A few years ago we had some discussions here regarding privacy settings to choose when doing a clean install of Windows 10 Pro. IIRC, some of the choices were not obvious. There are a number of guides available on the web. The discussions here mentioned a few hidden things I want to be sure I do not miss.

Thank you for your help.

I just did an upgrade from Win7 to Win10. The local IT techs and engineers recommended opting out of them all when presented with the privacy menu during install with the understanding that one can't be fully defeated and will still provide basic trouble related data to MS.

I wish I had saved the thread. Cortana is one thing I definitely do not want.

Among other things, look for the update options where it says the bastard Will search all your LAN for other devices to update And Share Those magnificent updates with. It keeps a torrent engine running in The background. Need it or not.
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I'm using Win10 Pro now and I turned off all of that shit. It took me a while to find all of it. Highly invasive.

I won't upgrade to Win10 on any machine I own for that very reason

if MS wants my data, they should pay me - $1 million a year to run their OS shouldn't be that much out of their pocket

Support for Win7 ends next year.

I know, but that gives me at least a year.

I only use 4 major programs - Word, Excel, Firefox and Outlook

most everything else is just fluff, as long as I can still run those four things, I'm happy

if not, I'll go back to DOS 3.2 and start over

Be careful nhtagmember - Russian Bots are out there lurking.

Spybot Anti-Beacon is what i used to turn stuff off.

This is JUST the starting point - I suggest several searches and heed all advice:

https://pixelprivacy.com/resou...ws-privacy-settings/

quote:

Originally posted by sgalczyn:
This is JUST the starting point - I suggest several searches and heed all advice:

https://pixelprivacy.com/resou...ws-privacy-settings/

Thank you for this.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
I won't upgrade to Win10 on any machine I own for that very reason

if MS wants my data, they should pay me - $1 million a year to run their OS shouldn't be that much out of their pocket

That was my attitude until I was faced with a clean install of Win7. With support dying soon and the ability to kill the invasive crap I went ahead and upgraded.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:
A few years ago we had some discussions here regarding privacy settings to choose when doing a clean install of Windows 10 Pro. IIRC, some of the choices were not obvious. There are a number of guides available on the web. The discussions here mentioned a few hidden things I want to be sure I do not miss.

Thank you for your help.

If you're talking about the prompts during the install, I uncheck everything.

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
I won't upgrade to Win10 on any machine I own for that very reason

If you truly care about security, and want the most secure OS for the Windows platform by far - then you need to upgrade to Windows 10 ASAP. With Windows 7, your data is much less secure, especially when you can't get updates for it around the corner. This is regardless of how much info you are allowing Microsoft to pull from you.

Google "adjusting windows 10 telemetry settings" for info on how to turn it down as far as possible. I have an Enterprise version of 10 which allows you to turn it off completely.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DonDraper,

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:
Google "adjusting windows 10 telemetry settings" for info on how to turn it down as far as possible.

This helped me find some more things to do, thank you.

its not about security - its about privacy

and the fact that they're so sneaky about it hiding stuff, needing a PhD in IT technology and everything else

nothing I have on my machine requires security, but I'd like it to remain private

MS is the antithesis of privacy

not willing to trade one for the other

my machine that I am going to run starting in 2020 is a Linus box running Mint - over a VPN

again, its not about security as there is little there to get, just don't want my computer OS data mining me

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
its not about security - its about privacy

and the fact that they're so sneaky about it hiding stuff, needing a PhD in IT technology and everything else

nothing I have on my machine requires security, but I'd like it to remain private

MS is the antithesis of privacy

not willing to trade one for the other

my machine that I am going to run starting in 2020 is a Linus box running Mint - over a VPN

again, its not about security as there is little there to get, just don't want my computer OS data mining me

Give up your security and nothing you have will be private. Microsoft doesn't tie any of the data they collect to a person. If you do any banking transactions, or shopping on your Windows computer - you privacy is going to be much more safe on Windows 10.