installs of the November update available today should be fine.

The November update, version 1511 aka build 10586, is now available again via MCT for people with machines to manage.

Last modified on 25 November 2015
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