Since windows 10 is violating users privacy almost at every opportunity. I wanted to inquire how do you tweak you windows 10 installation to ensure as little (if not none) data gets transmitted to Microsoft? I know there are some tools out there that promis to take care of it, but how can one be sure the job is done right if its not done by oneself. Or which tools do you consider doing a solid job and be reliable? I played a bit in virtual machines with windows 10 and noticed that there is more to telemetry than just the one service, you also need to disable error reporting and a compatibility assistant, most tools for example only kill the telemetry service nothing more. and there ate tasks to be removed also many tools don't do that. I would generally say there are the following categories of malicious behavior users may want to disable: 1. telemetry and error reporting 2. advertisement, forcefully installed apps, user tracking 3. submission of "samples" to Microsoft, speech, writing, windows defender crowd protection 4. cloud services; Bing search in start menu, cortana, onedrive, MS online account 5. forced windows updates Now that the support end of windows 7 is coming to an end its time to look into how windows 10 can be made usable. One thing often tolled to privacy aware people is to not use windows at all, but if you need advanced CAD software, etc... there really is no real alternative. Graphics acceleration in VM's is poor at best and on laptops GPU passthrough is usually not an option. So people are forced to use windows no viable way around it. We can only try to make the best out of this bad situation. So please no comments like if you use window you are already owned, etc... stay constructive and productive.
@DavidXanatos telemetry and cortana are two things built into the heart of 10 along with couple of things you mentioned in your post. there really is no way to achieve this without crippling 10's functionality. not to mention that all changes done get reverted with every new update. i don't think it's a good idea to use a 3rd party "privacy" tool for that.
Just avoid 10 all around if it's causing you so much trouble about your privacy. End of support for W7 is not a big deal, especially if you're a home user. If I really, really have to use 10 I'd only use LTSB edition.
O&O Shutup10, no brainer. Anyway expecting serious privacy with any big tech companies' products is utopia.
if MS want your data, all will be transmitted via some obscure critical processes which you won't block if you want use your system normally. on proprietary programs/OS, the users can't win.
About the changes being undone twice a year, LTSB solves that, so you only need a recipe to cripple win 10 enough such that it respects your privacy. The problem about windows 7 is the leak of support for modern CPU's I'm looking forward to buying a new PC with a 32 core thread ripper 2and 128GB memory, not sure how good win 7 support will there be for that. I know that Cortana basically is now the windows search, but guess what I stopped using windows search when I switched from XP to 7 in favorer of a 3rd party tool, so entirely removing windows search in order to get rid of Cortana is a non issue. I beg to differ, M$ will not ex-filtrate data from every system in the world with some convoluted (and probably illegal) methods as that would sooner or later be noticed by someone. And the fallout would be not good for busyness. Sure if they explicitly target a person or an organization than you are ******. But they wont use some super secret backdoor and steganography to transmit mostly worthless data from everyone, that wouldn't be worth it. David X.
