Don’t Let Windows 10 Spy on You: Manage Your Privacy!
If you’d like to get a better grip on your privacy, you have a few options available to you. There are native Windows tools like the Group Policy Editor and Settings app, but also third-party tools which are specifically designed to disable various aspects of the Windows telemetry.
If you want to stop Windows 10 spying on you (and make sure you get some Christmas presents this year), keep reading to find out more.
Native Windows 10 Tools
Let’s begin by looking at which privacy management tools are natively part of Windows 10.
Settings App
The easiest and most accessible way of managing your privacy on Windows 10 is to use the Settings app.
You can find the privacy options by going to Settings > Privacy. The number of settings you can change in the new Creators Update can be overwhelming for new users. The settings are split into a bewildering 18 sections.
Microsoft might argue all these settings are giving you a granular level of control. Critics would say the app is confusing by design — Microsoft doesn’t want you to disable all the privacy settings.
Working through each setting individually is beyond the scope of this article, but don’t worry, we’ve still got you covered. Check out our complete guide to Windows 10 privacy settings and you won’t go far wrong
Microsoft Account Privacy Dashboard
At the start of 2017, Microsoft completely overhauled the Privacy section of your Microsoft Account online portal. Some of the new settings protect your online privacy, some of them protect your privacy while using Windows 10.
In a blog post, the company claimed it made the changes to “support [its] privacy principle of transparency.”
To find the new settings, head to account.microsoft.comand fill in your credentials. When you’ve logged into your account, click on the Privacy tab at the top of the page
The settings are divided into five primary areas:Browsing history, Search history, Location activity,Cortana’s notebook, and Health activity.
From a Windows 10 perspective, you should focus onLocation activity and Cortana’s notebook. Click on the corresponding link to see what Microsoft knows about you and edit or delete the data.
I have all tracking disabled on my main machine, but on my testing machine, I have everything turned on. It was frightening to see the amount of data Microsoft held.
Local Group Policy Editor
By default, the Group Policy Editor (GPE) is only available in Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. It is not available in Windows 10 Home, though there are some workarounds to enable it.
At its core, the GPE is a powerful tool that lets youconfigure and control your system in much greater detail than you can achieve solely by using the Settings app. Because it’s so powerful, it’s a great tool to manage your privacy.
Best of all, you don’t even need to be a GPE guru to take advantage of it. You can grab a copy of The Group Policy Pack: Privacy and Telemetry for $108. It aims to block all Microsoft telemetry. The pack includes 70 policies with 250 Registry keys, deactivation of 40 background apps, scripts to remove pre-installed apps like OneDrive, and scripts to add entries to the hosts file and thus block telemetry servers.
If $108 is too much money (we didn’t test it either), you can create the scripts yourself. Of course, doing so is much more complicated and time-consuming for the average user.
Download: The Group Policy Pack: Privacy and Telemetry ($108)
