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Growing up I heard horror stories of people pirating versions of Windows, Office, etc that had backdoors installed. If you download pirated software there isn't a real way to know for 100% certainty that it isn't laced with something.

So I avoid it like the plague. Even if the majority don't have anything it only takes the one and then, depending on its level of sophistication, you're screwed.

Pirating Windows is pretty stupid these days. You can download the official MS ISO from their website, and buy a real key from some subreddits for like $20.

The keys they sell are those bulk keys large companies get, their IT dep guy wants to make some extra coin on the side. But they work.

Also:

- if you bought a laptop with preinstalled Windows, you can activate a fresh install with the key that's stored in the laptop (in ACPI tables IIRC). Just make sure it's the same edition and language.

- if you're a student, check if you have DreamSpark (er, Imagine) Premium. Apparently Windows Server is available even in the non-Premium program (for all students).

> you can activate a fresh install with the key that's stored in the laptop (in ACPI tables IIRC).

Free tool we developed to quickly grab that key: http://neosmart.net/OemKeyTool/

> The keys they sell are those bulk keys large companies get, their IT dep guy wants to make some extra coin on the side. But they work.

What is the legality of that? The IT-guy is probably violating his corporation's license with Microsoft, but does that affect you as buyer? I suspect that you may run afoul of anti-fencing laws in a lot of jurisdictions (where buying goods you can reasonably suspect are fenced is illegal as well).

Aren't keys tied to computers these days?

> The keys they sell are those bulk keys large companies get, their IT dep guy wants to make some extra coin on the side

Which make these keys as illegal as pirating Windows. Obviously it is a more secure solution though.

Which subs, how do you look for that?

Don't bother with the subs just buy one off ebay for $5 instead it's the same thing and the subs are just as shady but charge more.

i think we can be quite certain that there are backdoors into windows also without it being pirated, so your phrasing makes it easy to argue back.

i'd personally argue with the backdoors hidden by the pirates are significantly more likely to be used for nefarious things than the 'official' ones, as whitehats are responsible for the former, while blackhats created the latter.

My favorite was all the pirated copies of Windows 10 that were floating around that supposedly had the telemetry features removed. It always confused me who exactly those were targeting.

My guess: one's mother / uncle / neighbour who wants Windows 10 on his/her laptop, but heard about it spying on you and does not want that.

I know that the usual rule of thumb is that "normals don't understand or care about complicated technical issues" such as privacy. But Windows 10 telemetry was so widely discussed in media, that I noticed even the non-tech people around me were refusing to upgrade from Win8 to Win10 on the basis of "I heard it spies on you".

Lots of non technical people I know find that creepy without really being sure of what to do about it.

And the crying shame there is that Win8 did the same sort of spying.

Actually, no. Microsoft instrumented essentially every OS component (and sharing backend infrastructure, universal telemetry client, etc.) starting in Windows 10. Prior to that, it was just a few isolated pieces that had their own kind of telemetry.

Not quite. Windows 8 had most of the same telemetry, but it was off by default and you were given the option to turn it on during or after installation. Windows 10 flipped that on its head by giving you a page during install that said "get started quickly" which automatically turned everything on, and there was a tiny text link at the bottom which said "customize". Clicking that gave you three pages of telemetry-related toggles that you had to manually click to turn off. Even then, basic telemetry (anonymized usage data and crash reports) is still sent to them.

After Windows 10 was released, Microsoft started backporting most of its telemetry capabilities to Windows 8 and 7 and turning them on by default, rendering those versions just as "backdoored" as 10. That was what pushed me to accept that Windows was never going to get better in that regard, and so I've upgraded all my Windows 7 and 8 machines (except my Surface RT obviously) to take advantage of the new features. I'm especially enjoying native NVMe support on my new workstation build; I can't go back to a spinning HDD without feeling like I've stepped 20 years into the past.

Also wrong. The telemetry in Windows 8 was just in critical components that had been instrumented long ago, such as Windows Update, crash management, etc. None of those were using the current universal telemetry system. In fact, I don't know if all of them moved to the new telemetry infrastructure shared with the rest of the OS or if they kept what they had and just added the new telemetry on top.

All that said, I agree with your last point about upgrading being a fair compromise compared to staying in Windows 7 or gasp Windows 8.

> The telemetry in Windows 8 was just in critical components that had been instrumented long ago, such as Windows Update, crash management, etc. None of those were using the current universal telemetry system.

Are you sure? I did a lot of Windows 8 installations when I was evaluating it, and I distinctly recall the option to turn on the same tracking features that 10 had on by default. In the Windows 8 installer they were presented up front and off by default, in 10 they are hidden and on by default.

As of a month ago this is still the case; I reset a Windows 8 hybrid laptop, going through the standard installation screens, and then upgraded it to 10.

The EULA for it is the same, but the underlying system is totally different. I am 100% sure about this :-)

But, as you noted, a lot of the telemetry instrumentation has been backported so that argument is lost for someone wanting to avoid upgrading to Windows 10 from an earlier version.

The same kids who believe "Turn off your virus checker when running the crack because it shows up as a false positive"

> isn't a real way to know for 100% certainty that it isn't laced with something.

There are iso hashes on MSDN. You can read them with a free account.

With some things you can get a hash of an iso from the true source and compares that to the downloaded iso

Security in this space is based on reputation and trust. Users and groups who has a long history of uploading files with no malware is more trusted than freshly created accounts.

To make a analogy, imagine a world where there existed no government food inspectors. I would expect that visiting restaurants would become more dangerous, but my behavior would also change. I would only visit established places where people before me have eaten and proven that the food aren't poisonous.