Free tool to stop Windows 10 from spying too much

and to say i never realized there was such a thing

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If you really have nothing to hide, you don’t mind giving me your banking information right? I don’t mind it if you want to PM it instead of posting it out here in the open :wink:. Your Chrono.gg username and password will also do, perhaps I could use your Steam account as well…

Some companies might also be interested in the conversations that you’ve had with your friends and family during your lifetime. Perhaps they could use it to better target their ads, or as a way of raising your insurance costs or something! If you happen to have a webcam why not set it to stream your daily life 24/7 too while you’re at it? What about building a house out of glass?

Just saying that “you have nothing to hide” is an infuriating argument. Even if Microsoft/Google/Facebook doesn’t necessarily implement all of the aforementioned things.

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if u think those are secret, whether they are online or through the phone, u r insane; certain governments record every single one of those, there’s no doubt about that, but like i said, i’m past caring about that

as for ads, i use adblock, but they do send me sms’s that are linked to my google searches, y

as for the webcam, there’s a reason i don’t have one

I stand by my statement that i have nothing to hide, u see, it might be difficult to understand living in the “free world”, but in certain “shithole” countries [not my opinion btw], it is rather reassuring to know the government “knows” u have “nothing to hide” as that can save u a whole lot of trouble, trust me, so i not only welcome that everything is recorded, i embrace it, but yr not gonna catch me naked on camera either if u get my drift, they’re only gonna record what i’m willing to let them record, as I’m well-aware of that shit

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and that actually goes for the “free world” too u know, maybe u can’t understand that though, which is fine by me

so once u realize that that is a given, why the hell would i care about what windows does or doesn’t do…

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Of course I won’t deny that there are many possibilities for third parties to record everything I do, even to quite a large extent. I have a cellphone, which means that my location can be tracked pretty accurately every time I’m carrying it around and it’s on. I would hope that my calls and text messages are not recorded, but of course I can’t be sure of it. God knows what my stock Android device is doing, even though I’ve disabled everything that can possibly be disabled (but can I trust that when I tick a box it’s actually disabled, or does it just color the box to humor me?). My ISP can see (and while they probably aren’t legally allowed to monitor it too accurately, it’s better to assume that it’s as unsafe as possible) what I’m doing on the internet (even with HTTPS they still see at least the DNS queries, although if I wanted to I guess I could mask those with reasonable effort). The servers I connect to also know what I’m doing. If I happen to be logged into a Google account they will also get a lot of data from other sites too thanks to Google Analytics. I occasionally use Steam and WhatsApp for communicating with friends and family, and since those are proprietary I have no idea how they’ll use the data. I don’t host my own mail server, which means that if the hosting company wanted or were allowed, they could read anything I’ve sent and received (maybe I should start encrypting my emails with GPG :stuck_out_tongue:). Maybe I also end up in a random photo or video someone uploads to Facebook or other social media and then they too will have a tiny bit of information about me, even if I don’t want to give them any information myself.

Despite (because of?) all that I still care about privacy and try to ensure it when it’s within reasonable effort to do so. Not using Windows or at the very least disabling telemetry is just one such thing. Also I feel like if corporations are going to collect data from me anyways, I could at least make sure that a single entity doesn’t have too complete a picture and rather just fragments of the whole. I still have a lot of room for improvement though, but especially private communication is one of those things where not only you, but everyone you want to contact has to switch to something new from say Steam or WhatsApp. At least face to face communications are relatively private still, as long as both parties leave their cellphones behind.

Seems like you’re also contradicting yourself when you mention that “they’re only gonna record what i’m willing to let them record”. Sounds to me like you have something to hide after all, which is understandable even if one isn’t doing anything illegal. With that said, I can also see your viewpoint, and while in my opinion it’s too defeatist it sadly seems to be quite common, since usually it makes things much more convenient.

Edit. I also trust my government, local ISP and my phone service provider more than Microsoft or other multinational corporations. Even if only by a tiny bit.

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no man, merely as i said, im not gonna be naked on camera, and there’s certain intimate things im not gonna discuss on the phone or in apps with my wife, and that’s it, nothing more to it

as for all u said, sure man, i wish u the best in all yr endeavors, but if they want to know anything about u one day, they’ll already have all that info stored somewhere, that’s what i believe, and im fine with u having yr own opinion on that

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Disable all the windows stuff you can disable, all the android stuff you can disable + use Telegram or Signal for messaging: reasonable effort to-privacy ratio :smile: (also there’s Whisper for secure SMS and there are tons of addons for disabling tracking to a relatively large extent)

Using VPNs is just too much of a hassle for me, TOR browsing is for ppl who def are hiding illegal activity and paranoid ones…but to each their own ^^

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Cool stuff, but ppl should try to care less nowadays. Private data is not private for like years now. Even social media web pages were proven to check what you are doing in your browser and stuff. I for once will be happy if someone (preferably microsoft) is taking notice how I use my net - they might learn something from my porn - it’s pretty advanced :smiley: Even the guys trying to fix my laptop said so few days ago.

