Windows 10 privacy settings that you should check [How to]

You should check your Windows 10 privacy settings if you want to personalize your Windows 10 experience. This not only depends on the colors or themes you choose for your desktop, but also on the privacy settings of your account.

To do this, you need to take a look at Windows Settings and decide how your data will be used to improve team dynamics while maintaining your privacy.

Windows 10 privacy settings

To start you have to go to Settings >> Windows 10 Settings >> Privacy, as you see in the image.

You will find some options that determine the data you share with Microsoft and others that configure how the apps that you install on your computer will work.

The degree of privacy you want to have and the level of Windows experience may depend on these settings. And in some cases, the performance of the team.

Let’s go over the most important Windows 10 privacy settings.

Store voice data

Microsoft asks us for permissions to store our voice data in the cloud to improve its services on Windows Cloud. If you do not agree with this premise you can deactivate it.

One detail to keep in mind is that if you deactivate this option, you will not be able to use Cortana and some other services based on online voice recognition.

Share contact and calender data

These two options allow us to decide if we want to give the applications access to the contact data or the calendar options. And if so, which applications will have this permission.

We will see a list of apps and we can decide to activate or deactivate access. And of course, this can affect some of the features of the application.

When to have the camera and microphone activated

Setting these options can serve as prevention. Instead of having the camera and microphone activated by default on our equipment, we can determine which applications will have automatic access.

This will avoid accidents or carelessness thinking that these options have the correct configuration.

Devices that can communicate with your computer

These windows 10 privacy settings allow your device to connect with other devices even if they have not gone through the pairing process. For example, your computer can communicate with your mobile device through the Microsoft Your Phone app.

So that this is not a headache, you can keep the option activated only for trusted applications and devices.

Who will see your location

Location is one of the pieces of information that helps Microsoft deliver a personalized experience. You can decide to share this data or deactivate the option. And the same dynamic applies to applications.

You can choose which applications will have access to your precise location. In some cases, even if location access is disabled, apps can still determine an estimate of your location.

Apps that will access your account information

If you use Windows 10 with your Microsoft account, you can choose whether other applications will have access to this information to customize this dynamic. For example, Microsoft Edge may use this information to facilitate access to Microsoft services.

You can decide if this is an appropriate dynamic for you, or if you want to provide this information individually to each application.

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Automatic file downloads

These windows 10 privacy settings allow us to choose the online storage applications that can perform automatic file downloads. For example, OneDrive, Google Drive.

Once we give the necessary permissions, the apps will work in the background downloading only files online. Having this configuration updated will help us avoid surprises and save disk space.

Activity history

In this section we have to configure how we want the information that Windows collects about our activity on the computer to be used. For example, applications that we use, web pages that we visit.

All this data is stored locally, but if we log in we can choose to send that information to Microsoft for a personalized experience. For example, the possibility of having a timeline of our activities.

Background apps

Having this option configured will help improve the performance of your computer, since you will have under control the number of applications that can work in the background. You may only want to activate these settings with those you use most frequently and the rest deny this permission.

You can change these settings at any time and adapt them to your needs.