Privacy Settings in Windows 10

Take Back control of your Privacy, starting with your Windows 10 PC

Learn how to control privacy settings in your Windows 10 computer.

Episode #9-39 released on May 12, 2019

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We humans can only be human and feel free to be unique and individual as long as we have some sense of privacy left. It is a fundamental human need and I know that everyone needs to learn how to regain a sense of privacy, and today, we will start with your Windows 10 computer.

I am presuming that you have already installed Windows 10 and now want to change and or edit many of the settings in Windows 10.

To get to the privacy settings in Windows 10, head over to the start menu and on the left click the gear icon, from there click privacy.

On the left is a menu of every privacy setting Window's itself relies on to get away with its privacy invading antics. You have two sets of menus, the Windows Permission set and the App permissions set.

Under the Windows Permission settings you have a general menu, speech, inking and typing menu, diagnostics and feedback menu and lastly, the activity history menu. Click on each and either disable or reduce to basic transmission of information. Windows should not need and does not need any of our information at all. Unlike Facebook, we paid for our operating system, so we are the clients, we are the end users. You'll notice in activity history a link below clear activity history called Manage my Microsoft Account activity data. Clicking clear above it does not clear that data, you will need to click that link and delete all the data section by section.

Now, under App Permissions you have settings related to Location, Camera, Microphone, Notifications, etc. These settings allow you to decide which applications have access to various settings or disable them entirely. My suggestion is this, if you don't need it, disable it. Personally, I have disabled location entirely. You can, also, do things like disable microphone access to Cortana, if you want it to stop listening to you. If you want fewer notifications, you can disable that, too. You can go further and disable access to account information, too. One way or another, the more you disable, the fewer services can access those items and therefore the less information can be captured intentionally or by accident by applications.

How much you are willing to allow or disable is your choice, it is your computer and your experience online. In my own opinion, companies should by default disable all this and require explicit consent before activating each option. Whether it means a bunch of toggles be unselected or in the disabled position.

Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net