In the past couple years, privacy has become a burning topic in the technology world. The gathering of information on mobile devices and social media has become a source of major concern for some of us. Windows 10, with its mobile-inspired design and features, is known to collect user information for functions such as determining location, targeting ads and making system improvements.
Luckily, to help alleviate anxiety, the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update will give users more control over their privacy. In this guide, we will look at some of the relevant privacy settings and how you can customize them.
Privacy Settings Overview
To access the privacy section of the settings app, go to Settings -> Privacy. Here you will see an overview of all of the customizable privacy settings in the left pane of the screen. New in the Fall Creator’s Update is the Learn more link below the Know your privacy settings option to the right of the screen. Here you can get view your Privacy dashboard with descriptions for each privacy setting as well as other additional options.
Location
Access your Location privacy settings by going to Settings ->Privacy -> Location. Location is one of the most important privacy settings and the one that generally raises the most concerns among technology users. Allowing a device or an app access to your location can sometimes be useful for features such as Find my pen, finding places of interest or navigation. However, if you are uncomfortable with this, you can turn off the location service altogether by toggling the switch below Location service to OFF.
On the other hand, if you want to restrict a particular app from accessing your location, scroll down to “Choose apps that can use your precise location” and toggle the switches to the off position for the apps you want to restrict. On this page, you can also clear your location history and manage location information that is stored in the cloud.
Feedback and Diagnostics
Access the Feedback and diagnostics setting by going to Settings ->Privacy -> Feedback and diagnostics. This is another privacy setting that is worth looking at. In this page, you can determine how much data you would like to send to Microsoft. You can either send a little (the Basic setting) or a lot (the Full setting). You can view, in detail, the information collected by both settings in a listing provided by Microsoft for the Basic and Full settings.
Background Apps
Disable apps from running in the background by going to Settings ->Privacy -> Background apps.
Another new addition to the Fall Creators Update is the ability to universally turn off background apps from running. If you want to disable a specific app from running in the background, simply scroll down to “Choose which apps can run in the background” and toggle the switch to OFF for that particular app.
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