Afraid Microsoft's Spying on You? This App Disables All Windows 10 Tracking Features

[Karamjit]

Disable all telemetry services with just one click

Back in late 2014, when Microsoft rolled out the first Windows 10 technical preview builds, many accused the company of trying to spy on its users, as it bundled some telemetry services in the operating system in order to better collect feedback to improve the final software.

Needless to say, that was never the case, and Redmond itself explained in the terms of services of the Windows Insider program that such services were needed in order to improve Windows 10 based on the way we actually used the operating system.

The final version of Windows 10 still comes with some tracking features, and obviously, many disable them from the very beginning in search of better privacy, but fortunately for these users, there's now a tool that takes care of everything with just a single click.

“Hidden tracking services”

Reddit user 10se1ucgo created an app that he says disables the tracking services in Windows 10 and also tweaks the registry in order to block any other processes from tracking your activities while using the operating system, as in addition to the features we can see and disable, there are also some hidden ones working in the background.

“The program is meant for inexperienced users who don't want to have to fiddle with the registry and don't want to take the chance of messing up something. And no, most of it can't be disabled in the built-in menus, there are still some ‘hidden’ ones,” he points out.

The project is currently hosted on GitHub, and while Microsoft hasn't yet commented on this little app, everything seems to be working smoothly on Windows 10.

Administrator privileges are needed to apply the changes and the app can disable telemetry, tracking services, block tracking servers with HOSTS file, and clear the DiagTrack log.

We've contacted the software giant for a word on this and will update the article, should we receive an answer. In the meantime, use this app at your own risk (make sure you create a backup before anything else).

Source

[Yorel]

Posted here.