Nearly a month after launching, Windows 10's controversial privacy policies continues to dominate talk about the operating system. However this latest issue is probably something that won't bother Microsoft. Private BitTorrent tracker iTS has decided to start banning Windows 10 users from using their service due to concerns that Microsoft may be sending information from your computer to anti-piracy sites.
A user on Reddit was alerted to iTS' Windows 10 ban last week and shared his discovery on the r/trackers subreddit. According to his post, all Windows 10 users attempting to access iTS will be redirected to this video instead.
iTS posted an official statement on their page explaining why they had to go to the drastic step of locking out Windows 10 users. They claim that Microsoft is using Windows 10 to monitor the contents of users' local hard drives and is sending their findings to a company called MarkMonitor, one of the largest anti-piracy firms.
The general fear is that Microsoft may soon use this information to remotely disable pirated software such as games, apps, and other media.
ArsTechnica points out that this extreme paranoia over Windows 10 is generally overblown, even for a website that traffics in pirated data.
"To the best of our knowledge, this is nonsense. Windows 10, like every modern mainstream operating system, does connect to numerous cloud services, and there are certainly privacy implications to these. But sending the contents of disks to Microsoft? There are no signs that Windows 10 does anything of the sort." Writes Ars' Peter Bright says.
Torrentfreak also questioned these precautionary measures, believing them to be overly excessive:
This change isn't limited to Windows 10 but covers many services. Also, there is no indication that this will ever be used to target third-party games, which is highly unlikely."
