How to keep Microsoft Windows 10 from spying on you? Ever since Microsoft released Windows 10, a popular movement grew out of the privacy controversy, people are afraid of the many tracking features within Windows 10, thus the birth of many “anti-spying” apps have sprung up. They promise to keep Windows 10 from tracking you–but often, they can cause more problems than they solve. I do not recommend you use these tools unless you are certain it won’t affect your work station.
See More ▼ 4 Anti-Keylogger And Keystroke Scrambler Software To Stop Spying
Privacy is a far more serious concern than most people realize. Personal data could be used to steal your identity, and your money. It could also allow malicious people to track you or your loved ones and find opportune moments to do harm. Or on a simple level, it could be used to publicize information you just don’t want to be public. In an age where giving up your private info grants you access to some very helpful services and apps, it can seem impossible to protect that data. It is possible though. We’ve compiled a list of key services and apps that help you do just that.
If You’re Not Paying, You’re The Product! Which is somewhat true, since Windows 10 is a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users, Microsoft needs to find a way to generate income, thus the best way to do that is to monitor the behavior of the users – anonymously. Since Windows has a large installation pool base, tracking which domain is popular means making Bing search engine better. Since Microsoft is forbidden by law to track a person personally, these data are collected anonymously, thus no harm allowing them to do so. Possible problems when using these tools.
- Blocking Windows Update, making updating Windows impossible and preventing you from patching important security updates, making your computer vulnerable.
- Possible synchronizing problem with backups, Skype and many more apps that uses the ‘Host Files’ feature.
- Breaking Windows Store, making it impossible to update apps or verify the license.
- Disabling the Windows Defender antivirus, which helps keep Windows 10 secure, and other system components you may actually want, like OneDrive.
1. WPD
A small but powerful portable tool working via Windows API. WPD is the most convenient and proper way to customize privacy related settings in Windows.
- Privacy management – Customize Group Policy, Services, Tasks and other settings responsible for data collection and transmission.
- IP Blocker – Block telemetry IP’s using rules from the @crazy-max repository.
- Appx uninstaller – Easy remove pre-installed Microsoft Store garbage or any other app.
2. Blackbird
Don’t want Windows spying on your every move? Don’t feel like spending hours messing with privacy settings that ultimately still result in data collection? Think your private information belongs to you and no one else? Or maybe you just want a faster PC and don’t like all the new “features” Windows has to offer. They thought so too, so they made the Blackbird V6.
- Blocks Telemetry Completely – Block Windows spyware, on both the application and network level, without editing the HOSTS file or firewall settings and remove all Windows telemetry updates. Supports Wireless and Ethernet connections, IPv4/IPv6.
- Removes Windows Ads – Remove all Windows built-in advertising and any pre-installed app you want. Stop your PC from downloading and installing sponsored software in the background.
- Restores Privacy – Prevent diagnostic data, passwords, contacts, URL, SMS, handwriting, location, and P2P-update sharing. Remove all unique ID tracking tokens. Disable 60+ data collection tasks and consequently speed up your PC.
- Portable, Restorable, Flexible – No installation, with a focus on leaving the smallest possible footprint, Blackbird is a single, portable exe with granular switches available. Want to restore everything back? They got you covered. Works on Windows Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10 (Home/Pro/Ent/Edu)
3. Win10 Spy Disabler
Win10 Spy Disabler is a very simple Windows OS software that helps you to disable Windows services and programs used to track your activity and to collect data about your usage, disable telemetry and data collection. It seems that Windows 10 may spy on nearly everything you do, according to Microsoft’s privacy statement.
They developed this tool so you can easily disable all services, programs and system settings known to collect data and telemetry. When all changes have been applied, you should reboot the PC. This program should be used only on Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32\64-bit).
4. O&O ShutUp10
O&O ShutUp10 means you have full control over which comfort functions under Windows 10 you wish to use, and you decide when the passing on of your data goes too far. Using a very simple interface, you decide how Windows 10 should respect your privacy by deciding which unwanted functions should be deactivated.
O&O ShutUp10 is entirely free and does not have to be installed – it can be simply run directly and immediately on your PC. And it will not install or download retrospectively unwanted or unnecessary software, like so many other programs do these days! More control over your operating system.
- Adapt your security settings
- Protect your privacy
- Control location services
- Control Windows Updates
- Do not pass on your user data and diagnostics
5. W10Privacy
The by default highly questionable set options concerning privacy and data protection in Windows 10 brought me to the idea for the development of this little program. Microsoft generously enables everybody to change the concerning settings, but hides them in countless menus, where a normal user does not want to search for!
6. DisableWinTracking
Uses some known methods that attempt to disable tracking in Windows 10 such as Telemetry, DiagTrack Log, Services, hosts-file, IP blocking, Windows Defender / WifiSense, and OneDrive.
