What Windows 10 Privacy Nightmare Settings Really Do

Windows 10 has a few handy new features, but according to the rest of the web, it also has features that hide any semblance of privacy. But this opinion is a little exaggerated. Let’s take a closer look at what each of these settings actually do, and which ones are actually a privacy issue.

Windows 10 has a reputation for calling home more often than its predecessors, and while that’s true in the first place, most of this was already present in Windows 8, and a lot in other products such as Android, iOS and Chrome. … This is not to say that all these settings are good, just very little new here.

You can read the Windows 10 privacy statement here . It’s not as broad as the Windows Insider Preview policy that caused so much noise , but it’s still very broad (like most privacy policies).

Numerous sites have posted lists of all the features you should turn off in Windows 10 to protect your privacy, but many don’t explain in detail what each of these settings does, making it difficult to separate FUD from facts. So let’s go over these settings and explain what we know about them, where the real problems are, and how to turn everything off.

General privacy settings

Let’s start with the obvious. Open the Settings app in Windows 10 and choose Privacy> General. Most of these functions are actually self-explanatory, but here’s what each one does:

• Allow apps to use my advertising ID : This helps Microsoft show you more personalized ads in apps. You can safely turn this off so it doesn’t affect your user experience.
• Turn on SmartScreen Filter , which sends URLs you visit in Windows Store apps to Microsoft to check if they match a list of potentially malicious sites. Google Chrome does the same thing too. (Bugfix: Chrome does this locally and only submits your url if you have usage statistics turned on.) I think this is a useful setting, so I leave it on. You can turn it off if you like, but be careful when browsing. Note that this only affects the SmartScreen Filter in Windows Store apps – if you want it to be disabled in Edge, where you’re more likely to use it, you’ll have to do so in Advanced Edge Settings (see below).
• Send information to Microsoft about how I write : This feature improves the suggestions for completing text when handwriting or typing (presumably on a touch keyboard, although that doesn’t say it. It’s very broad and we’ll talk about it a little later. I recommend turn it off.
• Allow websites to serve locally relevant content : If you speak a language other than English, this feature might be useful, but feel free to turn it off if you prefer that sites not know what language your system is using.

In short, most people can probably turn off these settings without affecting them.

Location settings

Windows 10, like iOS and Android, can use your location to improve the experience with certain apps. For example, it can check your location so you don’t have to enter a zip code to find out the weather, or so you can pinpoint your location in the Maps app. However, to do this, he may share your location with certain “trusted partners” (for example, the aforementioned weather service or … well, someone else).

On a regular desktop computer, you probably won’t use this as often as you do on your phone, so it’s up to you if you want to turn off location detection entirely. Go to Settings> Privacy and look at the list of apps at the bottom. You can turn off individual apps, or if none of them seem to need your location for anything, you can turn off location detection entirely at the top of this window. (Note that a location must be specified for Cortana to work.)

Cortana and Start Menu Search

Cortana has some of the broadest privacy-related settings out there, but it’s also one of the most useful new features, which means you’ll have to decide whether or not disabling privacy is worth it. To work, Cortana records your voice (to process what you say), location (to give you location-based answers), your letter (to answer questions), your contacts (so you can link to them), events a calendar (so it can create, delete, or provide information about your upcoming appointments); and more. That’s a lot!

Of course, it’s also very similar to Siri and Google Now, which collect a lot of the same data (but on your phone, not your PC). Luckily, like these services, Cortana is easy to turn off if you’d rather keep her close to your chest. To do this, you should change the following settings:

• Turn off Cortana . Open the Start menu and start typing. Click the notebook icon in the left sidebar and select Settings. From there, you can turn off Cortana.
• Search the web and include web results . When you turn off Cortana, you will see this option appear. You can turn it off if you don’t want to receive web search suggestions from the Start menu that log your input and send it back to Microsoft so you can get real-time update predictions like you do on Google.com or Chrome. and Firefox.
• Getting to know you . In Settings> Privacy> Speech, Inking & Typing, you’ll find the Meet You feature. This is probably the broadest privacy setting on the system, and even after disabling Cortana, you will have to disable this setting. Just click the Stop Dating Me button to turn it off.
• Information about the cloud . Turning off Meet You will remove information from your device, but you will have to remove it from the cloud separately. In the same window, click “Go to Bing and Manage Personal Information for All Your Devices” to clear the “Get to Know Data” from your Microsoft account.

This, combined with the previously mentioned “Send information about how I write” option to Microsoft, is the biggest privacy issue in Windows 10, primarily because the language is very vague. The ‘Meet You’ option does not indicate where or when it can collect, say, ‘typing history’, which is worrying. We contacted Microsoft who said the following:

It is a handwriting and typing feature that users can turn off at any time. Microsoft does not collect personally identifiable information through handwriting or typing. It is collected to improve the product, for example, to improve the visual ink translation engine or to improve the user dictionary, language library, and spell checker functionality in Windows. The data goes through extensive multi-pass scrubbing to ensure it does not collect sensitive or identifiable fields (e.g. no email addresses, passwords, alphanumeric data, etc.). The data is also broken down into very small bits and removed from the sequence data, so it cannot be collected or identified. The collected data samples are limited; Microsoft doesn’t collect everything you write, nor does it collect data every time.

