You can configure the privacy settings manually in Windows 10 but this requires time and knowledge of
all the settings.
Fortunately there are a number of automated tools to choose from to help.
You still have to look at disabling the privacy features as a moving target.
Microsoft will make up days and you will have to keep on top of any changes that need to be made to
protect your privacy which is why Windows 10 isn't the right choice if privacy is paramount to you.
But I think if you just want to minimize your tracking you could get away with Windows 10 as long as
you stay on top of what needs to be blocked with it too.
The hope is this software will keep up to date with any changes made by Microsoft and the latest information
in protecting privacy.
So these are the current tools for automatically fixing the privacy issues in Windows 10.
First you have destroy Windows 10 spine.
This only affects host file changes.
So that's no good at all explain why later than this when cold disable Windows 10 tracking that's written
in Python is open source.
That's very good.
There's do not spy 10 which is closed source that does have explanations as to all the fix that it's
making and you can do backups.
There's Windows 10 privacy and shit which is a batch files that's open source.
There's Windows 10 privacy fix which is open source.
There's 10 privacy top10 that has backup functionality.
Spy bar anti-B can for Windows 10 and that's produced by a known anti-spyware company so you could say
there is some trust there built with those guys.
There is a shampoo anti-spy a Windows 10 as back of functionality and there's windows privacy tweaker.
Those are the ones I'm aware of many of these are made by pretty random developers.
You don't really have much knowledge or background on them.
So you have to think about trust.
Can you trust these people to have developed this software with your security and privacy in mind if
they are opensource and you understand the language they are written you can verify the software.
This is why it's best to go with open source as a tool for this because these are from trusted sources.
You have no idea who has written some of these.
And you don't know what extra bits of crap they've put into them which could be counter to your security
or privacy which is why I go with an open source auction a couple of points about how these tools work.
They do things like disable services.
They affect app access disable telemetry remove apps and firewall rules and the host files and other
things the host file is a plain text file named hosts.
It stops the operating system making DNS requests to resolve a web address or domain name into an IP
address.
Now an example of that might be you put Google into the host file and a corresponding IP address.
Then whenever you go to Google it doesn't need to do a DNS query it just looks in the host file first.
Now what these tools are doing is they're using these hoes file to put in false IP addresses in correspondence
to the phone home domain names to stop them calling back home to Microsoft.
So for example they might be to be a Microsoft dot com and they put in a corresponding IP address of
0 0 0 0 0.
The host file is no longer the all powerful thing it used to be in Windows 10 Microsoft is hard coded
IP addresses into the systems dynamically linked libraries effectively making domains and IP addresses
on block cable by the operating system so HOST file doesn't work.
But not everything is hardcoded like this though.
So some of the phone homes that Windows 10 does too can be blocked in the host file.
The House will provide some benefit but it won't block everything.
The other method that some of these tools use is to employ software firewall rules like the Windows
firewall to block the phone homes again because the file sits on top of the operating system there is
no guarantee that they will block all the IP addresses and for all time.
Plus if you're using the Windows Firewall which is a Microsoft product that isn't a good choice to block
Microsoft IP addresses it would require testing and monitoring.
The most effective way to block a phone homes is to block the addresses off the machine at your gateway
device to the Internet so your router your hardware firewall etc..
And we'll talk more about that later and how you might do that.