Microsoft has been doing more and more of this stuff lately, and it does start to worry me quite a bit. The last time they worried me was when "Microsoft shut down a million-strong Tor botnet, by uninstalling Tor from the computers".
I don't want Microsoft to have that kind of power, let alone use it. Worse yet, they make it sound like it's some kind of PR win for them. "Microsoft the hero, takes down evil network". But they usually try to hide how they did it. Very few articles mentioned they were uninstalling Tor from the computers the last time around. Most were just churning Microsoft's press release and the hero narrative.
> The last time they worried me was when "Microsoft shut down a million-strong Tor botnet, by uninstalling Tor from the computers"
They did not uninstall Tor. They disabled it. More importantly, this Tor was NOT installed by the user of the computer. It was installed by the malware for its own use, without the knowledge of the computer user [1].
> I don't want Microsoft to have that kind of power, let alone use it
Actually, if you are running anti-malware software, you DO want them to have this power, as finding and disabling things that malware has installed on your computer is the whole point of anti-malware software.
It is almost like giving one company monopoly control of the personal computer industry through a proprietary OS nobody can audit might not be the best plan.
>The last time they worried me was when "Microsoft shut down a million-strong Tor botnet, by uninstalling Tor from the computers".
>Very few articles mentioned they were uninstalling Tor from the computers the last time around. Most were just churning Microsoft's press release and the hero narrative.
Microsoft's security software did that, that too only stopped it from automatically starting if it was installed by a known virus. So if you install and run a virus scanner, why wouldn't you expect it to block such attacks?
If you didn't want it to do that, I am sure there are ways to opt out from using Microsoft's security tools. Were there any reports of legitimate Tor users getting affected by the action?
Debatable. When you install it and agree to the Terms and EULA you agree to allow Microsoft to uninstall software that it deems as malicious. I don't know if that means the tool is malicious.
Most people don't read EULAs. Caveat installing users.
I don't want Microsoft to have that kind of power, let alone use it. Worse yet, they make it sound like it's some kind of PR win for them. "Microsoft the hero, takes down evil network". But they usually try to hide how they did it. Very few articles mentioned they were uninstalling Tor from the computers the last time around. Most were just churning Microsoft's press release and the hero narrative.