Steve Hayes wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 21:29:42 +0000 (UTC), "D. F. Manno"
wrote:

It seems, from reading those articles that Microsoft servers obtain,
*by default*, the following ...

1. Your browser history, favorites and the websites you currently have
open as well as saved app, website and mobile hotspot passwords and Wi-Fi
network names and passwords.

2. “your voice input, as well as your name and nickname, your recent
calendar events and the names of people in your appointments, and
information about your contacts including names and nicknames.”

3. App info “from you and your devices, including for example ‘app use
data for apps that run on Windows’ and ‘data about the networks you
connect to.'”

4. Windows 10 generates a unique advertising ID for each user on each
device. That can be used by developers and ad networks to profile you.

5. Your encryption key

6. We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your
content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications
or files in private folders)...

The other day, when using Windows 7, I wanted to watch a 10 second
movie clip that I had inadvertently taken on my digital still camera.
I wanted to see if I should keep it or delete it.

But up camw Windows Media Player, which would not play the film clip
but wanted me to go through a set-up routine and answer all sorts of
questions that I didn't understand, including things about stores and
file types, which I would have to look up to see what they were (for
what it's worth, the file I wanted to see was a .AVI file). It would
take me at least three hours to set it up properly, just to watch one
lousy 10-second movie clip.

So if I answered all the questions the way I was supposed to, would
Microsoft actually know that I had watched a 10-second movie clip of
my dog playing with a ball? And why would they want to? Would they
know that I wasn't using their store, whatever that may be (I don't
mind telling them that, they are welcome to the information).


WMP doesn't play the formats you want, so why would
you even bother ? As soon as you see WMP pop up,
close WMP, rewire the file type to a known-working player.
I'm sure your dog would look fine in VLC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

That uses its own copy of libavcodec, so does not require
KLite codecs or anything else.

For detailed info on some of the media players, this site
is good. They have lists of media players (as does Wikipedia).
You have to study the support characteristics of the players,
whether they're DirectShow or Libavcodec, to understand what
formats they're likely to support.

http://www.videohelp.com/software/VLC-media-player

When content is protected via DRM, the situation is a bit
different. You can't access Netflix with just anything.
Only certain methods work there, methods which can enforce
DRM and prevent unauthorized access. But for many other
purposes (your dog video), the free players are good.

Paul