Windows 10: how to guard against spies in a computer repair shop

Assume you need to send your computer to a repair shop. (Manufacturer's warranty service, or other, away from your home). How can you ascertain your private information can not be read? 1) copy USERs folder to your external hard disk, then delete source. 2) Extract browser history, cookies (browser passwords), URLs and move these to hard disk. Delete source. 3) If you do a search with words you use often you might find some duplicates of your information. Now this is tedious and unreliable. 4) Some applications store data inside the application folder without you ever know about. 5) Here follows what other TENFORUM members suggest...........................................PLEASE. A) MS forces use of registration (email), there is a chance repair shop can open email, hotmail, out look, just by using logon data. Hopefully this will become an item in the TENFORUMs library to download.

:)

 

how to guard against spies in a computer repair shop

If I was worried about "spies in a computer repair shop", I would... make a full OS image backup, and save that backup to an external hard drive or even an internal hard drive.

Then I would remove all drives except the OS drive.
Then I would overwrite the OS drive with zeroes, and delete everything in OneDrive if you use it.
Then do a clean install of Windows on the OS drive.

I don't think you could do any more to protect your privacy.

 

how to guard against spies in a computer repair shop

Assume you need to send your computer to a repair shop. (Manufacturer's warranty service, or other, away from your home). How can you ascertain your private information can not be read?
1) copy USERs folder to your external hard disk, then delete source.
2) Extract browser history, cookies (browser passwords), URLs and move these to hard disk. Delete source.
3) If you do a search with words you use often you might find some duplicates of your information. Now this is tedious and unreliable.
4) Some applications store data inside the application folder without you ever know about.
5) Here follows what other TENFORUM members suggest...........................................PLEASE.
A) MS forces use of registration (email), there is a chance repair shop can open email, hotmail, out look, just by using logon data.

Hopefully this will become an item in the TENFORUMs library to download.

 

how to guard against spies in a computer repair shop

Take the drive(s) out and send it to the repair shop. If they need to, they can throw in a drive with an OS on it for troubleshooting. Or, find a local person you can trust. Or, learn to do it yourself. *Wink