The patches are opt-in, easily turned off, and part of a long-established campaign of gathering data under the CEIP.
Conspiracy theories are gaining steam as accusations about Microsoft "spy patches" heat up. But a much larger part of the story may sound familiar to any experienced Windows or Office user.
The tinfoil ball started rolling on Aug. 24, when Sergey Tkachenko at Winaero.com published an incendiary discovery: Four recent Windows 7 and 8.1 patches -- KB 3022345, 3068708, 3075249, and 3080149 -- were sending a potful of data to Microsoft's servers. In at least one case, the spying patches transmit data through hard-coded servers, bypassing the Hosts file and making it even harder to block their activity. On Aug. 28, Martin Brinkmann at ghacks.net posted a follow-up that confirmed several details.
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