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O&O ShutUp10++ – Free anti-spy tool for Windows 10, 11
- kukx 5y agoI wonder how long they will stay a "Gold Microsoft Partner" after this.
- temac 5y agoIirc this software exist since the release of windows 10, or maybe shortly after, so I guess they can stay "gold partner" forever. There is probably nothing in that program attempting to prevent them to release that kind of software, and MS is not Apple...
- ChoGGi 5y agoQuite awhile; I'd imagine. It's not a new tool.
- cricalix 5y agoIt's existed for several years now, so apparently at least several years.
- vetinari 5y agoProbably as long as they pay the golden partner fee (some 3800 eur/year).
- k4rli 5y agoThis is not a new tool. Has existed for years.
- WithinReason 5y agoO&O ShutUp10++ "Gold Microsoft Partner"
- nix23 5y agoGold competency: To attain a competency, partner must: Pass required exams and skill validation. Meet performance requirements. Pay the annual fee. $4,730
- christophilus 5y agoFedora is my preferred solution to this problem.
- marderfarker2 5y agohttps://ameliorated.info/ https://ameliorated.info/ works too
- sodality2 5y agoWith Windows Update removed, and no way to patch the system without a full reinstall, I would not use ameliorated.info in any important capacity. The complete unability to patch zero-days makes it very unattractive. They recommend to just take admin privs from the default user. If you're this serious about privacy, use Linux. If you NEED Windows for a program, use a VM and nothing else. If you NEED Windows as your daily-driver... then you shouldn't be risking your daily driver with this. The ONLY update you can apply is simply to just reinstall the operating system. I do appreciate this kind of stripped-down build procedure, but fail to see a good-enough use case. > Furthermore, as touched upon on the main page, 94% of critical Windows 10 vulnerabilities can be mitigated by revoking administrator privileges from the default user.
- judge2020 5y agoI'd just like to touch upon that 94% figure. It's from this source[0], which actually says: > Of these critical vulnerabilities, 94% were found to be mitigated by removing admin rights, up from 85% reported last year. It's a very fine line, but they're mitigated by not running stuff as admin, not just removing admin rights from the main user's account. With Ameliorated, people will still want to set up software as admin and install to Program Files, so if they take the advice from the FAQ, they might think they're fine just having a separate Admin account they use for UAC pop-ups to install the programs, while leaving their main as a standard user, which is indeed not going to solve any zero-days compared to users just being able to click 'yes' at UAC. 0: https://web.archive.org/web/20170310043706/https://www.avecto.com/news-and-events/news/94-of-critical-microsoft-vulnerabilities-mitigated-by-removing-admin-rights/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170310043706/https://www.avect...
- freebuju 5y agoThere's privatezilla too. If you consider Microsoft Defender (real time scanning & sample submissions) to be a spy tool, there are easy scripts available to permanently disable it, apparently recent Windows versions decided not to honor instructions disabling WD via registry or local group policy.
- spicybright 5y agoHow does this compare to TronScript? https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://github.com/bmrf/tron/blob/master/README.md#use https://github.com/bmrf/tron/blob/master/README.md#use
- benbristow 5y agoIt has a GUI
- xeromal 5y agoThe people who normally get spyware can't operate it.
- zwaps 5y agoLovely how on mobile, the reddit page is blocked: you need the app to access it.
- shmde 5y agohttps://i.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://i.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ Or https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ If you have trouble opening any reddit website on mobile change "www" with just the letter 'i' or 'old'. Once they don't allow these workarounds I am leaving reddit for good.
- lvass 5y agoOr https://libredd.it/r/TronScript/ https://libredd.it/r/TronScript/
- makeworld 5y agoOr more lightweight: https://teddit.net/r/TronScript https://teddit.net/r/TronScript
- spicybright 5y agoSeriously though. I have old reddit UI always on by default and forget to keep adding the "old" prefix when posting links, so apologies. I will leave reddit too if they remove the old version.
- marcodiego 5y agoFree as in beer. I wouldn't trust such an intrusive proprietary application on my machine from a vendor who doesn't need to care about its reputation.
- PicassoCTs 5y agoYou mean windows. Neither do i. Linux and VMs for the proprietary crap.
- nfriedly 5y agoAre you talking about this tool or Windows itself?
- marcodiego 5y agoActually it can be seen as both. You're replacing an abusive part with another with the same potential of abuse and you can't check of modify either of them.
- lvass 5y agoConfirmed abuse isn't the same as potential abuse.
- MauranKilom 5y agoHad the same thought, but upon investigation I don't see the incentive for the vendor to do something shady with it. They have a clear business model: Develop software for Windows that companies need. See their About page: https://www.oo-software.com/en/company https://www.oo-software.com/en/company Hence, it is clear what benefit they draw from releasing this software for free: Marketing. They are not in the business of brokering user data or mining bitcoin covertly. This tool isn't even installed, it's "run once". To me, that's about as trustworthy as it could be.
