Cease Home windows 11 from monitoring you: Reclaim privateness with this setting
By default, Home windows tracks the present location of your laptop. Relying in your {hardware} configuration, it evaluates location information from varied sensors in your gadget.
In case your PC has a GPS chip, its location could be precisely pinpointed. Within the uncommon case your PC has a SIM card, Home windows can triangulate its location utilizing the sign strengths of surrounding cellphone towers. Home windows can even test the names of Wi-Fi networks and the MAC addresses of close by entry factors and examine them to a global database to find out your system’s location. Your PC’s exterior IP tackle additionally gives a tough estimate of the place you’re.
If all these strategies fail, the working system falls again on the default location, which you’ll outline in Home windows Settings below Privateness & safety > Location > Default location:
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Don’t need Home windows and Microsoft to all the time know your final location? You possibly can flip off location monitoring. Then, neither your working system nor your put in apps can have entry to this information.
You may have two methods to do that.
Technique #1: Disable all location
You possibly can open Home windows Settings and navigate to Privateness & safety > Location, then toggle “Location providers” to Off. Doing this may stop Home windows and Microsoft Retailer apps from accessing location information.
Nonetheless, common desktop apps that you just obtain and set up from the net (i.e., not by way of the Microsoft Retailer) will nonetheless have the ability to decide your location independently with out the situation providers of Home windows (e.g., by evaluating close by obtainable Wi-Fi networks).
Technique #2: Disable location per app
You possibly can go away “Location providers” as On in Home windows Settings and allow the “Enable apps to entry your location” setting. This offers you the choice of deciding on an app-by-app foundation (that are listed within the setting) which of them can entry your location. Solely apps that had been put in by way of the Microsoft Retailer will seem on this record:
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The “Enable desktop apps to entry your location” setting controls whether or not desktop apps are allowed to make use of Home windows location providers. Under that, you may see which apps have most just lately carried out so.
The “Enable location override” setting is used to configure distant PCs which are linked to a server system utilizing the Distant Desktop function. If location providers are energetic on each computer systems, totally different places can be utilized for the server and the shopper:
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Lastly, below the “Latest exercise” setting, you may see which apps have just lately requested location information. In the event you set “Enable apps to entry your location” to Off, the “Notify when apps request location” setting seems on the backside of this window, permitting you to set whether or not Home windows ought to present a notification when an app makes an attempt to entry your location regardless of being prohibited from doing so. For safety causes, it’s really useful that you just go away this feature enabled.
Additional studying: All of the methods Home windows 11 collects information about you
This text initially appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
