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4. Install Latest Windows Updates

5. Find that these settings have been set back to enabled again.

6. Repeat Steps 4 and 5 every Tuesday.

7. Discover MS is still sending data, regardless of your settings.

^^ The above is why.

Those are shady steps taken by MS but I don't experience them with Windows 10 Pro. Maybe it's only isolated to Windows 10 Home?

I still double check all of my privacy settings after a major content patch, but so far so good. I keep nearly everything disabled too (basic diagnostics, limited access to my webcam / microphone, Cortana is disabled, no timeline, etc.).

I deploy Windows 10 Enterprise and I routinely see the goofiest of settings set back to defaults.

Enterprise LTSC is what you want, no store, edge and other junk and only security updates.

I think you're missing the point here. It should not be a constant opt-out routine. If anything it should be opt-in only.

After spending two days to setup my Win10 Procame some glorious update and MS decided to reset settings on their own. That was the first and last time. Next day I downgraded to Win 8.1 Pro. Win 7 Pro memory and disk usage can't be compared to Win8 or Win10, but I'm happy.

Do you mean Win7 uses less or more memory and disk compared to Win 10?

You may want to have a look at the number of possible events sent to America compared between 'basic' and 'full' (93|112), (410|422).

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/23/german-federal-office-bsi-...

Office then has approximately 50 times that number again:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/16/microsoft_gdpr/

People are upset because there is no way to set this to zero aside from unplugging the machine from the network.

Thanks for the links.

You could also try installing O&O ShutUp10. I've been running it since I installed Windows 10.

You can download it (it's a free app) at https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10.

It nulls out a bunch of telemetry related addresses in your /etc/hosts file, and allows you to configure over a 100 different privacy settings from 1 place.

Microsoft have a long history of overriding and ignoring hosts configurations to their own addresses so I am skeptical on the utility of this. I think you might be a little too trusting.

I do not have time to repeat the efforts outlined by government contractors in the above links with this add on applied, I doubt you do either.

Better for me to avoid the OS altogether.

I don't think it's a matter of being too trusting. I know what I'm getting into by using Windows.

I don't sweat it because I know I did everything I could on my end to minimize being spied on without it really affecting me in a negative way. Like you said, I don't have time to match the efforts of full time govt employees.

I spent a grand total of 30 minutes researching and tinkering with privacy related settings since I started using Windows 10, and I'm ok with that.

I use the tool I linked not only for modifying my hosts file, but it's a 1 stop menu to access all of Microsoft's scattered privacy settings.

> I know what I'm getting into by using Windows.

the problem is rather that you think you do - but you don't and can't.

No, I understand that I'm not in full control over what MS does with privacy related settings.

By using Windows, I'm accepting that, and in my case, instead of hunting through 15 different privacy settings screens in the control panel, I use that app to have them all in 1 place.

They do ignore the hosts file, it’s true - but they don’t ignore windows built-in firewall. I used it to blacklist a bunch of hosts when I had wireshark open to diagnose an unrelated problem and noticed all my keystrokes in the start menu search box were being sent to MS, as well as details about every application I launched. The search box keystrokes were going to onedrive - presumably to show me files matching from there, but I don’t see why they can’t download a list of files and locally search that. Sending every keystroke in that box is unnecessary.

Very interesting info, but they own the OS and in some cases the compiler: https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/06/visual-cpp-telemetry

Given that, I don't care to engage in whack a mole with them. They have the upper hand.

Safe for visual studio and visual studio code users to assume that the IDEs are sending telemetry too.

In my case the best thing is to avoid the OS. And github and whatever else their malign influence could eventually own.

You conveniently left this out of your original comment, where you called people silly for not having things configured correctly.

This is a bit like saying that you've never had a problem with your car guzzling gas, or falsifying emissions, and then later casually mentioning that you actually own an electric motorcycle.

> You conveniently left this out of your original comment, where you called people silly for not having things configured correctly.

To prevent the issue the article spoke of only requires setting (2) options in the standard Microsoft settings, and also not signing in with a Live account.

You don't need additional tools for that.

Stopping an OS from collecting my data should not require research. If it's anything but a clear, comprehensive choice that you make when you install the OS and stays made forever, something is fucked.

> if you volunteer to use Windows, it's the price we have to pay for the time being.

I paid to use Windows.

> If you're concerned about privacy, why would you login to your OS using a Microsoft Live account?

Why would I expect there to be a difference in my level of privacy between the two? This is frankly a ludicrous thing to expect users to understand. I would certainly not expect this.

> Why would I expect there to be a difference in my level of privacy between the two? This is frankly a ludicrous thing to expect users to understand. I would certainly not expect this.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just old and paranoid.

As soon as the Windows installation menu requested to link a MS Live account to my Windows login, I thought "wtf, when did MS require having an online account to install Windows?", then I clicked whatever sub-link was there to create an offline user account instead.

It seems natural to me that they would try to log additional information about you and then store it "in the cloud" if you used an online account to login to Windows. Not only that but now they have a direct way to convert anonymous data into non-anonymous data through your MS Live details.

I think of myself as fairly paranoid as well, but age and wisdom and paranoia shouldn't be a requirement for basic privacy.

And just what is being sent out at "basic" level?

It's covered on Microsoft's website at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-level....

Whether or not their documentation is exhaustive is another issue, but they do at least provide non-ambiguous wording on what's being collected. There's also other links to see what's collected using full instead of basic (check the sidebar).

Unambiguously-worded it may well be, but there's obfuscation through overload, particularly when writ in explicit technical jargon.

I consider myself a fairly knowledgable computer user (I've been using computers for 35 years, Windows since 3.1) and the page you've linked there means nothing to me - what hope has the average consumer?

that's a bit disingenuous: the issue here is that even if you turn off activity tracking, activity is still tracked if you have error reporting enabled, a setting that is much less explicit about what it is collecting.

> A setting that is much less explicit about what it is collecting.

It's pretty explicit on what it's collecting given the article's context.

The linked article's tagline is:

> Microsoft baffles Windows 10 users by apparently collecting data about recently opened websites and apps when users have opted against sharing that information.

But if you look at the help text next to the radio button in the diagnostics settings it specifically says if you turn it on it will track which websites you visit (among other things).

There are other things that get tracked which is less explicit in the wording, but then again, you can set this to "basic" and then it's only anonymous data that gets sent.

If someone is serious about protecting their privacy and happens to be stuck using Windows, in my opinion it's their responsibility to at least look at the configuration options of Windows.

I have it set to basic and it still shows the apps I used in the privacy dashboard website.

The basic/full story is bull

Yeah but having a privacy dashboard means you have a MS Live account linked to your Windows login right?

You should disable that and revert to a standard offline Windows user account (check the 3 steps from my original parent comment).

Most folks aren’t experts, defaults matter.

If you think your 3 points cover privacy for Windows 10, you are grossly underestimating the extent of the problem, and have no idea what you are talking about. It's not even possible to outline in a comment twice as long as yours how to go about configuring Windows 10 to prefer privacy.