Win10 Consolidated Privacy Options

Damar

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 20, 2004
Messages
4,613
Came across this and thought it might be useful for some folks. I'm not running W10 yet so I haven't had a chance to test it out myself. Puts a lot of the options in one place which is something I myself like to see. Your mileage may vary. ;)

http://pxc-coding.com/portfolio/donotspy10/

Current Features

•Disable Telemetry
•Disable Biometrics
•Disable Handwriting Data Sharing
•Disable Handwriting Error Reporting
•Disable Application Telemetry
•Disable Inventory Collector
•Disable Steps Recorder
•Disable enabling Lock Screen Camera
•Disable and Reset Cortana
•Disable Location
•Disable Sensors
•Disable Web Search
•Disable Windows Media DRM Internet Access
•Defer Windows Upgrades
•Disable App Notifications
•Disable Password Reveal Button
•Disable and Reset Advertising ID
•Disable SmartScreen Filter for URLs
•Disable Sending Writing Info
•Disable Access to Language List
•Disable App Access to Location Info
•Disable App Access to Camera
•Disable App Access to Microphone
•Disable Getting to know me
•Disable App Access to Account Info
•Disable App Access to Calendar
•Disable App Access to Messages
•Disable App Access to Radios
•Disable Sync With Devices
•Disable Windows Feedback Requestes
•Disable Windows Update Sharing
•Disable Windows Update for other Products
•Disable WiFi Sense
•Disable Windows Defender
•Disable Automatic Windows Updates
•Disable OneDrive
•Disable Automatic Driver Update
 
There are tons of such tools being offered up nowadays, dozens of forum postings all over the place (not just here at [H] but everywhere), and dozens if not hundreds of potential Registry tweaks/PowerShell scripts/etc that can be done to rid Windows 10 of all the crap it's pushing down end users throats, sure.

Or people could just say "Fuck no, I don't think so, <whatever OS you were thinking about upgrading to Windows 10> works just fine for me..."

But they won't, and so, this whole fiasco will continue to snowball out of control...

I mean this with all due respect to end users 'cause I happen to one of them (but I don't use Windows 10):

Stick with what you've got now if you haven't upgraded to Windows 10 yet because once you do, after all the bad press it's been getting (it's out there if you look for it), it's on you from that point on. If you have to go in and disable that much stuff in order to feel better about using Windows 10, don't even install it.
 
Many of those are really unnecessary, tinfoil hat stuff.
"Disable Handwriting Error Reporting" lol god forbid those error reports go to microsoft.
"Disable and Reset Cortana" Why the need to disable Cortana, as opposed to simply not using it? Fear of the female voice?
"Disable App Notifications" I understand how that could be annoying, but that implies there are no legitimate situations where your app might want to give you a notification? That is a bit extreme.
"Disable App Access to Camera" Tinfoil hat style fear of all your programs using your camera? Many of the apps I would potentially use (like a camera app), I would want to have access to the camera.

Some of those on the list are good for sure, but you could easily trim that list by half at least just by removing the stuff that was only disabled out of paranoia and irrational fear.
 
I pretty much agree with you GotNoRice...And i also think its funny 75% of us have pretty much zero privacy with are cellphones and think nothing of it. I would go so far to say that all these scripts and reg edits are completely unnecessary in most cases.....lol just look in settings/ privacy and make the easy changes there for the most part..cortana is not hard to turn off either. I can say this the average user doesn't give a shit about all this talk...i sorta asked my dad and he gave me a weird look lol
 
The big issue is it actually is a major privacy concern but people are just blowing it off with the casual "It doesn't matter to me, it doesn't affect me..." or something similar which is entirely the wrong attitude to have about all this. But then again, it's in the EULA and the privacy statement(s) about Windows 10 but people don't give a shit about those either it seems so, in the long run more tiny little things are done over time that people ignore or dismiss as irrelevant, and it just continues till there's a really big problem but it'll be too late to turn things back by then.

Paranoia? Irrational fear? Well, whatever, but the simple gist of it is: it's not right, and people should do something about it, but they won't.
 
Just to pick one example, there are *known exploits* in Windows where a remote user can gain access to a camera. There are ongoing court cases where people were blackmailed with camera photos taken of them through such exploits.


Thus, I have serious privacy concerns by blanket allowing access to all apps for the camera. There is no fine-grained control -- it's all or nothing so I would choose nothing.


Look into the details of the Handwriting and Cortana ones. It's not just transmitting error reports. It's transmitting the converted text that you wrote (or search data, in the case of Cortana). So, potentially very private information about you, your life, or how you use your computer is being transmitted *in the clear* to Microsoft. In this case, I don't care about it going to Microsoft per se so much as I care about it being transmitted in the clear for anyone with Wireshark to observe.


Here's a scenario that is all too realistic in Windows 10. you have advertising ID turned on so now anyone can uniquely ID your PC. Now, let's say that that a government agency (or worse, someone trying to blackmail you) starts snooping the handwriting traffic or Cortana searches and they see something about you that they would like to know more about (or, observe you). Then, all they need is a simple exploit in the Metro runtime engine (they already exist) to get access to your camera. And all of this can be uniquely tied back to you and your PC because of how inter-linked all of the Microsoft data is.


This is not theory. This is not hypothetical fearmongering. These are real scenarios that can play out right now with data that is already documented either by Microsoft themselves or security consultants.
 
