“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.
Whether you know it or not, you’ve already given permission to Microsoft to collect an extraordinary amount of data about you—how you use your computer and your online activities. If Microsoft requires any forgiveness, it’s because it’s so hard to figure this out, and it’s so hard to manage your privacy permissions to your comfort level.
To make this as simple as possible, I recommend you download a free privacy management tool called O&O Shutup10++. The name says it all. It also works on Windows 11, but they chose not to change the name. You can find it at: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10. To establish basic privacy permissions, do the following:
- The program does not need to be installed. Store it in a directory, double-click the program, and proceed.
- The program has two tabs: “Current User” and “Local Machine”. Take a quick look through both. There are a lot of settings. Each setting restricts some data collection activity or process. If you click on the text of a setting, more information about the setting will be displayed.
- To the right of the text of each setting, under the column heading “Recommended”, you’ll see “Yes,” “Limited,” or “No,” with green, yellow and red dots respectively. These recommendations reflect the level of risk associated with enabling the settings. Settings with a “Yes” recommendation are low risk.
- If you’re highly motivated, I would spend some time reviewing and understanding the settings.
The settings are grouped by category. “Privacy” and “Activity History and Clipboard” are two examples. Settings that are enabled are toggled “Green”. Otherwise, they’re “Red.” You can ignore the current settings, we will change them. - Click on “Actions” in the menu bar and select “Apply only recommended settings.” A pop-up will appear asking “Do you want to create a system restore point?” Click “Yes.” All the Recommended (Yes) settings should now be enabled (Green), and the other settings (Limited and No) should be disabled (Red).
- Scroll through all the settings in both tabs. Make sure they look right to you. And there are a few things you may wish to change. On the “Local Machine” tab:
- If you use Cortana (Personal Assistant), disable all the settings. Note that I recommend against using Cortana. It’s collecting more data about you than you know.
- If you intend to turn on “Find my device,” which I discuss in a later post, under “Location,” disable the setting “Disable functionality to locate system.”
- Select “File” in the menu bar and then “Exit.” Start the program again and review the settings to ensure your changes are all there.
As you become more comfortable managing your privacy permission, you may wish to enable some of the “Limited” settings. And you should review all your settings after operating system updates. Updates may change some settings.
Technical Note: You can manage some settings in “Settings > Privacy” in Windows 10 and “Settings > Privacy & Security” in Windows 11. If you do so after configuring settings with O&O Shutup10++, you may see a message that says “Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization.” The setting will be locked. This is because O&O Shutup10++ runs as Administrator and made the change in the Registry. If you wish to change the locked setting, go back to O&O Shutup10++ and make the change there.
Next, we’ll review the same privacy permissions for macOS.
Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.