Your Windows 10 system is not working properly.
Your Windows 10 system is not working properly.
I received a fresh SSD and installed a new Windows 10 copy. Using the Destroy Windows 10 Spying tool caused activation issues, as it’s tied to your Microsoft account and blocks server connections. You may need to reinstall Windows via USB if the problem persists.
No method exists to disable those features without removing activation. Staying unactivated is the safest option.
nowadays you have strong influence over the information Microsoft gathers (good thing), starting from very strict practices, but you can disable most collection yourself. Still some basic data is gathered (you can see what it includes), which I find acceptable, and you also have the option to check what Microsoft has stored and delete it.
It's tough to avoid data tracking from all the companies and sites you use these days. The only reliable option I have is Apple, even though it might draw criticism. They consistently demonstrate a strong commitment to privacy, which I appreciate. It seems we often just praise companies for basic practices.
Here’s a revised version of your statement:
These are the tools I’ve tried to achieve strong results on my Windows 10 systems.
There is no spying in Windows itself. Telemetry data collecting is not spying. And Microsoft provides full detail documentation on what they collect, and everything is in plain English. In addition they provide a tool which you can get from the Store, to read yourself the collected telemetry data. The big issue/scare, is that Microsoft had the balls to write its privacy policy in an easy to locate way on their site, and not buried and split between multiple section (ahem: Chrome), and written it all in plain English. So people panic now, not realizing that this is the reality of the market, and miss read everything. Like "files put in OneDrive will be kept in Microsoft servers, and all the data will be scanned", (Something that is required by Microsoft to offer the service, check for child-pornography (required by law by many countries), and virus check files), read as, "Microsoft is spying all on your files, you have no privacy, and Microsoft is uploading all your private information to their servers", and things like that. Some news site did have click-bait titles, but did properly explain things, but no one read that, they read the title and make a conclusion and spread the info, just baste on the title. Then worst, you have people making articles from other articles from just the click-bait article. A mess that I had "fun" debunking on this forum. I do agree, that all software, should have a full disable of telemetry option. But sadly that is the not the case. At least Microsoft uses telemetry data for update deployments, such as detecting issues from updates, try and find correlations and set updates blocks in place, all done via software, and then allows time for the dev team to look more into it, and see what is the real cause of the issue and remove update blocks on the cases not involve. This allows faster reaction time, and get instant reports for the dev team and not wait for mass people complaining everywhere before they can start looking into 1 problem.
Reinstall the software and disable all privacy, Cortana, and OneDrive settings.