Hacker News Reader

Comment by laurencei | Hacker News Reader

Is there a place where people have put together a conclusive list/script to remove/turn off as much telemetry as possible?

I've seen various lists on reddit, HN etc - but they all seem to have different bits.

Perhaps a GitHub Gist that can be crowdsourced to help people ensure they get every single hidden option turned off?

View on HN

It won't work. Switch to a free operating system. Microsoft will just keep pushing updates with more opt-out spyware. If your threat model includes Windows, you have no security.

I recommend using;

http://getblackbird.net/

and

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

and

http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.1836

Do you have to run them every time MS updates their system?

For ShutUp10 at least (and probably the others): Yes.

Microsoft resets settings when updates happen. The application explicitly warns you about this. And indeed, I ran the application before and after receiving the 'Creators Update' in my VM & some telemetry settings had been reactivated.

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html

Yeah - I hear there are some great tools at freebsd.org. You just download an ISO, install the OS, and your system won't track you any more ;)

Great idea. And it should be generalized to all systems/software: a one-stop shop for steps to take to make your system safe to use.

The problem is you can't really trust that it is actually turning it off. It could literally just be telling you that while shutting nothing off or shutting down some reporting while still keeping others. There is just no way to know, MS is noe completely untrustworthy in my opinion, and it should be treated as compromised.

Honestly, your best bet is to use a mac.

Did you try running Little Snitch lately? There's at least 5-6 daemons that keep contacting Apple and reporting on you on mac as well. And pretty much every 3rd party app uploads behaviour analytics without the ability to turn it off as well.

I installed Little Snitch for cracked Adobe suite, but holy fuck the constant barrage of daemons trying to connect made me disable it completely. Albeit most of them seemed to be related to iCloud or app updates

This is my experience as well with Adobe CC. At least 10 different daemons, some of them instances of node.js constantly connecting to adobe-owned IPs. Some of them even using very high amounts of CPU. Turning everything off from the CC settings didn't even make a difference.

I don't want fucking software I paid for to make my PC a part of a botnet, so I deleted all their stuff and tried to cancel my subscription to CC. I couldn't do that because their terms allow them to charge your credit card for the remainder of the year, even if you receive no service. After a few angry emails with a supervisor they finally agreed to cancel my subscription.

What a shady POS company.

1. Apple's telemetry is anonymize and not as invasive.

2. It's one option clearly in the setup and system preferences and easily disabled.

Neither of those is true for Windows 10.

You best bet in running an FSF certified operating system on open hardware like a Novena or a BeagleBone Black.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com