
You can start by disabling location details about your device, turn off SmartScreen Filter or prevent programs from using your advertising ID for experiences across apps.Protect user privacy with dedicated tweaks Despite its name, it can also be used on Windows 8.1 computers without any issues. Moreover, W10Privacy is a portable solution, which means that you do not need to install on your PC to enjoy its feature-set.This utility comes with a user-friendly graphic interface, and all its available functions are neatly organized into tabs, each featuring a relevant title.If you're not quite sure what competing tools are doing, give this a try instead.

The interface needs work, but W10Privacy scores for the details it gives about every setting and tweak. There's not just a vague "block telemetry" option: instead you can choose to "block IP addresses of known Microsoft telemetry servers" through either a firewall rule or your HOSTS file, in both full-strength and lightweight versions.Įach action is colour-coded, too, as either green (safe to set), amber (check carefully) or red (don't do this unless you're really sure), reducing the chance that you'll cause some major problems. W10Privacy gives you quite fine control over some areas. If that's not enough, hovering the mouse over that action displays a tooltip with more information.

One immediate plus point is that most of these actions are very clearly described, like "Do not let apps use my camera" or "Do not let apps access my name, picture and other account into". Some of these are Windows 10-specific ("Disable the Delivery Optimization Service", the scheme where Windows updates can be obtained from other systems on your network), but others are general PC tweaks ("Show extensions for known file types in Explorer"). There are a lot of options to browse, but W10Privacy tries to make life easier by organising them in several tabs: Privacy, Telemetry, Search, Network, Explorer, Services, OneDrive, Tasks, Tweaks and more.Ĭlick any tab and a list of related actions appears.

W10Privacy is a portable free tool which makes it easier to view and control Windows 10's many privacy-related settings.
