Windows 10: Important Problem: How To Prevent App From Calling Home?

Hey guys, this may make me come across as paranoid, but this is an important problem for me so I hope you can appreciate that.

I just wanted to know if this was possible:

Let's say I'm browsing a website that requires me to login and give the website permission to access my PC. Is it possible for the owner of the website to "see" which apps I'm using on my PC while I'm using their website?

I do all of my most personal things on my PC like my journaling and online banking.

Thank you!

EDIT:

Instead of creating a new thread and wasting forum space I thought I'd just update this thread over here:

Important Problem: How To Prevent App From Calling Home? - Windows 10 Forums

:)

 

privacy settings

The problem with an app like that is that nothing will prevent the user from uninstalling the app itself. If you use the

Apps Corner feature, you can lock down the access and even lock access to the camera button. And it comes with phone, it's already part of the OS.

 

How to prevent update-reboot during important calculation

Option 1:

Set your Internet connection as metered:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/manage-windows...

Option 2:

Use Active Hours and Restart options - when using active hours, you should not exceed 12 hours, there seems to be a bug where the application of up to 18 hours is not confirmed.

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/managing-windo...

Option 3:

Use Show/Hide Updates tool to block the update:

Is there an option or work around to block updates or hardware drivers that might cause problems?

Yes, Microsoft has released a KB update (KB3073930) that will let users block or hide Windows or driver updates.

You can download it at the following link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930

Option 4:

Press Windows key + R

Type: services.msc

Hit Enter

Scroll down to Windows Update

Select it then right click it

Click Properties

Under the General tab, choose Startup type to DIsabled

Click Stop

Click Apply then OK

Option 5:

Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro which can pause updates for up to 35 days or block them for a year.

Open Start > Settings > Update & security > Activation

Click the link ‘Go to the store to upgrade or enter a product key’

Click the $99 button to make your purchase (the price might vary by region or depending on the edition you are upgrading from or upgrading to).

Follow the on screen instructions to make your purchase.

Within 5 to 10 minutes, your system will be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro, your personal files, apps and settings preserved.

You won’t get a product key, you get a digital license, which is attached to your Microsoft Account used to make the purchase.

 

This sounds interesting, can you specify how does the website asks you to access your PC ? Never met with something like this before.
To protect your privacy simply just avoid such websites.

 

I'm not sure that the website is doing anything malicious to my PC.

I just wanted to know if it was possible for a website to view what a user was doing on their PC?

 

They will know what sites or links that you visit, though not the contents, their interest being marketing, this being common.
Banking on line is encrypted though you should still use a good anti-virus to be doubly secure.

 

It's troubling to know that they can't see what sites I'm visiting.

How can I prevent this?

 

The short answer is "you can't"

Some browsers have an option to send a 'do not track' request to web sites , but many ignore this.

You can use an browser ad-blocker to block cookies being placed on your PC , but that's never 100% successful.

Use a search engine like duckduckgo which doesn't log your web search terms as google and many others do, but as soon as you click a results link , that site will try and track what your doing.

You can pay a monthly fee to use a VPN that doesn't log sites you visit , but that will not stop web sites that you log in to use logging the links you click on if you do so from their web page.

If you go on-line , you have to resign yourself that someone , somewhere will see the links you click , items you search for , sites you visit etc.

You can reduce your tracking footprint a lot , but not totally , the only way is to do so not go on-line at all.

 

I would suggest that one never gives access permission to their computer by some website.

I'm on the internet for several hours everyday and have never been asked by a website to access my computer.
Could someone post a website that does such a thing?

Please note:
Being paranoid is another layer of security.

Jack

 

Hi guys,

There are many other people who need help so I'm sorry to be asking a question, but I didn't know where else I could turn for help!

I've been using Evernote for a couple years now and while it's great to store my notes in "the cloud", I'm starting to think it was a mistake to give up so much of my privacy to Evernote.

The ability to use multiple devices isn't helpful as I only write my personal notes using one device: My PC.

Thank you!

 

My first thought was 'does or can Evernote encrypt them'?

Encrypted Text Within a Note

If you are using an Evernote desktop client, such as Windows Desktop and Evernote for Mac, you can encrypt any text inside a note to add an extra level of protection to private information. Evernote uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with a 128-bit key to encrypt text you select.
When you encrypt text, we prompt you for a passphrase. We take your passphrase along with a unique salt and use PBKDF2 with 50,000 rounds of SHA-256 to derive a 128-bit AES key. We use this key, along with an initialization vector, to encrypt your data in CBC (Cipher Block Chaining) mode.
We never receive a copy of this key or your passphrase and don’t use any escrow mechanism to recover your encrypted data. This means that if you forget your passphrase, we cannot recover your data.
Resiliency / Availability

We operate a fault tolerant system and network architecture to ensure that Evernote is there when you need it, wherever you may be. This includes:

• Diverse and redundant Internet connections.
• Redundant network infrastructure including switches, routers, load balancers, and firewalls.
• Scalable system architecture built using a large number of independently operating shards, each servicing a small slice of our user base.
• Shards architected as pairs of redundant servers, providing hot standby capabilities should a single server fail.
• Servers engineered with redundant power, redundant network hardware, and storage deployed in a RAID configuration.

Our colocation vendor provides fault tolerant facility services including: power, HVAC, and fire suppression.
We provide live and historical status updates here: Evernote Status (@EvernoteStatus) | Twitter and Evernote Status | Evernote Corporation.
We back up all customer content at least once daily and replicate those backups to our backup data center via a private network link. This process ensures that we can recover from a complete site failure in our primary data center. We do not utilize portable or removable media for backups.

Security overview | Evernote

 

Thanks for your reply!

I know Evernote can encrypt text within notes, but I'm still VERY worried about leaving my notes in Evernote's control and this is why I want to write my notes outside of Evernote.

 

It depends what level of security you want.

First you'd need to use encryption. Then you could hide the existence of the files, so they are not shown in explorer. Store your data locally, not in the cloud - and never connect to the internet - or not while you are accessing your encrypted notes, which of course you store on external storage which is never connected to your PC when you are on line... and of course you put that encrypted external storage - of which you have at least two copies- in two separate secure locations (!!)

Whatever you use needs to be inaccessible if someone uses a boot disk to access your drive - hence encryption. There are plenty of 'folder hiding' programs, but without encryption, they are potentially insecure.

Now, somewhere amongst that you need to decide:
a. How paranoid are you (that's not a criticism - just a question you need to ask- how much inconvenience are you willing to put up with for the sake of 'absolute' security?)

That determines the means you employ and how arduous and rigorous a procedure you want to follow.

b. Whether you want a free or commercial solution

A practical approach:
Until Truecrypt (free) was thought to be insecure (the arguments for which are somewhat arcane) that would be my recommendation.
Such programs create a container, which is password protected and encrypted.

The user needs to know where the file is, access it with Truecrypt, enter the password.

That file's content then is visible as a new drive letter in explorer- and looks like a normal drive with folders and files.

Maintain backups as usual.

There are newer programs which have replaced Truecrypt - which still works, but is not maintained.

 

I only ever store passwords within a password protected Word file on a removeable Bitlocker protected USB stick kept in a secure location. My PC is disconnected from the net when accessing the USB drive.

 

Dalchina, I wasn't expecting such a detailed reply so I'll reply to you soon!

This seems like a great idea.

EDIT:

Dalchina, I meant to say that I'll need some extra time to reply to your post!