They’re a bit scattered throughout Windows 10, but they’re not hard to find if you have a good guide.

Rather than relying on some tool to change the settings for you, learn what Windows 10’s privacy settings do and change them yourself. RELATED: 30 Ways Your Windows 10 Computer Phones Home to Microsoft

Over the past year, we’ve regularly seen stories of people who ran these tools and only later discovered something wasn’t working properly, forcing them to reset or reinstall Windows 10 to fully repair the damage (or, at best, go hunting for the setting that triggered the problem–a huge hassle in and of itself). Some of them may work alright, but most of the tools and scripts we’ve seen look harmful and dangerous, albeit to different degrees. We’re not here to slam any individual tool. Just Configure Windows 10’s Privacy Options Yourself Some of them may cause applications and services to stop working.” Running a not-properly-tested script that takes a shotgun approach to your operating system sounds like a bad idea (and it is). The download page warns you should use this script at your own risk and that “We have not personally tested every HOSTS entry. It can also delete various services from Windows rather than simply disabling them.

Deleting various services and parts of Windows 10, breaking various things and potentially blocking you from installing major updates like the Anniversary Update and November Update before it.įor example, if you downloaded the “windows-10-tracking” PowerShell script from GitHub and ran it, the tool will block various Skype domains in your hosts file, preventing Skype from working properly.

Disabling the Windows Defender antivirus, which helps keep Windows 10 secure, and other system components you may actually want, like OneDrive.

Breaking the Windows Store, preventing you from installing apps from there and preventing it from updating the included applications in Windows 10.

Tampering with the hosts file to block specific Microsoft web servers, leading to various problems like Skype failing to synchronize chat messages or being unable to update itself.

Blocking Windows Update completely, preventing the installation of important security updates and leaving your PC vulnerable.

Tools of this type can cause a variety of problems, and if you look around the web, you can see plenty of instances of people experiencing those problems.

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