Here’s How You Can Stop Windows 10 Spying on You

Windows 10 is great OS. It’s like a polished version of Windows 8 and feels much more cohesive compared with the older Windows versions. But as a popular saying goes, there’s bound to be some bad with the good stuff. And the same applies to Windows 10.

In this post-Snowden world, Windows 10 does some really invasive things when it comes to user privacy.

We’re going to take a look a look at how Windows 10 treats your privacy and how you, the user, can take back control over your data and identity in response to that.

The Windows 10 Privacy Issue

It’s no secret that Windows 10 spies on its users. Microsoft’s privacy agreement has clearly mentioned it in plain English that they access your data (and do the same once you install Windows 10 as well).

Here’s the excerpt from the privacy agreement detailing data access:

“Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:

1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services.

However, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.”

Privacy is becoming a growing concern these days with major companies such as Google and Facebook also accessing private information in certain cases.

You can safely turn off the services in Windows 10 which collect, send and preserve your data, but the process is lengthy and complicated for average users.

Here’s how you can do it all in a simple manner.

Spybot – A Solution for Safeguarding Your Privacy

Spybot Anti-Beacon lets you turn off these privacy breaching services in Windows 10 so you can rest easy about your data being safe from prying eyes.

The tool is easy to use and solves the privacy issues without going through lengthy procedures to manually turn them off.

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All you need to do is click “Immunize” and you’re good to go.

It also has the option of refreshing “Immunization” every time you turn on your PC to ensure these services do not restart and do what they are supposed to do.

This One-click software solution is geared towards casual users who don’t want to fiddle around with strange-sounding options. The best thing is that it’s built by reputable folks behind some of the best security products around so you know it’s reliable.

Spybot Anti-Beacon is available for free and can be downloaded from here.

A techie, gamer, and Senior Editor at ProPakistani.


    • No, you can’t trust this tool. Microsoft management have stated that telemetry can’t be stopped leaving your computer. This means that it hard coded in such a way that 3rd party software cannot interfere with its collection (eg some sort of back door).

      The name resolution may be blocked by spybot but the telemetry does not use the usual name resolution of the OS (eg it ignores the host file).

      The only way to stop it leaving your computer is to use an external firewall or hack the OS (which Microsoft will be very unhappy about).

        • google it, you will find many resources they claim to destroy windows 10 spy, try which you prefer, but please read all things carefully first. and monitor the services (at least what you can), if the service(s) running which have disabled in the process it means only a real hacker can stop it, find them on Dark Net (please do not ask me for how to find them), we can’t stop it. and/or another solution is keep offline your PC, which is not possible … :)

    • You cant because Microsoft sent down updates to Win 7 and Win 8 which have all that spying stuff in it. The only way is to do it with hardware in between your home network and the Internet.

      • I am using Windows 8 with ‘Windows Update disabled’. I don’t want their crap.

        • Same. Win 7 (dont like the monochrome boxes of metro ;-) and windows update disabled). So much more productive.


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