O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#161

Post by sydney6 » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

Jenk wrote: post #139

jakobdabo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to use Windows once in a while (circumstances). Best way to forget about the existence of spyware (aka telemetry) that I found is to not connect a Windows box directly to internet. I configured my router to give it a gateway and DNS IPs which don't exist in the network. Eat that, Microsoft. And I can still connect to internet by manually setting a SOCKSv5a proxy to the router in Firefox and other software that…

Since the 21H1 update you might start noticing connection drops since a new wlan autoconfig feature has been added: if windows can't ping home reliably, it will restart your nic. Yep.

RedHat's NetworkManager already does something pretty similar [1].

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager#Checking_con...

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#162

Post by RachelF » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

Spybot anti-beacon is also good. It also stops MS Office from "phoning home"

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#163

Post by freebuju » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

There's privatezilla too. If you consider Microsoft Defender (real time scanning & sample submissions) to be a spy tool, there are easy scripts available to permanently disable it, apparently recent Windows versions decided not to honor instructions disabling WD via registry or local group policy.

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#164

Post by rkagerer » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #124

inside65 wrote: post #115

I've been using this since W10 came out. It works, but as others mention, some parts seem to stop working magically over time.

Its not magic. Its windows update happening in the background I went from perfect system health , progressively into blue screen death, it got so bad that it happened every 2 hours after spiking my i7 to 100% cpu use. The decline happened within a month of a win10 update back in Aug/Sept. A couple of MS support tickets and a windows reinstall later, I finally gave up had to do a complete fresh PC install to fix. No i…

I went from perfect system health, progressively ... it got so bad ... decline happened ... I finally gave up had to do a complete fresh PC install to fix

Sounds like every Windows since 3.1. Instead of telemetry I wish they'd focus on making an OS that stays robust and performant indefinitely.

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#165

Post by keewee7 » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

Jenk wrote: post #139

jakobdabo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to use Windows once in a while (circumstances). Best way to forget about the existence of spyware (aka telemetry) that I found is to not connect a Windows box directly to internet. I configured my router to give it a gateway and DNS IPs which don't exist in the network. Eat that, Microsoft. And I can still connect to internet by manually setting a SOCKSv5a proxy to the router in Firefox and other software that…

Since the 21H1 update you might start noticing connection drops since a new wlan autoconfig feature has been added: if windows can't ping home reliably, it will restart your nic. Yep.

I don't think the reason for this is malicious. Back in 2012-2018 many Windows laptops belonging to friends and relatives had frequent WiFi issues. The only reliable way to fix the issue was to restart the NIC.

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#166

Post by arriu » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #101

PaulKeeble wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR requires the opposite, data collection has to be opt in. I don't really see why the telemetry they capture doesn't count as peoples personal data honestly, it should given how much behavior information is available from it.

I believe it’s only opt in when it contains user identifying information. Information on did a feature work or not and how long search indexing took isn’t particularly sensitive once you strip off any device identifiers.

But... You've just described how fingerprinting on the web works. How is this not uniquely identifying information?

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#167

Post by spicybright » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

shmde wrote: post #28

zwaps wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lovely how on mobile, the reddit page is blocked: you need the app to access it.

https://i.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ Or https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ If you have trouble opening any reddit website on mobile change "www" with just the letter 'i' or 'old'. Once they don't allow these workarounds I am leaving reddit for good.

Seriously though. I have old reddit UI always on by default and forget to keep adding the "old" prefix when posting links, so apologies.

I will leave reddit too if they remove the old version.

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#168

Post by mmgutz » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

The UI is confusing (double negatives). Does Red "Disable Inventory Collector" mean that is enabled? Red, to me, usually means off on a toggle switch.

It's explained in the help.

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#169

Post by cma » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

gigel82 wrote: post #137

There are a lot of open source scripts and tools on GitHub for accomplishing the same goal (in various state of being out-of-date, abandoned, etc.); I started collecting the ones that appear somewhat active here: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy I plan on going through them to weed out duplicates and duds. You shouldn't trust any of those blindly, but definitely read through the code; I'm par…

I noticed a media disk drive grinding away the other day, nothing made sense to be causing it. Turns out Chrome now scans all your drives and sends executables back to Google by default or something (software_reporter_tool.exe), even if you are a software developer in competition with them (practically all software developers since Google are essentially all-encompassing at this point).

Is it intuitive to anyone that a third party web browser would be doing this by default?

Re: O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11

#170

Post by zalebz » Sat, Oct 09, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

mmgutz wrote: post #168

The UI is confusing (double negatives). Does Red "Disable Inventory Collector" mean that is enabled? Red, to me, usually means off on a toggle switch. It's explained in the help.

agreed. I've been using this and similar tools for several years and the cognitive load for every single setting is infuriating. especially given the very obvious underlying reason everyone is launching this tool.