The advice on this page should only be followed if you feel you have a higher level of computer skills. These actions can be undone by essentially following these steps in reverse.
Telemetry is the process of collecting information from a remote source. Most modern tech companies make money by harvesting your data and either selling it or using it to better figure out how to market their products. You may have come across forms of telemetry when you're setting up a new app on your phone or setting up a new computer. These programs will often ask what forms of data sharing you want to take part in. But these programs often take additional data from you that you might be unaware of. While it is difficult to fully disengage ourselves from data harvesting, we can at least take steps to reducing how much of our information is shared with large corporations.
This page lists a variety of actions you can do to reduce Windows 11 telemetry. You don't have to do all of them if you like some features or are not comfortable changing some aspects of your computer. If you are using your work computer, you might not be able to do some of these depending on what level of permissions your IT department gave you.
Our Online Privacy & Security section also provides some more general information on how you can improve your online privacy.
Microsoft gathers a lot of data about you if you're logged into Windows 11 with a Microsoft account. One of the simplest and easiest ways to maintain privacy is to avoid using a Microsoft account on Windows 11. You can still use Windows even if you're logged out by using a local user account on your PC but this obviously isn't always feasible if you are using a work or student computer.
To log out of your Microsoft Account on Windows go to Settings on your computer and then going to Accounts. From Accounts, click on Your Info
From here you should see an option to sign in with a local account.
If you click on this you will see your Microsoft email address, it will prompt you to enter your PIN or password. Once you do this, you can enter the details for you new local account.
Create a new account and password with, and then just click "Sign Out and Finish" and you can sign in with this new local account. You can verify this by checking settings and seeing what account is used.
This is a feature that uses your computer's location. You can turn this off by going to Settings, then Privacy & Security and then Find my Device and simply turn it off.
In Settings under Privacy and Security, there is an option simply called General. If you click on this, you will see a variety fo features you can turn off. Many of these features relate to trying to customise features and advertisements to you (by using your data). It is a good idea to turn all these features off.
In Settings under Privacy and Security, there is an option simply called Diagnostics & Feedback.On this page, turn off "Send optional diagnostic data" if it is not already off.
Then change "Feedback frequency" from automatically to never.
You can also click "Delete diagnostic data" though this might not be enabled by your IT department.
On some instances of Windows 11, you may see the option to turn off "Tailored experiences". This can also be turned off. if it is enabled.
On your personal computer or if it is allowed on your work PC you can make some changes through the registry editor. The registry editor is a database that contains a lot of settings that you normal don't need to touch. You should note that this option doesn't work on every version of Windows 11 even if you follow each step.
To open the registry editor, search the taskbar for this program. When it's open, you'll see something like this:
From here you want to go to Local Machine and then Software.
From here then go to "Microsoft" and then "Windows". Then go to "Current Version" and then "Policies." and then finally "DataCollection".
Within this folder you may or may not see a file called "AllowTelemetry".If it is there, you'll see something like this
Double click this and change the value to 0.
If it is not there, in the blank space within the DataCollection folder you right click and select DWORD (32-bit) Value. From here type AllowTelemetry. Please note that this is case sensitive so include the capitalisations and no spaces. After creating it, double click this and change the value to 0 so it resembles the image above. Your computer needs to be restarted for this change to take place.
In Settings under Privacy and Security, there is an option simply called Search. On this page, turn off as many of the features as you can or want, as all of them use your personal data to personalise results. You can also clear your device search history under this section.
In Settings under Privacy and Security, there is a heading called "App permissions". This contains a number of settings that allow your apps to access certain information. Some of these you may want on. You probably want Teams to be able to access your camera for example, but there might be other permissions that are totally unnecessary, like your webcam probably doesn't need to know your location. You should go through each of these options and set them up to your liking.
This step requires the use of the registry editor as we did with the Disabling Telemetry option earlier. Open it up but this time go to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" then Software, then Policies, then Microsoft and then Windows and then finally DataCollection. You should see something like this.
Right click the Windows folder and select New and then Key. Call the new folder that appears Explorer. Some computers may already have this folder here.In the blank space within the new Explorer folder you right click and select DWORD (32-bit) Value. From here type DisableSearchBoxSuggestions. Please note that this is case sensitive so include the capitalisations and no spaces. Double click this and set the value to 1 as in the screenshot below
If you have done this all correctly, simply restart your computer and then when you search your taskbar it will only search your PC and nothing online. It will resemble something like the below:
This is another feature of Windows 11 that sends on your data to Microsoft. This is fairly hidden. You can turn this off by opening a program called Services. You will see something like this:
From here, find "Connect User Experiences and Telemetry" and double click it. You will see a pop-up box, and you should set "Startup type" to Disabled as in the screenshot below.
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