Installing Windows 10‬? Fix 35+ Privacy Issues With Just One Click

Installing Windows 10‬? Fix 35+ Privacy Issues With Just One Click

So you finally upgraded your system to Windows 10 and became one those 70 Million users.

No doubt, Windows 10 is the Windows best version released by Microsoft, but you need to know that it does not offer much privacy by default.

Windows 10 is making many headlines these days, even it made me to write two detailed articles about Windows 10’s most controversial options, i.e. Windows Wi-Fi sense and Windows 10 stealing users' Bandwidth to deliver updates.

I noticed over 35 more privacy issues that come enabled by default in Windows 10, which has permission to send your vast amount of data back to Microsoft.

While Installation, a click through "Express Settings" allows Windows 10 operating system to gather up your contacts, text and touch input, calendar details, and a lot more, including:

• Location Data
• Biometrics and Handwriting data
• Advertisement and its Tracking Code
• Apps access to your personal information
• Windows Defender and Sample submissions
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Cortana & Web search
• Telemetry services
• Webcam and Microphone Access
• Sync Data with other Devices
• Using Microsoft account, Instead of local account
• Sending Feedback & diagnostics reports to Microsoft
• and many more...

The operating system then sends all the gathered data back to Microsoft so that the data can be used by the company for personalisation and targeted ads.

Disable all Windows 10 Privacy Issues with Just One Click

The new free software app, dubbed DoNotSpy10, allows you to disable a total of 37 Windows 10 privacy issues with just one click.

DoNotSpy10, developed by German developer pXc-coding, is a third-party app that creates a centralized interface where you can quickly and easily change settings related to 37 different Windows 10 services that directly impact the security and privacy of your data.

DoNotSpy10 prevents you from going through dozens of various features settings in Windows 10 and lets you adjust all privacy and security settings in one place with just a click.

'APPLY' and 'RESTART' to Save Changes

The app makes changes in the Registry in the background, so you need to reboot the system once for changes to take effect.

Download and Install DoNotSpy10 for Windows 10 for Free

UPDATE: False-Positive Antivirus Alerts

Note: Your Antivirus product may detect this tool malicious in nature because it can modify Windows settings.

However, developer of the tool is also using an advertisement campaign within the software (mentioned in its End-User License Agreement), so it could also be detected as an Adware, or Pup (potentially unwanted program).

Technically, the program is not a malware and you can uninstall it after using once to fix Windows 10 privacy issues.

In our previous articles, we raised concern about Windows 10 privacy issues, including its controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature. Also, to cope up with these issues, I provided you a one-click solution to fix all privacy compromising features that allow Microsoft to track users.

But unfortunately, all those efforts got wasted because Microsoft still tracks you, even after you harden your Windows 10 privacy to an extreme level by disabling all privacy-infringing settings.

This time the culprits are – Cortana and Bing search.

Windows 10 features, including Cortana and Bing search, continue communicating with Microsoft's servers and sending it data, even after you turned the features off.

A Technical Analysis done by Ars showed that even when you tell Microsoft to not to make any Internet-related inquiries by changing various privacy settings, it appears that Windows 10 still communicate with the software giant's servers for different information.

Cortana is Cheating on You

With Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu turned off, a request to www.bing.com is still made for a file called threshold.appcache that contains some Cortana information, whenever a user opens Start and start typing.

The operating system's voice assistant Cortana sends information containing user's identifying computer ID that persists across reboots. This allows Microsoft to distinguish between the Cortana requests from different computers.

The worrisome part is that Cortana sends this data even though she is disabled.

Windows 10 Sends your Data via Unencrypted Channel

Moreover, it also appears that Microsoft keeps on sending data to its servers via its Live Tiles in the Start menu. Even if users clear all the Tiles, Windows 10 re-install new tile info from Microsoft.

However, Windows 10 do so using unencrypted HTTP connections, potentially leaving users open to malicious actors who could intercept the traffic between users and the company, which is more troublesome.

In response to the latest report, Microsoft said that all communications between a Windows 10 machine and Microsoft are only to make the retrieval of updates easier.

"As part of delivering Windows 10 as a service, updates may be offered to provide ongoing new features to Bing searches, such as new visual layouts, styles and search code," Microsoft said.

Microsoft further added that "no query or search usage data" is sent to the company, in accordance with the user’s selected privacy settings, and the same applied to searching offline for apps, files and settings on the device.