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Windows tip of the week

Control the amount of diagnostic data your PC sends to Microsoft

By Ed Bott


Every Windows 10 PC sends regular transmissions of diagnostics and feedback data (aka "telemetry") to Microsoft. This data includes details about crashes, software and driver installations, and other events that can help engineers identify problems and fix them quickly. By default, it also includes details about how you use apps and features.


That data is anonymous and can't identify an individual person, but advanced error reports can inadvertently include information from documents that were in memory during a crash. If that prospect bothers you, there's a setting you can adjust to reduce this diagnostics information to the minimum amount required.


Open Settings > Privacy, click the Diagnostics & Feedback tab, and change the setting from Full to Basic. This option is also available in Group Policy, under Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Data Collection and Preview Builds > Allow Telemetry.


Note that in that policy setting you'll find two additional options. Enhanced is somewhere between Full and Basic and can be safely ignored. The Security (Enterprise Only) setting works only with Enterprise edition and requires that you have an alternative mechanism for installing Windows updates. If you set this policy option on a machine running Windows 10 Pro, the effect is the same as Basic.

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