And now me forced to use windows 7 on older machine … damn I miss my windows 10 and microsoft spying on whatever they want from me :frowning:

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nah no worries man, i’m sure they spy on u just the same :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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I wish they would… but there’s nothing in here … I’m forced to use 13 year old laptop for now… it’s even 4:3 screen :smiley: I can’t wait to give them material.

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Au contraire people should care now more than ever. Do you think if we just go along with the current standards that companies will stop at this? No they will keep pushing harder and for more, they always will. Only by resisting and caring is this progress slowed down.

Yeah maybe it is inevitable that we’ll one day be straight up owned by companies who somehow have attained the rights to our lives because too many people were willing to give it away for the sake of convenience. Me resisting today might not do anything, but if a million of mes do then maybe that future can at least be delayed slightly and that’s worth it in my opinion.

Defeatist attitudes like “doesn’t matter, I have nothing to hide” and “privacy is just an illusion” only helps play into the hands of the companies who drives this forward. Why are you helping them?

If you don’t want to work against them at the very least can you please stop trying to hinder those that would. Thank you.

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sadly, they already own the law, in a lot of countries at least, so they basically already own us too…

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You and I have a fundamental misunderstanding going on that I don’t really have the energy to care to clear up.
So just No.

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Clearly you don’t, please just leave it.

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Ofc you are right, but in the long run it’s inevitable. Comparable with early access games, DLCs and what not. Internet now is one huge spying machine. 20 years ago it might have been the sweet communication spot, but this time is long gone.

Everyone will take advantage of everything now. It’s just a matter of time when a new and smart invention can be turned to work against it’s initial design. I tried to fight and keep my things private for years and years and after my experience I stopped carrying entirely. 5-10% fighting the combined majority isn’t working. Majority controls everything and you can’t sell brain. I’m too old to waste my time bothering myself with such issues while I clearly see how 9 out of 10 don’t care and won’t do shit.

The only solution is we make our own private internet :smiley: but don’t get me wrong … ppl need to fight for this, but the reality is pretty grim - preordering star wars battlefront won’t stop after this second idiocy and on the surface everyone expected to be garbage…

When the majority of internet users is around 12 years old - I can only wish you good luck. 20 to 30 years old are divided if they care or not and the 30 plus, well… most can’t be arsed or doesn’t understand their information might be leaked.

Fighting is necessary and good compared to my opinion about reality check. That’s for certain, but I can talk plenty of how stuff is going wrong in recent years. Soon probably we won’t be allowed loop holes either. Oh well, just my 2 cents.

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There’s little here I disagree with. The future is not looking bright by any means, I’m only holding out for trying to delay it a little. As with most systems they tend towards top down control and historically that’s been dealt with by revolution, tearing it down and rebuilding. Internet working at a time factor somewhere in the 10s to to what the rest of the world is we might see a need for such drastic measures sooner rather than later.

We’ll see what happens, but I will “fight the power” as long as I can and then we’ll build our own internet with “black jack and hookers” again. : )

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I for sure want to be a part of it and please… really please! Let’s make different age categories if not age restricted! :smiley:

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The future is not looking bright by any means, I’m only holding out for trying to delay it a little.

I guess this is fundamentally your personality type @Fraggles , but I never quite understood why some people are so pessimistic and choose to fight my own pessimistic tendencies every day. To me, when I look at humanity I see SpaceX successful launches with laudable long-term goals of branching out beyond a single planet. I see a government funded NASA successfully discovering the atmospheric composition and depth of Jupiter’s storms (3000km) and seeking to find out more about what type of core Jupiter has. I see an entire city (Austin) mobilizing to combat an evil bomber and successfully tracking him down. I see a kid with one arm innovating and creatively applying himself with the tools available. I see millions of people holding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica accountable for possible misuse and breach of personal data. I see robotics and self-driving cars advancing this year faster than the last 10 years combined, despite the first pedestrian death. I see new cancer drugs being tested on a friend with Stage 4 colon cancer shoving the survival rate from 10% to over 85%. And all of that is just this week, most of it today in the news!

I see the same world you see, but I choose to see the glass half full. Even though I see the negative, I also see the positive and view humans as resilient, passionate, and persevering.

Maybe that’s too deep for a games forum, but I love this community and want everyone to get along - or, barring that, at least respect and tolerate each other.

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Of course I see those things too. But the positive things doesn’t need me standing up, the bad things do. Just because there are good things happening I don’t see a reason to allow all the bad things to go unchallenged or attempt to lull myself into a false sense of optimism by only focusing on the good.

Now we all have limited amounts of energy to spend on an infinite amount of things so we need to pick and chose what we care about. I care greatly about privacy, control of information and freedom of expression. So I engage with such topics but don’t expect anyone else to. Except for the times where I feel that people are actively working against my ideals, in which case I will voice my opposition.

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as is yr right, and anyone else’s

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