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Windows 10 Express Spying Settings

The default privacy settings for Windows 10 anger me. Hiding the fact that you will be collecting everything a user types, says, or searches for on the Internet behind a big, obvious "Express Settings" button (which most users are likely to click during the setup process) and providing only a tiny text link to "Customize" these very important choices is just sneaky and wrong. Providing a way to turn all this tracking off is great, but such overt trickery makes me wonder if switching these settings to off really does anything at all. Some users might be happy to hear that Windows 10 offers bitlocker disk encryption, but at least in the Home version your private key gets uploaded to a Microsoft server which pretty much makes using it a non-starter for me.

windows10_setup

If you're one of the folks who need to use this operating system, you can find out what privacy settings Microsoft makes available to you by reviewing the stories linked below but understand that with every update these options may (and likely will) change. There is no guarantee that any of these settings will actually do what you might expect them to do because with any closed source, proprietary software there is no way for a third party to audit the code directly. All that a concerned person can do is poke around with network tools and infer.