Windows 10: Cortana: The spy in Windows 10

Thanks. I followed Brink's tutorial and signed out of Cortana. It's now 'off' or at least sulking.

 

Sign off did not work for me, I still had the Cortana circle in the search box. With the .reg mod I have only "Search Windows" in the search box.





What is your Version & OS Build? Settings > System > About.

 

Windows 10 Home Version 1607 Build 14393.82.

 

Urban legend? http://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/05/tar...ide-story.html

 

If I am typing Software Coding, is Cortana saving it and sending it to MS?
Thank you

 

Policy or Registry! That is how to get in there and make a change stick. The registry besides calling up a restore point soon after for some reason generally makes it stick as well as changing the Local Group Policy setting. I pointed to the guide back in Post #12 just for this reason of how to get it done. Glad to see someone did refer to it! *Biggrin

 

From Microsoft Privacy Statement > Cortana:

"Signed out. When you are not signed in, Cortana will collect data about how you chat with Cortana and use Cortana to search, using either your voice, inking or typing. This data includes the following:

• Speech, inking and typing. To help Cortana better understand the way you speak and your voice commands, speech data is sent to Microsoft to build speech models and improve speech recognition and user intent understanding. If you choose to sign in, the speech models will become more personalised.
• Search history. Your Bing search queries - even if Cortana does the searching for you - are treated like any other Bing search queries and are used as described in the Bing section.
• Device Data. Cortana can access data about your device and how you use it. For instance, it can determine if Bluetooth is on, whether your lock screen in on, your alarm settings and which apps you install and use."
  
  
  Millions of average users won't do it that way. It's ridiculous to have to jump through hoops just to be able to disable Cortana. The "Search online and include web results" toggle switch was working fine before the update.
  
  What is Microsoft's motivation behind the change? Obviously it's to collect data from more users via Cortana & Bing.

 

Hoop jumping is the actual norm for anything in Windows to begin with. MS wouldn't have it any other way! "See our brand new feature in this new version of Windows!" being an automatic selling point to motivate people as well as the slower business community to upgrade into the newer. You are supposed to be "awed" by the new thrills each time around and not be so anxious to turn things off.

Data collection going into web searches and general browsing typically help with marketing. Browsers now see options like "tell sites I don't want to be tracked" so MS does it for them?!

Case in point with the MS Spam Fighters project the spam filter will snag 1 out of some 30 junk emails coming into where? an Live hotmail account no less with the "thank you for helping us fight spam" reminders while all those junkies originate from where? Some out of country Live accounts set up for generating junk mails! So if you have any doubts that other methods are not being deployed for gathering info guess again!

 

I can't speak for anyone else but myself, but I certainly like to be able to turn off any program in my computer that I do not use. The one thing in the computer that I certainly do not use is search. To me search is completely useless. Either I know where a given file is, or I don't, but in the latter case I most likely don't know the file name either. So how would search help me?

Can any desktop search find me that cool photo with the funny dude I met three years ago I don't remember where? If not, it's useless to me.

However, if I leave it on, it will keep indexing files on my computer. I don't want it to do that. Why? First of all, it's useless to me, so why bother, but most importantly, it makes noise when it does so. You see, most of such automated functions are designed to be activated when the PC is "idle". My fundamental problem with computers is that the people who write the OS have no idea when my PC is actually idle. They think it's idle if I don't use my mouse. So, if I don't move my mouse while reading something or looking at some image or even if the PC is calculating something with nearly 100% processor load longer than some really short period of time (I actually don't know what it is and how to change it), guess what, the OS decides that the PC is idle and activates all kinds of automation. And as the PC starts churning, the fans start moving and voila - there is noise.

There is more. If I'm talking on Skype or watching a video - I'm not using my mouse either. What happens if the PC starts doing something else at the moment? Well, yes, noise, but also unwanted pop ups and perhaps screen freezes. Just yesterday I watched John Kerry's press conference on CNN that was transmitted by some Skype-like service (Ruptly or something). And what do you know, right in the middle of it, there is a pop up saying "you have to restart your PC to finish updates", right across Kerry's face!

To me that is more annoying than the data collection. Basically because I took care of the data collection already. My PC does not have any contacts lists (except Skype, but that's OK). I never give my serious email address to any website that does not need it, certainly not to Microsoft. I always have location services off - I just have no use of them, but I don't want to see Google in another language just because I went to another country. So any search services are also off on my PC. And you know what? I can still search (about once year or so), I just have to live with the banner announcing that search in unindexed locations is slower.

So, with search off, I also have Cortana off. Completely and totally. In any case, my webcam and mike are always off unless I'm on Skype anyway. it can't listen to me without mike, now can it?

 

Cortana is not available in Dutch. Would it be, I would not use it. I have no use for it.

 

*Roflmao2*Roflmao2*Roflmao2 That was good! You don't want McM$ snooping through everything? constantly running in the background I see.

Actually Cortana has more then one option for searched in general like tieing Bing in for general web searching as well as any local file searches which can be handled still by the Search line in the Start menu itself. A friend likes it however for the ability of voice command searching for things as part of an accessory. So it does have use for some people.

The problem is the want by most to keep local file searches as something totally separate from the web. OneDrive is another annoyance at times I cut from the Task Manager Startup group there since I don't need files out in the Cloud. I simply prefer larger local storage capacity at times.

And for you prikker who said it wasn't available in Dutch or other languages? Several blogs illustrate the Region and Languages found in Start>Settings>Time & Language while the general advice is to have Cortana in sync with the main language in use on the system otherwise lose access to things like the MS store and other online accounts. An older blog from August 2015 indicated MS was planning to expand the number of countries for Cortana as the market for 10 continued to grow.

The blog page for that is found at Windowsreport

The other report linked to on the same site instructs on how to try Cortana even if not presently being supported in your location.
Fix: Cannot Activate Cortana in Windows 10