So this is not a “keylogger”, but rather a text analysis engine that takes already written text, cleans it up, extracts words from the sequence and parses them for a dictionary and spell checker. However, again, the language is extremely broad, and this is probably the most troubling privacy setting on the system. However, if you’re worried about Microsoft’s data collection and can live without Cortana, disable this setting.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft’s new browser, like most modern browsers (including Chrome and Firefox), includes several features that also allow you to “call home”. You will find them in Edge Settings> Advanced Settings. Here’s what they do:

• Ask Cortana to help me with Microsoft Edge . If you use Cortana, she will track your browsing history so she can link to her when you ask her questions. You can turn off this feature in the advanced settings for Edge.
• Show search suggestions as you type . Like the Start menu, Edge logs “your keystrokes,” but it does so to give you search predictions as you type. If you want to disable this feature, you can disable “Show search suggestions as you type” here.
• Help protect me from malicious sites and downloads with SmartScreen Filter . As we mentioned in the first section, SmartScreen Filter can track the URLs you visit, but it does so to protect you from potentially harmful sites. I recommend leaving this on, but you can turn it off if you like.

If you’re not using Microsoft Edge, these features won’t make much of a difference, but it’s good to know where they are.

Sharing a Wi-Fi network

Windows 10 includes Wi-Fi Sense, which lets you connect to secure Wi-Fi networks without a password from your Facebook, Outlook.com, and Skype friends. This way, you can connect to your friend’s Wi-Fi network without asking for his password. However, this also means that they can share your network with their friends and so on. Bugfix: your friend cannot share your networks with his friends. This actually makes it more secure than giving them your Wi-Fi password.

Much of this process is done by subscription, so you have nothing to worry about. You must check the box to share your network connection with your contacts, and they must do the same (and they can only do this if you tell them your password). However, you can make your network unavailable by adding _optout to the end of its SSID (for example, mynetwork_optout ). By default, however, Windows gives you the ability to connect to networks your friends have shared with you. If you want to turn this off, you can do so under Settings> Network & Internet> Wi-Fi> Manage Wi-Fi Settings.

Sync and your Microsoft account

Many Windows 10 features require a Microsoft account because they either store information online or sync over the Internet. First of all:

• Synchronization settings . In Settings> Accounts> Sync Settings, you can decide what to sync with other Windows 10 computers. This includes, but is not limited to, your wallpaper and theme, your web browser settings, passwords, accessibility settings and much more. You can turn it off here.
• Bitlocker encryption . Hard drive encryption is a must, and Bitlocker finally comes with all versions of Windows 10. However, if you have a Home version, it will automatically save your recovery key with your Microsoft account (or prevent you from encrypting your hard drive.). There is nothing you can do about it other than upgrading to Windows 10 Pro or using an alternative encryption program like VeraCrypt .

Alternatively, you can opt out of using your Microsoft account entirely by choosing Sign In with a Local Account during setup or by going to Settings> Accounts> Your Account. Just select “Sign in to a local account instead.” Please note that you will not be able to download apps from the Windows Store if this setting is disabled or use any of the above features.

Windows Update

Unlike its predecessors, Windows 10 doesn’t let you turn off automatic Windows updates. Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education users can disable Windows Update through Group Policy or the registry , but Home editions cannot. However, this is done for security reasons, so we recommend leaving it enabled. You can always turn off certain updates if they are causing problems.

Windows Update also uses peer-to-peer file sharing, similar to BitTorrent, to distribute updates. It’s cool, but if you don’t want other people to use your bandwidth to download updates, you can turn it off. Just go to Settings> Update & Security> Advanced Options> Choose how updates are delivered. From here, flip the switch to the “Off” position. Or better yet, flip the switch to a PC on my local network. This allows your home computers to send updates to each other, but not to other people over the Internet.

Feedback and diagnostics

Like many applications and operating systems, Microsoft allows you to send diagnostic data to Microsoft so that they can better troubleshoot performance issues and improve services. However, this often means inadvertently sending information that you don’t want, such as snapshots or apps you use the most.

If you go to Settings> Privacy> Feedback & Diagnostics, you will see two settings:

• Feedback Frequency : Windows from time to time asks you for feedback so that you can send your thoughts on Windows 10 to Microsoft. If you don’t want this problem to occur, you can change it to Never.
• Diagnostic and Usage Data : This feature can send a large amount of data to Microsoft, including information about how often you use certain apps, which apps you use the most, and memory snapshots (which may inadvertently include parts of a document, which you are working on if something crashes). You can change it to “Full”, “Advanced” or “Basic”. You can find out more about each of them here .

Microsoft does not allow you to completely disable diagnostics, with the exception of corporate versions of Windows. Baseline setup, they said, is data that is “vital to Windows,” including Windows Update and malware protection.

So what’s the problem?

So is Windows 10 the worst privacy killer in human history? Probably not, but there are some problems here, first of all:

• Microsoft’s language about one or two settings is very vague, which means it’s hard to tell when it collects and doesn’t collect data related to some of the settings. The “Meet You” setting is particularly vague and problematic.
• All settings are unsubscribe, and there are a lot of them. Most casual users will never even look at these settings.

However, at least Microsoft provides these switches, which is at least a step in the right direction.

However, apart from the language in the Meet You setting, there is nothing particularly new here. Calling the Start menu nefarious because it provides search predictions seems a bit overdone, especially when we’ve been using the same technology in Google.com, Chrome, and Firefox for years. Most of the other settings exist on other OSs, not to mention your smartphone (which knows as much, if not more about you , than your PC).

This does not mean that you should not (or should not) worry – this is a personal choice. If you don’t like any of the above settings, or if you don’t trust Microsoft with certain data types, you should turn them off completely. But some functions will have to be abandoned.

Just keep in mind that Microsoft is far from the only company doing this, so if you disable them on Windows, be sure to disable them in other apps and devices you also use ( including OS X and your browser ). Of course, the only way to keep all your data is to never connect to the Internet at all – so good luck with that.

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