- marcodiego 5y ago> I don't see the incentive for the vendor to do something shady with it. Now. It is not a matter of having incentives. It is a matter that they can abuse and you simply have no way to check or control it.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoWhat O&O stand for?
- MauranKilom 5y ago> O&O Software GmbH was established in 1997 in Berlin, Germany by Oliver Falkenthal and Olaf Kehrer. The idea for the name “O&O” originated back in 1991 in the form of O&O Systemtechnik GbR, a company offering software specifically for students whilst the two founders were still studying. The name “O&O” came about spontaneously, as both founders first names begin with the letter “O”. In 1998, on the 10th February to be exact, O&O Defrag V1.0 was released, and the company that you see today was born. https://www.oo-software.com/en/company https://www.oo-software.com/en/company
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y ago> The name “O&O” came about spontaneously, as both founders first names begin with the letter “O”.
- rhexs 5y agoThe O&O team needs to post more pictures of Frida. Great tool, first download on every Windows install for years.
- dmos62 5y agoIt still amazes me how prevalent closed-source is on Windows. Even hacker-oriented, non-commercial things are closed-source.
- marcodiego 5y agoMe too. I think the "windows way" get into the mindset of its users.
- larodi 5y agoeverything is closed source, apart from the building blocks that comprise it. all clouds are closed source, most of the finance is closed source, MacOS is closed source, iOS - too. games - closed source, critical infrastructure - closed. okay...let's think. lets take for example postgresql. all right is opensource, we all love it. but how some company uses it - well this is not open source. only few businesses dare to be open source and typically open the non-critical parts. why so much pressure on MS? the idea that the world is embracing opensource is absolutely disconnected with the reality ever since the idea of open source came to existence. once again - even when the building are open source, the way they are tied together is usually not. and their usage in business systems - also not open source. period. there is fair chance, that whoever is reading this comment works is paid by a company that is using open source, but is not open sourcing.
- dmos62 5y agoYou've said a lot of things there. Could you sum up what you were arguing for?
- unstatusthequo 5y agoIs it similar to WPD? https://wpd.app/ https://wpd.app/
- TLLtchvL8KZ 5y agoI prefer https://privacy.sexy/ https://privacy.sexy/ - it generates a script that I can read/edit.
- chaz72 5y agoThis is great! https://github.com/undergroundwires/privacy.sexy/tree/master/src/application/collections https://github.com/undergroundwires/privacy.sexy/tree/master... looks like the raw data (yaml) for all these commands, including commands for macOS. With that, it’s at least plausible to audit these commands. I probably still won’t trust it on a critical system without a reputable audit though, I think I’d still prefer to either trust Microsoft or Apple or go run OpenBSD or Linux instead.
- dbmnt 5y agoThanks for sharing this. I tried 3 of the tools mentioned in this thread, in addition to having tried the O&O tool before, and https://privacy.sexy/ https://privacy.sexy/ resonated with me the most. It's the easiest to understand and also makes it much easier to make smaller incremental changes. Due to the "revert" toggles and heavy commenting, it's easy to roll back if anything breaks.
- GordonS 5y agoMicrosoft has faced so much criticism for their approach to telemetry - I don't really understand why they don't at least provide the option to opt out of all telemetry. If they left it enabled by default, but provided an option to opt-out, realistically only a small segment of users would do so, and most of them would likely be power users who are already taking other steps to try to prevent telemetry being collected and/or sent. So they'd take an insignificant hit to telemetry, but would gain a lot in goodwill. Any reason not to do this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dannyw 5y agoTelemetry isn't just a tool for product managers, but it's also a goldmine for national security agencies (more than just the NSA; Bing is unblocked in China for a reason). Anti-government meme made with GIMP at a specific timestamp? One search through the telemetry logs to find who exported a file at that exact moment. Any data collection is also government surveillance unless proven otherwise.
- keyle 5y agoThe simple fact that this even has to exist is hilarious.
- OrvalWintermute 5y agoI agree, but in part, it is how the Windows business model has changed. Older versions of Windows were the product, and the customer was the end user With New versions of consumer Windows, user data is the product, companies and advertisers are the customer, and end users are the data source. Commercial/Server versions of Windows not so much.
- tumblewit 5y agoIts funny how Windows and Android, the two most widely used operating systems, are a privacy nightmare and basically spyware at this point. Remember you can install tools and ROMs that are privacy focussed but also realise only a minor percentage of the users bother or are aware of these. I wonder what the sales pitch would be to sell privacy focussed products to the average Joe.
- tibbetts 5y agoI think Apple has (with varying success) been making that pitch for several years.
