Asking people to change their SSID so the system won't share something they are not supposed to be sharing to begin with is very ridiculous. I really don't understand why this is not opt-in to begin with. Microsoft should be forcing people to put in _optin in their SSID to allow this feature to work if they are so inclined to use an SSID to regulate access. At least it would be semi-tolerable if there was a web form of some sort that I can simply put in BSSID so it gets blacklisted systemwide, but I don't think that's even there.
Agreed. At my house, we have three laptops, a desktop, three tablets and two smart phones. I don't want to have to change the wireless settings of nine devices because of Microsoft.
If this features truly works as stated, it is an incredibly arrogant thing for MS to do.
It doesn't work as stated. Users have to opt to share the password when they connect to wifi router. This checkbox is empty by default meaning you don't share the password by default.
It doesn't make it much different whether that checkpoint is off or not, I basically see two problems with it:
1) Wi-fi access point owner is absent from that decision about sharing the password or not, other than the SSID name (thus, I suggested that Microsoft should have made this ins option basis. This way, at least that it would show that the owner of the AP is WILLING to participate in that.)
2) People do very stupid things. They may not even see a single implication before they "check" it. I've seen a lot of people enabled certain feature "because it sounds useful" without seeing further implication. Especially when they are not that tech-inclined, they may flip that switch "because everyone else's doing it," "that's the way I do in my home," or "I didn't know that's what it meant." I'd know if he/she is sharing my wi-fi password on Facebook by that person writing on their timeline (which I'll pick up my phone and start screaming at that person) but this seems to be much more discreet than that.
Again, it doesn't really matter if that checkbox is checked or not. It's a bit of a different story if they had to drill down to several layers of menu (which I wouldn't change my opinion that it is still a bad idea) -- but it sounds like this option is presented right in their face everytime they are connecting to new networks.
