Comprehensive list of privacy settings? Also: Death to telemetry.

Macboatmaster said:

The link does not actually go to an article it simply goes to ZDNet.
I am not honestly sure if you mean - you have assessed the article as by a jerk.
If so IMHO it is perhaps not best practice to describe something as written by a jerk - (in public forum - even if indeed that is your opinion)

ZDnet seems to be weird about linking; remove the "/xx" and it works. I am quite confident that Ed Bott is a jerk. Assuming his opinions haven't changed since 2016, anyway.

2. However to get to the actual problem - please explain further what you mean by - along story involving a lot of defective merchandise.

3. Also please be aware that many settings are changed to default when a new version of windows is installed from an update on your computer. However that does not account for it being the 6th time in a year

Dell sent me 4 defective laptops in 5 months and this has completely exceeded my frustration tolerance for setting up new hardware/software. I'm currently working with a new SSD in a refurbished Precision M4600; to the best of my knowledge all the hardware I'm dealing with is sound.

This is the second clean install of 1909 I've put on this SSD. The first time around it ran amok and installed Candy Crush; since there was no data to lose, I did another clean install.

6. It maybe best of you peruse these links to start with
Change Diagnostic Data Settings in Windows 10

If you scroll down through that tutorial (which is of course from this site - written by Brink Admin of the site) you will find links to many other tutorials on the same broad subject and I feel certain you will find your answers on those.

Sorry I wasn't clearer; the "Basic" setting is unacceptable and I can't find workarounds for 1909.

I've gone through all the built-in privacy settings I can find but since there is zero centralization, I'm sure I've missed some.

Tutman said:

I have tried many of the programs out there but I am impressed with using this one which was just updated and is free.

W10Privacy - Privacy made ​​easy - W10Privacy

It helps with privacy and disables telemetry and can disable/remove apps and breaks down info for each thing it disables.

Callender said:

I've used that for some time. (W10Privacy). I even used it to update windows (I'm using something else to update currently)

Using applications to stop telemetry

Comparison of Windows 10 Privacy tools - gHacks Tech News

If you go too far with some of these tools cumulative updates might fail.

That seems pretty useful! I'll look into it, thanks.