W10Privacy 2.4.2.0

Many people are concerned about their privacy when it comes to the latest Windows 10 operating system. Although Microsoft has stated on several occasions that the data it collects is only meant to make the operating system perform better by personalizing its delivery, the fact is that many users are still concerned about the information collected. If you're one of them, then a simple tool that will help you control what your computer shares with Microsoft servers is W10Privacy. The lightweight application makes it easy to prevent tracking so you can have peace of mind.

Using W10Privacy

We extracted the executable file and saved it in a folder from where we launched it directly. We liked its portability not only because we could use it on multiple computers but also because it eliminated the risk of interfering with the system registry.

We launched it with administrator privileges to ensure all our changes were applied. Whenever we launched the application, it gave us the opportunity to create a system restore point before making any changes, but we chose to do this only during the initial launch for our test purposes. It even allowed us to check for ourselves whether the restore point was created properly.

The application interface had 14 tabs that allowed us to access the features we could tweak on the same window. We simply clicked a tab to display its list of items, which were color coded depending on their potential impacts. Explanations of the color codes were on the lower part of the user interface. In addition, placing the cursor over an item in the list displayed a brief description of its function.

Each item had a check box on its left for either selecting or deselecting it. Some items were preceded by exclamation marks, indicating that they could only be changed with administrator privileges.

Once we had made the adjustments we wanted, we simply clicked the 'Set changed settings' button. The application restarted itself, enabling us to confirm that it had applied the changes. Some settings required signing out and back in while others needed a complete restart of the system.

Conclusion

Although Windows 10 allows users to adjust privacy settings without using any third-party application, they have to wade through multiple menus that make the process tedious. Thankfully, W10Privacy allows you to prevent tracking easily by letting you access every feature you may disable on the same application window via tabs. The software doesn't include the feature for selecting or deselecting all items at once, forcing users to consider every item without making blind selections.