Tell HN: Windows Defender considers W10Privacy to be malware | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Windows Defender considers W10Privacy to be malware

15 pointstareqak5 comments

I tried installing W10Privacy earlier this week from https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/ and I found Windows Defender coming up with a notification saying that it is malware and it then immediately deleting the executable.

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You don't even indicate which download link you used, it was "earlier this week" so nobody can try and reproduce it, and you don't even say what it was detected as? Plus you linked to a site that has a whole article talking about them getting regularly flagged for false-positives due to the sensitive settings they're changing within Windows (see "Virus?" link).

Like what is it you expect to happen here? Plus why are you using this sketchy looking tool instead of one of the many scripts available[0] or Open Source tools[1] that do the same thing while making the source code readily readable?

I don't personally endorse any of this stuff, in fact I recommend against it. A lot of these scripts disable or remove security features and break functionality that has nothing to do with privacy. Plus users that use this stuff are self-selecting as the exact kind of users without the technical knowledge to know what they're doing, why, or how to undo it (or else they'd just make the changes "by hand"). Breaking Windows Update is a common symptom of this stuff (e.g. install -> rollback -> install -> rollback, loop), and they won't know how to fix it then just blame Microsoft.

I guess my point is: You try to get sketchy things, from sketchy sites, and it gets flagged thusly, it is working as intended. If you're here to complain that Microsoft pointed your gun away from your own foot, well too bad? Better luck next time, guess?

[0] https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy#po...

[1] https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy#os...

The Windows Internals series needs to be a must read for users moving from Unix style systems to the NT world. Microsoft may have questionable UI designers and GUI product people, but the systemland is solid. Their old guard like Cutler are all experts in their field. They may not be as famous in the media as Torvalds but their work speaks for themselves.

> Plus users that use this stuff are self-selecting as the exact kind of users without the technical knowledge to know what they're doing, why, or how to undo it (or else they'd just make the changes "by hand")

Or the exact kind of users at the other end of the bell curve, who are fully capable of "just mak[ing] the changes 'by hand'" but recognize that to be a massive waste of time when an automated solution can do it with orders of magnitude less time and effort (and do it again, when - not if - some Windows update undoes the changes).

Sorry, I used this download link https://www.w10privacy.de/app/download/12302828636/W10Privac... . I assumed that my use of the URL https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/ would have implied that I downloaded it from there, but it looks like there are other hosts for this program elsewhere on the Internet.

The last time I used this tool successfully without issues was around the end of last year (November-December 2022) in Windows 11 without any complaints from Windows Defender.

I thought I came across W10Privacy for the first time from an HN post years ago before I ever saw any of these scripts and open source tools even being mentioned on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... .

Thank you for the links `Someone1234 : I will try to learn and use these instead later.

Upon closer inspection, the W10Privacy is the last option in your second link.

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