Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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Advice on cleaning bloatware off of a new PC (www.bestbuy.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I helped my 77 year old mother purchase a new laptop, and I want to be sure to get all the bloatware off of it, and set her up with with some better privacy options. I am aMac guy at home so I haven't done this kind of thing for many years. (I use Windows at work, so I'm quite familiar and capable, but obviously I have to rely on IT knowing what they are doing (they don't)). I did make sure to get the pro version of Windows 11. I'm going to set her up with Proton mail I think. This is the computer that is coming:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-thinkbook-16-g6-abp-amd-in-16-touch-screen-notebook-amd-ryzen-5-with-16gb-memory-512gb-ssd-gray/6565272.p?skuId=6565272

(Forgive me if this is not the correct place to post)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Checkout things like WinDebloat, Privatezilla, Winaero Tweaker, Bulk Crap Uninstaller, and LoveWindowsAgain. There's some overlap between them (as they were built for different purposes), but they all pretty much kill telemetry at the service or installed level (as in remove the components providing telemetry).

Yea, it's BS you have to do this. And screw MS for this crap.

You could also download Win10/11 LTSC, which natively doesn't have some of this crap, but also doesn't get feature updates automatically - just system/security updates 2x/year - so you won't deal with problems caused by updates.

And you can still run the apps above to reduce what's left.

Also, go grab MAS on github. It'll help if you have any problems with activating. It's a script Microsoft tech support uses.