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Windows 11, just like any operating system released from Microsoft
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gathers a ton of data from their users for advertising, diagnostics, and other purposes
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If you care about your data being private and are concerned about what Microsoft collects
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I'll show you the tracking features in Windows 11 you can disable to keep more of your data private
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Let's get started. For the first four segments, we'll be using the Settings app
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To open it, in the taskbar, right-click on the Start button and select Settings
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To open it more quickly, you can also use the keyboard shortcut, which is the Windows Key Plus I
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If you want to opt out of getting personalized ads on Windows 11, in the left pane, select Privacy and Security
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Windows permissions, select General. Turn off all four of these at the top
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Let apps show me personalized ads by using my advertising ID. Let websites show me locally relevant content by accessing my language list
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Let Windows improve start and search results by tracking app launches. And the last one here, show me suggested content in the settings app
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Once you completed all these you may still see some advertisements on Windows 11 but they will not be targeted ads shown to you based on your behavior For this next one we be disabling some of the diagnostics data collected by Microsoft
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To do this, in Settings, go to Privacy and Security here on the left
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Then in Windows Permissions, go to Diagnostics and Feedback. Windows does require that your device sends a limited amount of data to Microsoft
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as they say to keep your device and operating system secure, up to date, and working
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Here's what you can disable. First, turn off Send Optional Diagnostic Data
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You'll see below that, by disabling Send Optional Diagnostic Data, it automatically turned off Improve Inking and Typing, and that's a good thing
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Go down to Tailored Experiences and turn this one off to stop Microsoft from using the diagnostic data for personalized tips, ads, and recommendations
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Now click Delete Diagnostic Data. Scroll down here. Clicking on Delete will start the process of removing copies of your diagnostic data from
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their systems. Later in this video, I'll show you how to delete additional diagnostic data they might
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have collected. We'll now disable the Activity Tracking in Windows 11. This one is especially concerning to many privacy experts
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To disable it, select Privacy and Security. In Windows permissions you might have to scroll down select activity history They make it sound like this feature is useful to jump back into what you doing on your device It really not
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It's just another data collection technique. Having this enabled sends data to Microsoft regarding the apps and services you use
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and how you use them, including information about the websites you visit
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So turn this one off. While the Find My Device feature, when enabled, can be useful to help find your lost or stolen
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laptop or other Windows device, it also uploads location data to Microsoft, letting them know
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where you might be at all times. If you don't want Microsoft knowing your possible location, select Privacy and Security
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Then here on the right, select Find My Device. Then toggle the switch to turn it off
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If you're using the Microsoft Edge browser built into Windows, you can easily block trackers
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while you browse the web. To reduce tracking in Edge, click the three-dot menu icon here in the upper right
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From the drop-down menu, click on Settings. In the left pane, go to Privacy, Search, and Services
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Here on the right, enable Tracking Prevention. Then select the best option for you
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For most people, balanced would be the best choice, but if you want to block the majority
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of trackers on all websites you might want to go with strict Just know choosing this option may break some parts of websites While deleting data and disabling features on your device is useful there may still be some data to get rid of on your Microsoft account
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To do this, on any browser, go to account.microsoft.com. After doing so, you'll need to log into your account
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and you'll land on a page that looks similar to this one. Here on the top bar, click on Privacy
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On this page, scroll down. In Manager Activity Data, you'll see various groups. Just worry
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about the first four, Location Activity, Browsing History, Search History, along with App and Service
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Activity. Go into each of these groups and select the Clear All option. For example
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I'll go into Browsing History and click on Clear All Browsing Activity
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In the window that pops up, click on clear. You'll then have the option to choose how often you want that data to be automatically cleared
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For this, I'll go with 30 days. And to finish things up, click on turn on
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And that's all there is to it. Now it says for browsing history, there's no data
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comments if you still care about privacy or like many people have just given up. And if you're new
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to our channel, subscribe and click the bell notification icon so you don't miss out on our
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latest Windows 11 videos and other tech-related stuff