7. Privacy Repairer
Privacy Repairer is a breeze to use. No need to worry about complex and overblown interfaces, as each option comes with just a simple toggle button! And if you are ever lost, detailed information about every option is readily available. And remember, all changes you make are always safely reversible! Privacy Repairer is a tool for Windows 10 designed to protect your privacy.
It comes with almost 60 options engineered to carefully modify your system in a way most beneficial for your privacy. Privacy Repairer is a breeze to use. No need to worry about complex and overblown interfaces, as each option comes with just a simple toggle button! And if you are ever lost, detailed information about every option is readily available. And remember, all changes you make are always safely reversible!
- Privacy protection – Privacy Repairer is a tool for Windows 10 designed to protect your privacy. It comes with almost 60 options engineered to carefully modify your system in a way most beneficial for your privacy.
- Advanced options – Professionals may appreciate advanced options which significantly improve your privacy but may lower your security. For example, disabling “SmartScreen for desktop” will stop leaking what software you download, but may open you to malware as your downloads won’t be checked against an online reputation service.
8. Ashampoo AntiSpy for Windows 10
Windows 10 offers many comfort features such as the virtual assistant Cortana that can make everyday life easier for you. To make this possible, Windows 10 has to collect huge amounts of data. It also analyzes user profiles to display user-tailored ads as Microsoft openly acknowledges. So by default, Windows 10 is set to collect more data than many users would allow. Even the recommended express installation later states that: If you don’t want a particular setting you’ll have to disable it yourself. More system control.
- Configure security settings
- Protect your privacy
- Disable location services
- Prevent Windows® 10 from sending diagnostics and usage data
9. Avira Free Security (With Privacy)
Optimize over 200 privacy settings with just a few clicks, prevent companies from collecting your personal data, clean up your device’s digital footprint and shred confidential files beyond recovery. Imagine how long it would take to manually fix over 200 privacy issues on your PC – even if you could find them all.
Avira Free Security can do it for you automatically by selecting any of 3 user profiles. Each profile comes with a unique balance of privacy and convenience. They’re free and easy to use. Microsoft stores your personal data to allow firms to create more targeted ads. Privacy Pal’s basic privacy setting prevents this by automatically:
- Disabling your advertising ID tracker
- Switching off pop-ups in the Microsoft Store and Explorer page
- Turning off Bluetooth advertising
10. Debotnet
Debotnet is a free and portable tool for controlling Windows 10’s privacy-related settings and keeping your personal data private. Windows 10 has raised several concerns about privacy due to the fact that it has a lot of telemetry and online features, which send your data (sensitive and not) to Microsoft and can’t be disabled.
The Windows 10 default privacy settings leave a lot to be desired when it comes to protecting you and your private information. Whenever I set up a new computer or update a current setup for my family or job, I always carefully go through the privacy settings for each install, making sure to lock it down to make it as private as possible.
- Disable telemetry and online features, which send your data (sensitive and not) to Microsoft
- Choose which unwanted functions you wish to disable
- Uninstall Windows 10’s Built-in Apps
- Debotnet will show you what it’s doing. You have full control, because the executing code can be viewed in a simple text editor
- Debug mode. E.g. the Test mode lets you see which values are twisted in registry, commands executed etc.
- Simple scripting engine for adding custom privacy rules
- Modern and familiar UI, with template support
- Small footprint. No installation required
11. Destroy Windows Spying
Even though Windows 10 did bring many of the features users expected of it, such as a Start Menu and revamped icons, it also came with several issues and a very important one is related to its tracking behavior. Destroy Windows 10 Spying is one of the many applications that aims to solve this problem. Features.
- Remove all spyware modules
- Remove spying apps
- Add spying domains to hosts file!
- Remove spying services
- Remove Windows 10 Metro Apps
- Support Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Server 2008-2012 R2
- Remove Office 2016 telemetry
12. Spybot Anti-Beacon
Spybot Anti-Beacon is a standalone tool which was designed to block and stop the various tracking (telemetry) issues present in Windows 10. It has since been modified to block similar tracking functionality in Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.
Anti-Beacon is small, simple to use, and is provided free of charge. It was created to address the privacy concerns of users of Windows 10 who do not wish to have information about their PC usage sent to Microsoft. Simply clicking “Immunize” on the main screen of Anti-Beacon will immediately disable any known tracking features included by Microsoft in the operating system.
Guys all those tools are NOT ENOUGH without a REAL firewall. I use Netlimiter and NOTHING, even lowest OS stuff cant get into internet without approval.
Hey!..:) Netlimiter is (certainly!) one option, but for something more manageable (and free!) there’s the COMODO Firewall, which *can* be configured to run great IF (& only if!) it is switched to -fully- manual mode – nothing “cloud”!
