Windows 11. A Privacy Review

each year is an unending stream of bad privacy news and i'm sure i'm starting to sound shrill with my unending privacy complaints and there were a lot of bad news in 2021 but i'm happy to tell you that as far as windows 11 is concerned in 2021 i have no bad news we just have a little work to do what i'm going to do today is to go through all the elements of windows 11 that can impact privacy and examine if we can control these elements to our benefit second we will check to see if there are any tricks that indicate that microsoft is lying in any way and doing hidden things that break our privacy if we decide to use windows with a privacy focus i'll give you a spoiler alert there are a lot of things to set up and there has to be a change of behavior and expectations but if you follow my guidelines i have no doubt that microsoft windows 11 will be a very good private and secure os likely better structure for app security than even linux and i would say right up there with android on the security front so stay right there [Music] when you need better search results like those from google but don't want the google tracking check out privacy search engine startpage.com it does not collect or share any of your personal data so you can search anonymously my company offers a vpn service by its vpn d google phones vpn routers and now we offer a braxtmail email service these products are made to protect you from big tech and their tricks to profile us if you're interested in them there on my app brax me the link is in the description after working with mac os big sur recently and being disappointed with its privacy aspects particularly the 24 7 location tracking i have to say that windows 11 has been a breath of fresh air for one i did not find any increase in spying in windows 11 from windows 10. if anything microsoft was more forthcoming about how the different features worked in windows 11 and simplify the privacy choices windows 11 is not a privacy focused os by default but when you take the precautions i will talk about it turns out that windows 11 is not only a pleasure to use for a change but it definitely beats apple by being reasonably private then they added some app security features that not only help privacy against rogue apps but will restrict the activities of hackers in a big way if you use the features properly i will identify the windows 11 elements that have privacy implications and then examine them closely and then we will learn how to turn off these risky elements or utilize the new tools provided these are the elements we will discuss microsoft id location tracking find my device online speech recognition onedrive telemetry and app security just in general when you want to set up your privacy parameters there is a section for it in settings and these settings are for each user not for the entire device and it is called privacy and security so it is possible for one user in windows to have very private settings while another user to be completely open to microsoft on the same computer let's just show this to you in general when the current user goes to settings there's a section of privacy and security the safest approach is to turn every single thing in the windows permission section off and that will handle most of the privacy issues it doesn't handle all of it though so at the end of the video i'll show you a quick way to set it all up safely let's now talk about the different windows 11 elements that have privacy implications microsoft id a constant privacy lesson i've been trying to teach all of you is that a simple release of your data is not as dangerous as linking data to an identity your microsoft id is connected to financial transactions and subscriptions with microsoft if you have xbox live that is connected to a microsoft id if you use microsoft office 365 which is a cloud-based app then you will be using it with a microsoft id if you download apps from the microsoft store then you will need to use a microsoft id in fact you will likely have different microsoft ids some connected with work or school in windows 11 your personalization and other tracking is linked to your microsoft id as well this is where your privacy is at risk the difference in approach between apple google and microsoft though is that microsoft doesn't force you to make this a single global login it is in fact possible to log it to microsoft 365 with a different microsoft id and then to xbox with another id and to the store with a different id in the same user session it means microsoft's not trying to force a centralized identity on everything you do this is so opposite what is being done on google and apple's site so it is refreshing aside from the cloud apps and purchases much of the convenience tools offered by microsoft such as syncing devices locations remembering activity history typing suggestions personalization advertising ids are tied to the microsoft id but here's the great news you really have no real reason to use a microsoft id permanently i use my windows 11 without a microsoft id which is the same as with windows 10. many tech people on youtube claim that a microsoft id is required on windows 11. my windows 11 pro machine was upgraded directly from windows 10. i didn't have a microsoft id for my login though i did have to sign in with my microsoft id to get a download however after the download i was able to sign out of the microsoft id and use it without any further requirement i could also remove the association with a microsoft id even if i associated it earlier in fact i have multiple microsoft ids and it didn't seem to make any difference which one is associated with the login it is possible to log in with different microsoft ids in different parts this to me signifies that there's no attempt to create a centralized identity if you use the windows 11 computer in the library this would make it possible for many people to use the same computer with multiple microsoft ids and not require separate login accounts to their computer on the opposite side a family would likely have multiple computers that could share the same microsoft id in contrast on an apple or google device you have to globally log into the phone or computer and that same login is then consistently used in every feature this seems to indicate to me that the microsoft identity is more about getting access to paid resources rather than being tied to a specific device identity for direct tracking of a person another thing in windows 11 some computer users may be assigned to a microsoft id and some may not with this kind of strategy if microsoft is intending to be a spy company it would fail it would be hard to get specific data on which id connects to which device which is great news philosophically the difference is big on a windows device i feel like i own the device and i'm just agreeing that microsoft can run the os for me i can do whatever i want and windows does not stop me and this includes disconnecting from microsoft partially or completely by changing the os or changing and removing microsoft ids as often as i want on an apple device i feel like i'm just renting it i feel like i can only do what apple lets me do so kudos to microsoft for not following the trend in order not to be forced to log into your computer with a microsoft id all you have to do is set up a local account this is how you do it to demonstrate i will use an admin