O&O ShutUp10

The telemetry components of Windows 10 and the way they affect the user's privacy is a controversial topic ever since the release of the most recent iteration of Microsoft's operating system. While many options can be tampered with during setup, there are applications out there specifically tailored to allow the manual tweaking of Windows 10's security settings. One of them is O&O ShutUp10.

Requiring no installation, O&O ShutUp10 provides users with a simple means of customizing the privacy options in Windows 10 and thus decide which data collection options will stay enabled and which should be blocked.

If you are not willing to go through the entire list of settings, read about them (clicking on the name of an option reveals information about it and how it affects your PC) and disable or enable them, O&O ShutUp10 comes with a more simple solution. There is a list of security options that the application recommends, and you can apply them with just a click.

The array of tweaks O&O ShutUp10 comes with includes telemetry-related options, app access to Wi-Fi, the camera, the calendar and personal user data (messages, location), data collection and sending to Microsoft, advertising, localization detection, and more.

Many of the security-related complaints in Windows 10 are related to the Cortana personal assistant, but you can block this built-in application with O&O ShutUp10. Along with it, the SmartScreen filter, the app notifications, the automatic Windows updates, the feedback reminders, and OneDrive can be disabled.

The assortment of security options that O&O ShutUp10 targets is meant to offer you full control over the data collection capabilities of Windows 10. No restart is required, and the changes are applied on the spot, but you must run the application with administrator privileges. Please note that it is recommended to create a system restore point before using this app.

And in case you want the default configuration back, you can undo all the changes with just a click, restoring Windows 10 to its 'factory' settings.