There was an episode of TheTek on February 28th, and I must of missed it because I would of made this post.
When I have to deal with new installations of Windows there is SO MUCH SHIT that comes with it, including he privacy settings that are set to send out as much information as possible. I wanted to share with the group what I use to get rid of the vast majority of it.
After updating Windows, use the .bat file in a power-shell to batch remove Cortana, and most (not all) of the other Windows bloat apps and privacy settings.
Some problems.
Candy Crush and one other program magically appears shortly afterwards....
You have to double-check the privacy settings. It gets almost everything, but it misses a couple. You can add to the file in notepad to change some settings if you setup multiple computers like I do. There is an "undo", but if you try to remove stuff again, it is hard to remove Cortana.
You can't get rid of Cortana using those. The Cortana service has to be stopped, the files renamed/permissions changed in order to be removed. The file I posted allows you to do this.
Do you have a machine running wire shark on hand to check the outgoing connections?
Just as a reminder, the list of currently known servers windows phones to: www.msdn.com msdn.com www.msn.com msn.com go.microsoft.com msdn.microsoft.com office.microsoft.com microsoftupdate.microsoft.com wustats.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com microsoft.com update.microsoft.com download.microsoft.com microsoftupdate.com windowsupdate.com windowsupdate.microsoft.com You can't block above names with hosts file. They all were hardcoded in this DLL: %WINDIR%\system32\dnsapi.dll
more terror about MS from long time poster at dslreports:
All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to: oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net pre.footprintpredict.com reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
Telemetry is sent once per 5 minutes, to: vortex.data.microsoft.com vortex-win.data.microsoft.com telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net oca.telemetry.microsoft.com oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
Typing the name of any popular movie into your local file search starts a telemetry process that indexes all media files on your computer and transmits them to: df.telemetry.microsoft.com reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com pre.footprintpredict.com
When a webcam is first enabled, ~35mb of data gets immediately transmitted to: oca.telemetry.microsoft.com oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com i1.services.social.microsoft.com i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
Everything that is said into an enabled microphone is immediately transmitted to: oca.telemetry.microsoft.com oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com pre.footprintpredict.com i1.services.social.microsoft.com i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net telemetry.appex.bing.net telemetry.urs.microsoft.com cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net statsfe1.ws.microsoft.com
Well I disable indexing on the computers. The webcam app is removed (and I don't own one). I did not see anything transmitting when I used my microphone.... And the only thing I caught with my eyes was a IP that traced to Microsoft Azure HQ. Which I have no idea what service is using that. I don't have One Drive running or installed for that matter.
About the DLL file, you need Windows Update to install security patches, the others I have no idea why they would need to be in there...
I will try this on a fresh install when I go back to work on Thursday :)
You can disable allot of the telemetry tracking, but unfortunatly not all of it. Some of that stuff seems to be hard codded in the OS. Even with all the stuff disabled due tutorials and guides, it still does continue to phone home.
Yeah its terrible, and i´m even not suprised if windows 7 and 8.1 do the same thing nowdays. I have auto update disabled, but i have the feeling that MS is still doing patches to my system without letting me know. Ever since Windows10 is out, and they started to force people over.