account something i've always taught you in past videos is to always make additional user accounts on windows and do not make the additional users an admin then in daily use use the non-admin account so let's make a new account right now logging in as the admin user go to settings and then accounts and you will find the option family and other users notice here that i'm given an option to assign my current account or every other account with a microsoft id but just as you can sign in you can sign out so this account is not associated with a microsoft id when an account is associated with a microsoft id it shows below the account name otherwise it gives you the option to add a microsoft id now we will set up a brand new user which i will call demo you can see that the first thing it will ask me is to add a microsoft account i'm going to click i don't have this person sign in information which will then ask me to set up a new microsoft account but microsoft always gives this option add a user without a microsoft account just look for it if you've already signed in with a microsoft account no problem all you have to do is go to the family and other users in the account section of settings and disassociate an account from a microsoft id by going to the microsoft id below the account and do remove account i don't remember it being this simple in windows 10. personally i find no particular reason when in a privacy focused mode of use to ever associate a user account with a microsoft id at least not permanently like i said earlier you could always log into specific features like microsoft 365 or xbox or even the microsoft store with a microsoft id on a temporary basis as it turns out data collected about you like locations history or personalizations all of that is connected to a microsoft id so without that even if you enabled unsafe elements in windows 11 it won't necessarily be centrally collected without the use of a microsoft id for your windows login you are already a big chunk of the way into a private version of windows 11. so kudos to microsoft for not forcing the microsoft id number two location if you watch my recent video on the apple m1 chip i will remind you that i was disturbed by the use of a device where you can never turn off the 24 7 location tracking there's no switch to it and this means that apple can at all times find the location of every single apple device and so can google on android but i'm happy to report that after intensive testing with the proper setup my computer only shows my vpn location so this is working very nicely in order to understand how windows handles location i decided to dig a little deeper i found that by turning off the switches for location in the privacy and security settings that my location did not appear to be tracked using wi-fi triangulation and of course the typical computer does not have a gps so if they needed a location they have to use wi-fi triangulation the computer tracked a general location based on an ip address which was a vpn but i'm not a trusting kind of person especially with location data so i dug a little deeper in windows there's usually some background program like a service that handles this kind of processing and sure enough the module is called ifsvc and i found it running in the services list just to quickly show you this i went to the command line type services.msc and there's the list of services and i found geolocation on there that's the ifsvc module and then i turn it off i found out that each time i changed a user account it got turned back on and after some thinking i understood now that location tracking can be selected by each computer user and this ifsvc module is turned on during the login process since this service keeps turning on even after i had manually just turned it off i just ignored it and tried to see if it's sneaking up on me and tracking my location using wifi triangulation remember that my location settings are set to off in my privacy settings interestingly enough it doesn't appear to do that in fact it uses primarily an ip address-based location tracking which i'm sure is supplied by microsoft's location partners microsoft partners with two location tracking companies here.com and skyhook these two companies typically sell the reverse iplookup databases meaning if you have an ip address they will then turn around and give the historical location associated with that ip address they also have the database to provide wi-fi translation services so it appears that if a location is set to off then microsoft will just use the ip address as the basis of the location and will then cache that for use by apps you can also manually set a location if you don't want microsoft to guess and then it can force that location i also want you to know though that an application on windows could do its own wi-fi triangulation and send the data to google for example without involving the os each browser like chrome and firefox are capable of performing a wi-fi triangulation and then send the data directly to google fortunately windows does now in fact lock out location tracking and likely access to the wi-fi data that can do the tracking through the app permission section so take those settings seriously be careful about which apps are granted location permissions without location permissions all the apps will use only your default location or microsoft's guest location another test i did was to turn off the vpn and the location was then again based on an estimated location rather than a real location by the way if you turn on location and allowed wi-fi triangulation microsoft states that they will only store that data for a short amount of time there's also an option to clear the location as captured by the microsoft id so far so good no surprises and no tricks number three find my device the find my device feature is an attempt to copy the capabilities of a macos computer find my device takes your locations and then source it with your microsoft id i believe that when you select this it will turn wi-fi translation on to give you a more accurate location because find my devices tied to enabling location permissions it is not something i recommend you to do there's no reason to copy apple here would find my phone let's do it the old-fashioned way do not lose your computer i can't imagine this being a big issue with most computer users since a computer is not a mobile device i'm also not sure that this is a particularly useful feature for theft since someone could just wipe out the hard disk and lose all that personalization an apple device in contrast is pinging a serial number and location 24 7 which is very good against theft but extremely bad for privacy so this is a privacy risk that we don't need number four online speech recognition the online speech recognition called cortana is the same as siri google assistant and amazon echo it is a dangerous feature because you are sending your voice externally to the cloud to be stored at microsoft servers just like siri is stored at apple and alexa echo is stored at amazon you can disable online speech recognition which is clearly labeled on the privacy and security settings now microsoft makes it clear though that you can use microsoft speech apps that do not do online speech recognition microsoft has a speech recognition app that does local speech recognition which is important for the disabled this is enabled in accessibility