The premium service BitLocker provides more security, as it allows to store recovery keys locally. The recent Meltdown and Spectre exploits show the potential risks, demonstrating how a flaw in modern Intel CPU’s could leave your decryption keys vulnerable.Īlso, Windows uploads a recovery key of its disc encryption key, essentially giving Microsoft the keys to the castle. It provides them and possible attackers with potential hardware abuses. Information concerning hardware configuration is always shared with Microsoft. Examples are the time you spend in certain apps, whether they crash, and if you are browsing an online store.

Most privacy settings enable Windows to send sensitive information to Microsoft.

Spying tools are more prevalent than ever before. Moreover, Microsoft could use it to implement spying tools. Such features could be used and abused by law enforcement and hacking groups. The backdoors that have been present in previous versions of Windows grant Microsoft access to your computer at any time to ‘update.’ That starts to live a life of its own, such as downloading and implementing updates without the consent of the user. It is safe to assume intelligence gathering, the installation of apps, and features based on this information, are an integral part of Microsoft’s future business model. Furthermore, their business model changed from one-time software purchase to a free and live service model. However, Microsoft has implemented many new user tracking features and backdoors in Windows 10. Eventually, all users will have to adopt Windows 10 or face serious software limitations and security flaws. Microsoft is known for discontinuing the development of older operating systems. In this article, we briefly discuss significant flaws of desktop operating systems, as well as ways to avoid them. While productivity is certainly higher on the desktop, information security and privacy are not necessarily guaranteed. That is especially true when working with sensitive documents, or when privacy and information security is of greater concern. With smartphones becoming increasingly popular for day-to-day activities – such as browsing the web and buying goods online – most of our more complex tasks are still done on the desktop. Linux-based operating systems make up roughly 1.5 percent, but it is safe to assume that most ‘unknown’ operating systems are running some form of Linux. The desktop market is dominated by Windows – with a 75% market share – Apple (20%) and Chrome OS (Google’s desktop operating system) with 1 percent. These companies have a combined market share of 97%, and about 60% of all personal computing devices run on a mobile operating system. Three companies control the operating system market: Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

Windows vs mac os market share