Windows Privacy Tweaker

Windows has been around for little over a month at the time of writing this and, as you would expect, it’s getting a lot of press. Some of it is good, focusing on how Windows 10 is an improvement over Windows 8 and how millions have already upgraded. Some of is bad, focusing on privacy concerns, like the telemetry feature that sends lots of user information to Microsoft.

Now, if you’ve upgraded to Windows 10, you take privacy seriously and you don't want Microsoft tracking you, you’ll want to take a look at Phrozen Software’s Windows Privacy Tweaker. This free tool, as the name points out, lets you tweak various Windows 10 privacy settings. And more to the point, it can disable all Windows 10 settings that spy on you.

All this talk about Windows 10 may have you thinking that Windows Privacy Tweaker is meant for Windows 10 only. That's not the case. Windows Privacy Tweaker also works with Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 or 8.1. Windows Privacy Tweaker can detect some privacy issues even when it's used on a PC that run Vista, 7, or 8.

Windows Privacy Tweaker has a tabbed interface. You’ll see the following tabs at the top on its interface: Information, Services, Task Scheduler, Registry, and USB Security. Select Services for example and you’ll be presented with a list of services; enabled services are marked with red while disabled services are marked with green. Now go to the Information tab and look down at the bottom. It says there that green means safe while red means not safe.

To achieve a maximum level of privacy and security, you must uncheck all the unsafe red fields to the safe green fields. Go through all the tabs on Windows Privacy Tweaker’s interface and switch everything to green. Please note that a reboot/restart may be required for all changes to be applied.

Several command line commands are available. From the Information tab, click on the Commands button to view a list of command lines for Windows Privacy Tweaker.

While USB storage devices are handy for carrying and transferring data, they pose a security risk. Viruses sneak onto a USB device and then infect every PC that USB device is connected to. Windows Privacy Tweaker comes with an extra USB protection feature that lets you control your USB device status and set three different modes: normal, read only, disabled.

Thanks to Windows Privacy Tweaker you can protect your privacy by disabling multiple services, tasks, and Registry settings that track you and send user data to Microsoft. On top of that, you can use the extra USB protection feature to disable USB storage devices.