The Mainstream Press Doesn’t Understand Microsoft or Windows (Premium)

I read several mainstream news publications, and I’m always teetering between amused and concerned when confronted by their coverage of personal technology. No, not John Gruber faux outrage over some perceived slight, just concern. It’s not just antitrust regulators who are focused on the biggest of the bad players in our industry---Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta---it’s clear that the mainstream press falls into this group, too. And they just don’t get Windows, or what Microsoft is doing with Windows.

And Microsoft continues to use this ignorance to its advantage, moving ever more aggressively to push its own products and services in Windows, track users without their consent while offering no way out, and spamming users with ads and crapware.

Point being, when Brian Chen of The New York Times writes an article called The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away, I’m paying attention. And then I’m sorry I bothered.

Users of Apple’s iPhones are told about several general ways in which they can enhance their privacy and turn off data-sharing functionality.

Users of Google Android-based devices and online services are told about the data-sharing management functionality that the online giant offers.

Those fools who continue to use Facebook are likewise told about how they can use the company’s privacy checkup tool to “prevent snooping by employers and marketers.”

And users of Amazon’s e-commerce website and Alexa and Nest devices (the latter of which are owned by Google, not Amazon; the latter owns Ring) can exert “some control over how information is shared.”

And that’s all … fine. It’s also horrifyingly high-level and incomplete. But then so is most mainstream news. You gotta keep people’s attention.

But it’s the Windows coverage that bugs me. That always bugs me. Here’s exactly what the article mentions about controlling your privacy on Windows. This is all of it, two paragraphs.

“Windows PCs come with a host of data-sharing settings turned on by default to help Microsoft, advertisers, and websites learn more about us. The switches to toggle those settings off can be found by opening the settings menu and clicking on Privacy and [&] security and then General.”

This is factually correct and horrifically useless. Yes, Windows does come with a “host of data-sharing settings,” and, yes, they are turned on by default. And yes, you can find them where Chen tells you, though Settings is an app with a capital S and not a menu. But what he doesn’t tell you is which of those settings to change. There are literally hundreds. There are so many that I devoted a huge section of the “Personalize” chapter to this in the Windows 10 Field Guide. And in the Windows 11 Guide, it’s getting its own chapter. This is boring, dry stuff, and while you cannot do anything to stop Windows from tracking your usage completely, there are settings you can and should change...