So, right-click and enable ‘Advanced View’ and then right-click and Firewall, Custom Ruleset and then go through ALL of the settings and get rid of all of their ‘online’ and ‘cloud’ settings… This way, you’ll get prompted on everything. Auto-Containment can be left on, if you’re not using an anti-virus and HIPS, VirusScope and Website Filtering can be turned off, for convenience (otherwise you *will* get swamped with all kinds of prompts, for application control and whatnot. :))
^^ It’s no good out of the box, it *does* take some configuring and understanding to use.
COMODO Firewall was really nice software like 12 years ago. now its just resource hoggin bloatware
Spybot Anti-beacon is NOT free! It’s $9.99
spy bot is the model fix my bugs and i will reward you with a price
try Blackbird windows privacy and secuirty
Blackbird is THE BEST!
Blackbird Windows Privacy and security xcontiene malware please the editor review the programs recommended
result VT:
Sophos ML heuristic 2019-03-13
Jiangmin RiskTool.BAT.l 2019-05-11
McAfee-GW-Edition BehavesLike.Generic.hc 2019-05-11
Maybe it is a false positive.
McAfee is trash. I’ll bet it’s a false positive.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the tool I get a lot of false positives. I think I could in fact make the code less suspicious but that would make Blackbird much less effective and I simply refuse to build an inferior product.
To be perfectly clear, I am admittedly forced to use some very shady methods in order to effectively disable everything, but I would never knowingly do anything malicious to my users. The software never does anything that is not clearly specified and leaves no files behind.
If you’re concerned I’d recommend scanning it with VirusTotal. Most of the time you’ll see about 10 out of 80 AV’s complaining, usually comes up as “generic-dropper” or something similar.
For some reason the 32bit version gets a few more hits. Have no idea why.
tl;dr: Go with your gut I always say, it’s usually right.
I feel the need to help people understand their own minds. Privacy is not the reason “at-heart” to why we attempt to stop MS from collecting data. In “All” our hearts, we know that MicroSoft and “others” are getting something for nothing. Allowing them to better their products for free. As well, they learn how to better market and design products and sell the info collected for a dollar. Capitalism is the great evil behind it all. Corporations are the bane of human existence.
Communism is WAY worse in that regards. At least in capitalism there is a THEORETICAL possibility for a competitor (plus of tons of small actual semi\shitty-solutions).
In communism there is only one owner of everything, the government. Look at how magnificently this principle has worked out in china…
and here
So your reply is to use something he never once mentioned, anyway back to his points, it’s the corporations stupid!
Blackbird stopped my VPN from working?
From Blackbird’s ‘Read Me’ at , under “== KNOWN BUGS, ISSUES & LIMITATIONS ==”
>LAN / VPN / misc. network issues:
>Blackbird disables 2 services, SSDP Discovery & UPnP Device Host, which are required to >run Network Discovery on your PC. Press the L key in the main menu to fix any LAN >connectivity issues and reboot your PC when prompted. After applying the fix, you can >set Network Discovery back on in your network settings.
I hope this helps.
O&O ShutUp10 – works without any issue, highly recommended.
I use O&O ShutUp10, even before to found out this list!! and very efficace and it does it job!!
I like it possibility to save settings/ lists of disable things, so very fast for future Windows installation. Just apply the Backup, and a Reboot.
In combination, I use Windows 10 Debloater, to remove Windows Bloatware, and disable stuffs, and also like its Backup possibility.
Ooshutup works perfectly (shuts down defender-which is what i want) on Windows 10 enterprise BUILD 1607
however, when I upgrade to build 1809, it doesnt work anymore.
Is it compatible with Windows 10 version 1909 ?
Hi, while I’m certainly interested in privacy, the issue that I’m trying to resolve is this:
Exactly every two minutes, two annoying things happen on my Windows 10 machine:
1. What I type in is delayed for about 2 seconds, and worse,
2. audio stutters in every video player I have, standalone (such a smplayer) and in every browser, YouTube… it’s quite annoying.
I have a Lenovo and I was able to check / disable the Lenovo Experience and Feedback hooks.
I’ve tried the free version of Spybot Anti-Beacon so far — it didn’t fix this. And I’m willing to try the paid version — hopefully Anti-beacon won’t mess anything up..
Any suggestions to fix the audio stutter?
Thank you!
I had this once a few years ago. It was caused by my changing over antivirus software. The original one had not uninstalled properly, even though it looked as though it had. So the new one checked the old one out, then the old one would sense the new one was active and check it out. The new one would check the old one had become active and check it out, and so on.
