How To secure your privacy in Windows 10 (version 1)

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There has been a lot of speculation about if Windows 10 is spying on us or not.
The truth is, it is… sorta.

Within the EULA Microsoft states very clearly that they will share your information with external parties and sources in the event that they find illegal activity or are asked to provide this information.
That’s scary… right?!

So, here is how we can shut down some of the privacy concerns within Windows 10.

Please note: There will be a YouTube video following this, so I don’t have any images to add at this time.

  1. Secure your privacy settings under START > SETTINGS > PRIVACY SETTINGS.
  2. Disable everything under all of the 13 sections.
  3. Click START and type “gpedit.msc”.  This will open the Group Policy editor.
  4. Go to LOCAL COMPUTER POLICY > COMPUTER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > WINDOWS COMPONENTS and find “Prevent the usage of OneDrive for storage”.  Enable this setting.  This will stop your PC from saving your information to OneDrive without telling you.
  5. Go to LOCAL COMPUTER POLICY > COMPUTER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > ALL SETTINGS and find “Allow Telemetry”.  Switch this to “0” to disable telemetry.
  6. Close GPEDIT
  7. Click START and type “regedit”.  This will open the registry editor.
  8. Go to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE > SOFTWARE > MICROSOFT > WINDOWS > CURRENT VERSION > POLICIES > DATA COLLECTION and find “Allow Telemetry”.  Double click to edit this and switch it to “0”.
  9. Close REGEDIT
  10. Click START and type “cmd”, the right click and run this as “Administrator”.  If asked, tell windows that you wanted to do this.
  11. Within the command prompt window type in “SC DELETE DIAGTRACK”.  This deletes the service DIAGTRACK.
  12. Within the command prompt window type in “SC DELETE DMWAPPUSHSERVICE”.  This deletes the service DMWAPPUSHSERVICE.
  13. Within the command prompt window type in “Echo “” > C:\PROGRAMDATA\MICROSOFT\DIAGNOSTICS\ETLLOGS\AUTOLOGGER-DIAGTRACK-LISTENER.ETL”.  This deletes the contents of that file.
  14. Close the command prompt window.
  15. Click START and type “cortana”.  This will open Cortana.
  16. Click on the settings icon (the gear) and disable everything.

That’s it… you should be safe now.

I’m sure that Microsoft will make some changes in an update that will reset these settings, but, for now, you should be okay.

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