settings as i will show you here at last those with disabilities need not lose their privacy just because they need voice commands so it appears that the speech recognition app is useful for control of the computer by voice it is not intended for full dictation because the full database for recognizing a lot of words are kept in the online speech recognition or cortana and not on windows 11. in summary to make it clear speech recognition for use in commands is ok it is not the same as cortana which is used for dictation and cortana-like searches if you disable online speech recognition anything connected to cortana will not run seems simple enough i know that in windows 10 it took a lot of settings and registry changes to get rid of cortana so this is very direct and simple so speech recognition is okay just leave online speech recognition or cortana off number five onedrive just like google drive onedrive means cloud storage unencrypted on microsoft servers i don't know why anyone remotely concerned with privacy would want to store anything on a onedrive if you want cloud storage go with respected providers that provide encryption or end to end encryption turn off onedrive i have to say that in windows 11 onedrive wasn't pushed to me on the upgrade i had removed the onedrive app from the apps list yet i could in the past still see a onedrive folder on my c drive in fact i don't see onedrive push anywhere now i had to do registry settings before and had to hide one drive but this is very direct you don't want one drive microsoft will not push you really good moves once again microsoft id cortana and onedrive were the irritating things pushed to us in windows 10. and there are really no issues with getting rid of them in windows 11. number six telemetry microsoft was trying to be millennial cool and wanted to hang out with the super cool spy companies apple and google and telemetry is big with apple and google telemetry is a general term i use where the os can track everything you do pretty much like a remote access trojan or rat malware on ios and android the os can determine when you're using a particular app and they can combine capturing this data with sensors to even know what you're doing at that time movement wise and of course they have the unrestricted 24 7 location tracking remember the old blue screen of death microsoft has a legitimate need to receive diagnostic data about crashes and such on a windows machine they then extended this to inking and typing personalization which could obviously send your typing data to microsoft that's the part that we connect with a remote access trojan if you enable search and activity history those would also be sent to microsoft together with your microsoft id fortunately the level of telemetry done on ios and android does not exist on windows as you will find out there's nothing particularly lost with disabling all of this in privacy and security settings microsoft does not collect the amount of data that is done by google firebase and ios and it is not connected to any actual significant functionality other than suggestions so just disable all that and you're good to go in settings again look for privacy and security and turn off all the items in the windows permissions section number seven app security the app security section of privacy and security settings received a major upgrade now you can set permissions for what each app can do along the lines of the restrictions you would find on mobile like on android this limitation of app permissions cannot be easily done on linux for example you will find that is not even close to this extensive on mac os this is even more honed than se linux on android very advanced restrictions look at the things you can control now on a windows executable some of these are found on phone os's like contact lists and file system limits but they extend to limiting things like radio voice activation screenshots this is very excellent lockdown and frankly my hacking mind is now thinking i will have a hard time making an app that can get around this if you activated these features for the first time i would actually say this could make windows 11 more secure against bad apps than a desktop linux computer in summary from a privacy and security point of view windows 11 appears to have provided us with a way to customize our windows experience to be as private and secure as we want without microsoft trying to hobble us it seems like they're saying use it the way you want we won't force our way on you we won't be big brother watching your every move we won't act like we own your computer that's the message i got from windows 11 from microsoft now left to its default settings it is definitely not a privacy focused os and not locked down from a security point of view by default it is meant to be easy to use for a non-privacy focused consumer so i get that and likely cannot expect them to do more we have work to do to set it up properly number one disable microsoft id number two remove onedrive app number three privacy and security disable all windows permissions specifically including cortana and old telemetry number four harden your device by using the app permission section specifically make sure to limit which apps have location permissions and turn general locations off as an additional tool i'm going to show you an app that can check your security settings and make sure you didn't miss anything there's an app called shut up 10 from ono which is designed to do a checklist of your privacy settings on windows 10. fortunately this same checklist works with windows 11. so let me just show you how it works i just click on the app it's designed for one-time use so you don't even have to install it the link to the app is in the description basically the window settings are on the left side and then the right side shows the recommended settings so if you don't know any better just match the colors and you will set the permissions correctly i would likely not necessarily disable things that are marked limited usually i don't touch those there are some things not affected by this on privacy and security so i would at the very least check all the settings on there afterwards especially the locations in app permissions thumbs up to microsoft they appear to have made a positive improvement to windows 10 with windows 11. i would also say that the ui in windows 11 is more predictable and clean and the layout clearly is more modern and really suitable for the computer form factor it's not trying to become a mobile device so it seems to me that nothing stops this from running well on a touch device i'm on the platform odyssey.com in addition to youtube i'm one of the top creators on there currently in the top 10 actually just in case i get the platform please follow me there using the link in the description i'm also on my own app braxtman a large number of my subscribers are on there whether it's a community of like-minded 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Channel: Rob Braxman Tech

Views: 30,602

Keywords: internet privacy guy, internet privacy, tech privacy, privacy, privacy feature of windows 11, windows 11 vs windows 10 privacy, windows 11 vs MacOS privacy, Microsoft vs Apple privacy, app security Windows 11 vs Linux, location tracking windows 11, app security windows 11, app permissions windows 11

Id: B_ShZ98YupA

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021