The solution was to do a search for a tool to completely uninstall all traces of the original software (made by the makers of the antivirus themselves). Then my system was fine again. Could this be your problem? Only the symptoms you describe are identical.
You said:
“If You’re Not Paying, You’re The Product! Which is somewhat true, since Windows 10 is a free upgrade ……”
And then you go on to list a bunch for free products I’m not paying for so wouldn’t that still make me the Product?
What if WIN10 is forced on your, like it was with my ex? Then is it a virus?
It depends on what the free product is. If the free product has anything to do with the wicked Bill Gates the one who wants to depopulate the world, then of course they plan to spy on us and record as much as they can about us. Eventually all that date will be transferred to the Mark of the Beast system.
the DWS (11) tool has not been discontinued, another russian took it over last year. I won’t use it anymore on W7 because now I struggle to find a solution for a missing DLL that prevents me from running some Windows programs
All these tools are in vain. Search for this article “Windows 10 Sends Your Data 5500 Times Every Day Even After Tweaking Privacy Settings – The Hacker News.”
Windows 10 “Microsoft” cannot collect your data if you you have the right settings disabled or removed manually. There is no remote access to your PC unless you have any of the services,apps that state “Remote” enabled then yes this gives Microsoft and even anyone such as a “Hacker” a backdoor into your pc to collect your data,logs,etc. You must understand that you must take other steps as well to protect yourself such as a strong “paid” not cracked, antivirus software, a vpn and not rely on the basic “Microsoft Windows 10” protections it offers as it does little to secure and protect anything at all. If you are worried and skeptical about all this with Windows 10 then you should not be running Windows at all. Use and learn Linux!
All these tools are useless! You don’t have to download/install any of them! Although Windows 10 does contain allot privacy,security flaws of features and apps that does not allow you to uninstall,but you can simply disable all of them in “Services” and going into the “gpedit.msc” LocalGroupPolicy all settings etc you can disable,enable,modify them the way you want that’s all you have to do. And for other custom settings such as system info and Windows 10 logos,buttons,log on options etc you can use “regedit” to disable,enable,and modify the settings also. After doing these steps successfully you will find your PC will run faster and Windows 10 will operate allot more stable and faster. Windows 10 has always been a failed version since it was first released and has always contained flaws with security,privacy,bugs etc which Microsoft even admitted it themselves! It’s the reason why it is also the last version of Windows Microsoft will ever create and release. Even though they will continue to attempt to recreate new versions of Windows 10 it still will always contain new flaws,this is the reason why Microsoft customers are and were still chosing to operate on Windows 7 and 8 as they were stable and the best versions Microsoft has ever released. As of now it is mandatory that everyone upgrades to Windows 10 for higher security but not privacy obviously, so if you are concerned about your privacy? then just don’t use Windows at all is your safest and smartest choice you can make. You can use alternatives such as “Linux”.
Yeah right, like editing the registry and LocalGroupPolicies is even remotely ‘easy’ and quick. Man, some people just don’t get it, do they?
I’ve observed a few things.
Google Chrome seems to have some built in scanning, that seems to scan even beyond your downloads.
#1 google chrome related Software_Reporter_tool.exe was using a lot of memory
#2 Compatelrunner.exe from windows 10 uses a lot of memory…
you should look up a powershell script for “anti-bloat” for windows 10 also.
Help! After running the first one and Blackbird, my bluetooth add device function is broken! What should I do? restoring defaults didnt fix it!
run “blackbird -n” to restore
Be warned Blackbird has a nasty habit of destroying networking services. So if you’re on a network DO NOT run it, you may just have to do a full re-install. Hopefully the devs will add a switch to preserve networking function in the future.
BullShit, just run blackbird -n and your network will work! Read the manual, dude!!!
It’s because the wrong version
good article I went from windows 7 to 10 during the set up I unchecked all the crap like find device and so on , but still see it wasn’t enough and manually disabled a lot of crap. I always used WFC, Windows Firewall Control a great tool for blocking connections, just got to configure it to pop up every time a .exe trys to phone home.
hi
its been proven , even if you disable all those settings, still the win10 spies.
microsoft are not that stupid, they knew those tools would come out.
and recently, they bought several linux control chairs. means they put in spying in several linux versions too.
for smartphones, cyagenmod was stopped.
all smart-devices spies,
I have only tested DWS app and really works, you can see it with an old PC, works faster when you apply this… with ms updates everything is re-enabled but you can disable everything again
O&O is a gold MS partner…. so I doubt they’d make a tool that deliberatly criples MS ability to spy on people… ;)
This is just the surface. In the registry, Microsoft stores more stuff like the serial numbers of all devices ever connected.
The problem is, most of these type utilities stop getting updates. Microsoft on the other hand does not stop adding more and more spying. These utilities disable some stuff but not everything in Windows 11.