Day Three – chugging along!
Today’s challenge – Review Privacy Settings – Direct Link to Guide Page
Most people are not aware how much data Microsoft is harvesting (and potentially selling – they aren’t exactly clear on that) from your Windows 10 computer. The default settings in Windows sends countless streams of data to Microsoft, ostensibly to “improve the customer experience” and “to protect your account”, but we’re in the process of learning how to protect out own data thank you, and we’ll let the other millions of Windows users tell Microsoft what’s wrong with their product. Time to shut off the pipes to Redmond!
Geoffrey: I thought I had turned off most of the intrusive privacy settings during my upgrade to Windows 10. As it turned out, I was completely wrong! Nearly all of the settings were turned on, meaning that data was leaking out of my computer at an inordinate rate. All those settings have now been turned off. See this post here for additional guidance. Note that this is a little out of date and new categories have been added. Just to be safe, I turned them off as well.
Juan: Juan was in an even worse position than me, sending full “feedback” to Microsoft and who knows what else data. Naturally these have all been rectified and the taps turned off.
Diana: As expected, Diana had a pretty easy time of it again today. The only big change for her was to turn on FileVault, Apple’s built-in disc encryption setting. I’m presuming there will be a later topic on disc encryption for Windows but it is significantly more complex than the Mac (score one for the Mac!).
Priscilla: Just like Juan, Priscilla’s laptop was leaking data like a sieve. A quick run through all the settings turned the taps off and locked all that down.
So Day 3 is pretty straightforward, if a little eye-opening. See you tomorrow!
Previous Days Here:
Day 0 – Introduction to the Team
Day 1 – Installing Operating System and Application Updates
Day 2 – Set Up A Standard User Account
