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

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

#171

Post by blibble »

cma wrote: post #169
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There are a lot of open source scripts and tools on GitHub for accomplishing the same goal (in various state of being out-of-date, abandoned, etc.); I started collecting the ones that appear somewhat active here: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy I plan on going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…

I have... noticed something similar to this too

I have a single remaining windows box that is completely idle with a rust disk and it's started spinning up for no apparent reason

how did you figure out it was Chrome?

edit: going to try procmon with the filter set to the disk

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

#172

Post by Shank »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #98
dannyw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telemetry isn't just a tool for product managers, but it's also a goldmine for national security agencies (more than just the NSA; Bing is unblocked in China for a reason). Anti-government meme made with GIMP at a specific timestamp? One search through the telemetry logs to find who exported a file at that exact moment. Any data collection is also government surveillance unless proven otherwise.

Microsoft provides a tool that allows you to see all telemetry that’s captured https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/01/24/micro... I don’t work for microsoft anymore but I laugh at these sorts of suggestions. I don’t know much about bing but I do know a decent bit about the telemetry pipeline and the idea of an anti government meme detection is ludicrous at best.

With all due respect, the danger to a telemetry pipeline is almost always downstream effects, like court orders to intercept network data or human assets that knowingly exfiltrate data. Even if you assume that Microsoft has the best of intentions and that all of the telemetry is for the purposes of improving the software experience, it’s a naive assumption that this doesn’t increase the attack surface substantially. With no user accessible kill switch and with all teams operating with good intentions, you still stand to create scenarios like telemtry-for-surveillance, even if the probability of such a scenario is small in the grand scheme of things.

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

#174

Post by userbinator »

cma wrote: post #169
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…

If you're sure that's actually Google's application doing it, and can show it happening with clear evidence, then I recommend reporting it to the media and everyone else you can think of. That sort of behaviour is essentially espionage and I'm sure it would be enough to get Chrome banned from many places which were previously happy to use it.

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

#175

Post by gigel82 »

blibble wrote: post #171
cma wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have... noticed something similar to this too I have a single remaining windows box that is completely idle with a rust disk and it's started spinning up for no apparent reason how did you figure out it was Chrome? edit: going to try procmon with the filter set to the disk

FWIW, I recently started building my own ungoogled chromium from here: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-win...

Someone might post a binary build there soon with 94 (until yesterday they only had the ancient 89), but you can build it yourself as well (on my 32-core 5950x with 64Gb RAM it took 2.5+ hours to build, just to be prepared for that).

Note that it won't have the Google Chrome Store, so the process for installing extensions (ahem, uBlock Origin) is a bit more involved: https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-wiki...

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

#176

Post by userbinator »

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.

If only they would just use normal checkboxes, available on Windows since the 80s, instead of these stupid ambiguous slider-switches, they would be perfectly clear with the additional advantage that you can use them while colourblind. Check to disable, uncheck to enable. It's the result of another idiotic attempt at UI "modernity".

(Then again, the double negatives in Windows' own Group Policy Editor, where some if not all of this stuff is also configurable, are just as confusing sometimes; but there, at least the UI controls themselves don't add any more ambiguity.)

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

#177

Post by Krasnol »

dartharva wrote: post #143

A lot of recommendations here, but it's surprising no one has suggested Sophia Script yet: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows IMO the best and most holistic solution for debloating and de-botnetting Windows.

Probably because of this:

> Due to the fact that the script includes more than 150 functions with different arguments, you must read the entire Sophia.ps1 carefully and comment out/uncomment those functions that you do/do not want to be executed.

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

#178

Post by dreamcompiler »

I'm thinking about buying a Windows box just so I can run Flight Sim 2020. I was hesitating because of all the malware, telemetry, and advertising that is Windows today. This is helpful.

Sure wish I could run MSFS 2020 in Linux. (I have X-Plane for Linux but the whole-earth scenery of MSFS 2020 is pretty compelling.)

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

#179

Post by userbinator »

concinds wrote: post #104
marderfarker2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ameliorated.info/ works too

This reminds me of the old "Windows XP Service Pack 4", or Windows 7 Minimalist ISOs that were going around. Generally, even the idea of using an OS downloaded from a random site (big Linux distributions excepted) is a security nightmare: you're trusting random, anonymous people not to put malware deep enough into the OS image where it won't easily be found. See XcodeGhost that got caught way after the fact. Same exa…

What a bunch corporate-authoritarian fearmongering BS.

The community is NOT stupid. All it takes is one person to find out someone is trying to be malicious, and mass ostracisation will take place. For most of civilization we didn't need corporate overlords to tell us who to trust --- that's a very very recent development.

where hundreds of major corporations with world-class software engineers

LOL. The same "world-class software engineers" who brought us https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139 and are constantly fighting against the user?

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

#180

Post by gigel82 »

cma wrote: post #169
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…

I can't find anything like that on my machine and am running the latest Chrome; where is that executable located on disk?
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