Technology Tips – Published August 2017 in the Guide and Digest
By Don Trauger – Kennett
I last wrote about your computer’s Privacy settings in the November 2015 issue of the Guide & Digest. Privacy is all about how far Microsoft can legally shop your Internet surfing within Microsoft, or worse, to 3rd party advertisers.
To protect your privacy I recommend that you turn off ALL privacy settings in the Privacy category under Settings.
Here’s how:
Click the 4 pane white icon (Start icon) in the lower left corner of your screen. Two icons above the Start icon, click the white gear icon. This is the Settings icon. Next, click Privacy. It will open in the General category. Turn off all the items. Just below, click “Manage my info that’s stored in the cloud”. This will allow you to to opt out of targeted advertising when using your browser. Turn off “Personalized ads in this browser” and also “Personalized ads wherever I use my Microsoft account”. Do this for each browser you use on your computer.
You can click on “Learn more” in each of the 18 or so categories listed down the left side of Privacy to see if turning off a privacy setting may impact you. I have all of mine turned off except for “Speech, inking & typing” and I have maintained normal browsing on all websites. I left that on because I occasionally use Cortana – Microsoft’s voice assistant.
Under “Background apps” I recommend that you turn these off. Each app that runs in the background reduces computer performance. Microsoft usually turns all of these on thereby substantially slowing the performance of the computer.
The Privacy settings not only allow you to control what Microsoft and others may see, they can also affect performance as noted in “Background apps”. Next to having a good free anti-virus and anti-malware program installed, privacy becomes a very important issue. Targeted ads can contain malware or unwanted programs so privacy is also a security issue.
This subject will be discussed at our monthly meeting on the 3rd Tuesday at 7 PM upstairs in the Ardmore room of the Community Center. There’s always time to answer other questions you may have