Next, scroll down the page and click the Speech privacy settings link. Since we want to disable Cortana to the maximum extent possible, I suggest you turn off everything: Location Contacts, email, calendar & communication history and Browsing history. On the page that appears, you can cut down on what information Cortana can see and use. On the Permissions page that appears, click the Manage the information Cortana can access from this device link. You should see a list of search results that looks something like this: On the Windows Settings page, enter Cortana into the Find a setting box. What we are going to do here is everything we can do to prevent Cortana from functioning, without resorting to hacking the registry or creating local group policies. While there are some technical tricks to completely disable Cortana, they are beyond the scope of this article. It seems that they really want us to use Cortana, whether we want to or not. Unfortunately, one of the changes Microsoft made in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update was to eliminate the option to shut Cortana down completely. I’ll simply say that most people who value their privacy want to shut Cortana down completely. Why? Because of the huge amounts of personal data that Cortana scoops up and the way it shares your personal data with Microsoft. It is also perhaps the feature most hated by privacy advocates. Put Limits on CortanaĬortana is the digital assistant built into Windows 10. We’ll also discuss using Windows in virtual machines (VMs) for more privacy and security. Make Windows stop hiding stuff from you.Set app permissions for maximum privacy.Make privacy-friendly apps the default apps.From here we can make the following changes, which we will methodically cover below.

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