Just to pick one example, there are *known exploits* in Windows where a remote user can gain access to a camera. There are ongoing court cases where people were blackmailed with camera photos taken of them through such exploits.


Thus, I have serious privacy concerns by blanket allowing access to all apps for the camera. There is no fine-grained control -- it's all or nothing so I would choose nothing.

This setting only has effect on Windows Store apps and the exploits you're talking about would effect Windows 7 as well.
 
This setting only has effect on Windows Store apps and the exploits you're talking about would effect Windows 7 as well.


As I mentioned, there are already exploits in the Metro sandboxing (they occurred in Windows 8.1 era) that are so far as I know still unpatched in Windows 10 that allow access to all Metro apps regardless of sandbox/container.
 
As I mentioned, there are already exploits in the Metro sandboxing (they occurred in Windows 8.1 era) that are so far as I know still unpatched in Windows 10 that allow access to all Metro apps regardless of sandbox/container.

An exploit that can compromise store app sandboxing could probably do anything it wanted to a Win32 app as well. Again, there's not really anything here that wouldn't or couldn't effect Windows 7.
 
An exploit that can compromise store app sandboxing could probably do anything it wanted to a Win32 app as well. Again, there's not really anything here that wouldn't or couldn't effect Windows 7.


That's fair but the point remains that until Windows 10 tied everything together there wasn't a way to uniquely tie together all of the bundles of data.
 
There are so many privacy invading features in Winodws 10 that it's mind blowing. And I already permanently disable my webcam when I'm not using it even on Windows 7.

Tin foil or no I just don't want people knowing what I do. I'm already extremely annoyed by google linking every account of mine. That my desktop youtube history haunts me on my phone. My desktop web searches haunt me as well. And it's not about what I don't want others to see. I use my desktop completely differently than my phone. So by that definition I view completely different web pages on it as well, and I search for completely different things on it. So there is absolutely no need to link those together. It's not just a concern for my privacy, it's useless too.

Also thing like linking google+ account to youtube. I don't want all of my friends knowing what I watch on youtube. And this is the path microsoft is going down too, with Windows 10. Blurring the lines between features, and their usage. I don't want the web inside my computer, and I don't want my private stuff on the cloud or in Microsoft's possession. And my web searches, the documents I write, or edit, all that stuff is extremely private. And I communicate with multiple groups of people, like work, and friends. This system makes is almost impossible to separate the two.
 
Still not getting the issue with Windows 10 and cameras. The easiest was to compromise the camera in Windows is simply to install a Win32 app which would effect all versions of Windows. And whatever methods of permanently disabling cameras that exist in Windows 7 work in Windows 10.
 
So much tracking EVERYWHERE these days. On smartphones, on tablets, on PC's, random devices in the homes, etc. It's getting hard to be a security and privacy centric individual in this day and age.

I hate how they make it seem like "consumers don't care about privacy" when companies are openly trying to take away that option in the first place. At least we still have choices even if we have to jump through hoops.
 
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So much tracking EVERYWHERE these days. On smartphones, on tablets, on PC's, random devices in the homes, etc. It's getting hard to be a security and privacy centric individual in this day and age.

I hate how they make it seem like "consumers don't care about privacy" when companies are openly trying to take away that option in the first place. At least we still have choices even if we have to jump through hoops.

I blame social media like Facebook for starting this stupid trend. They were the ones that proved consumer data can be profitable.
 
I blame social media like Facebook for starting this stupid trend. They were the ones that proved consumer data can be profitable.

It's called free market capitalism. It was up to consumers to accept or reject this approach to IT economy and the consumer spoke and accepted it with open arms. It could be said that consumers don't truly understand how this all works and indeed even for a generally technical person it's a complex subject. But I think the average user has a general understanding that when they're online they're being tracked to at least some extent and getting some data collected on them and it's not freaking them out.
 
It's called free market capitalism. It was up to consumers to accept or reject this approach to IT economy and the consumer spoke and accepted it with open arms. It could be said that consumers don't truly understand how this all works and indeed even for a generally technical person it's a complex subject. But I think the average user has a general understanding that when they're online they're being tracked to at least some extent and getting some data collected on them and it's not freaking them out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they shouldn't or have no right to be doing this sort of thing. That doesn't make me dislike it any less.
 
It's called free market capitalism. It was up to consumers to accept or reject this approach to IT economy and the consumer spoke and accepted it with open arms.

^Victim blaming 101.

Just like when Balmer said we want the cloud when no one said any such thing.

I don't use Facebook so never accepted anything.

The corporations wanted the cloud and the data collection, not us!

http://pxc-coding.com/portfolio/donotspy10/

I use OpenDNS and it is blocking this url because it claims it is a phishing site.
 
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^Victim blaming 101.

Just like when Balmer said we want the cloud when no one said any such thing.

I don't use Facebook so never accepted anything.

Majority rule. Simple as that. The consumers can only blame themselves for their own ignorance.
 
^Victim blaming 101.

Huh? How much stuff do we all get from ads and use of personal data? You may not use Facebook but you use something that gets monetized through these methods if you use almost any tech, we all do. That's no blaming the victim, it's accepting responsibly in my role, pretty much everyone's role in the modern consumer IT economy. And it's hilarious when to see an article on a web site complaining about this stuff that's full of tracking ads.

We can all bash and complain about privacy issues but ultimately we also have to face the economics of if. If we don't want ads and the use of personal data to pay for these things then we need to find alternatives if we want to continue to use things that are funded through these mechanisms. That's Economics 101.
 
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