Windows 10 has gotten a lot of flak from privacy advocates for the amount of data the operating system collects about you. But while there’s no simple way to turn off all of the operating system’s data collection, Microsoft does let you disable some features such as location tracking, speech recognition and features related to advertising.
Now that the Windows 10 Creators Update is about to begin rolling out, Microsoft is unveiling a new unified privacy settings feature that’s baked into the update.
There’s a new Privacy Settings screen that will let you toggle the following features:
- Location – Let Windows and apps request your location and share that data with Microsoft.
- Speech Recognition – Let Cortana and Windows Store apps recognize your voice… and send data to Microsoft to improve speech recognition.
- Relevant ads – Allow apps to use advertising IDs to show ads based on your usage.
- Tailored experiences with diagnostic data – Let Microsoft use diagnostic data from your PC to offer tips and recommendations.
There’s also one more feature called Diagnostics. You can’t turn this one off, but you can switch between two options:
- Full – Send data such as browser, app and feature usage, and typing data to Microsoft to help fix problems.
- Basic – Send “less” data.
Previously these settings were scattered throughout other areas. The Windows 10 Creators Update puts them all in one place, and by default your settings will be based on whatever options you’d selected before updating.
If you’re setting up Windows 10 for the first time, there’s a new screen that offers the same toggles during the setup process.