- ekianjo 5y agoThere's no privacy on Apple with a closed source ecosystem and all the iCloud connectivity syncing your every move.
- reayn 5y agoThe “closed source ecosystem” is not nearly as restrictive as people make it out to be and is something that you willingly sign up for when buying apple products. Not sure where you got the idea of “icloud syncing your every move” but literally every icloud implementation can be disabled at your discretion. I for one only have my reminders, wallet, calendar and drive synced. Even with that said, none of this implies a lack of privacy in any way.
- sentai77 5y agoI...o.o.o..o.
- m0guz 5y agoI don't trust these tools as any Windows Update can override the setting, or Microsoft can add a new "feature" and continue collecting telemetry data from that. For example; Disk Space Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) tool has been trying to connect to internet since last year's Windows 20H2 updates. I use Binisoft's Windows Firewall Control (wfc)[0], set level to Moderate and check logs regularly. There is also simplewall tool [1] which has predefined Windows list to block. [0] binisoft.org/wfc [1] https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall
- squarefoot 5y agoAgreed. I would use them to avoid ads and annoyances, but Windows, as a closed system, to me remains untrustworthy. I'd never ever use it for banking, communications or store personal data. But if I'm using music software or games, those utilities would make the experience less annoying.
- freeAgent 5y agoYou do need to remember to re-run this after any major “feature” update on Windows as Microsoft have a way of “forgetting” settings they don’t like or coming up with new ways to violate users’ privacy. This is definitely not foolproof, but it is one of many tools in the arsenal.
- wellan741 5y agoFor Windows 10 i préfère w10privacy, open source and plenty of options
- glenneroo 5y agoIt's definitely not open source. In their FAQ (which is only in German): > Wieso ist die Software nicht Open-Source? "Die Community" könnte mithelfen, die Software weiterzuentwickeln etc. … "Why is this software not Open-Source?"
- wellan741 5y agoOh yeah you're right! I must be more tired than i thought
- Wurstmann 5y agoI'd rather use group policies to disable telemetry etc.
- glenneroo 5y agoCongratulations professional Windows administrator. You are definitely not their target audience. And using group policies to disable the 100 different things this tool disables would be a ton of work... and I'm not even sure you can disable everything this tool does via group policies?
- GekkePrutser 5y ago> I'm not even sure you can disable everything this tool does via group policies? Apparently you cannot: > On May 2017 a security researcher named Mark Burnett demonstrated that disabling the default data collection toggles, found in Windows 10's settings app, are entirely useless. Furthermore he showed that even through using intensive group policy modifications, in a process heavily scrutinized and iterated upon over several days, he was not able to prevent Windows 10 from sending critical, personally identifiable information with certainty. From: https://wiki.ameliorated.info/doku.php?id=faq https://wiki.ameliorated.info/doku.php?id=faq In my last job I had contact with Microsoft and I approached them about datamining issues several times. I noticed they simply don't understand the concerns at all. Microsoft is becoming a highly 'data driven' company and every time I approached them about data gathering the response was along the lines of "Oh but we only use this for improving your performance / our products / whatever". They think it matters what the purpose is, they don't understand (or they don't want to!) that some people are against telemetry whatever the reason. Our own company is thinking along similar lines, with the exception of the German parts of the business, for whom we had to make some exceptions. I'm not German but I'm heavily aligned with their thinking on this.
- npteljes 5y agoVery nice that I turn off everything I want one time, but what about the next update that will randomly toggle some settings back? How about new settings for new features that are added? I think it's foolish to go use software like this, and expect some privacy to happen. Windows and its user are just not on the same page. What refreshed my hope in IT is the FOSS ecosystem. Where software is passively uncaring about me, the user, instead of working actively against me, which is the case in most of proprietary stuff nowadays.
- mcbishop 5y agoFor some of us (me), tools like this are the difference between no privacy oversight and some oversight. I aspire to be a privacy-aware person rocking Linux, but in the meantime...
- npteljes 5y agoI appreciate this aspect of the ShutUp10. By its existence and popularity, it spreads the message that there is such a thing as privacy, and that it's important.
- stinos 5y agowhat about the next update that will randomly toggle some settings back? Well, you run the tool again. It even tells you to do that after making changes.
- npteljes 5y agoI acted like this for a long time, and my trust remained broken.
- estaseuropano 5y agoGreat, this is the most constructive answer. Eternal useless pessimism instead of at least trying simple steps to solve the issue. Great credit to the authors of the tool. I used it many times when I was stuck with windows - and I'm grateful that they did all the work to make it.
- nazgulsenpai 5y ago> `Disable advertisements via Bluetooth` A screenshot of the application on the website shows this option. I don't understand; are advertisements via Bluetooth some kind of Windows functionality and how does it work?
- schleck8 5y agoWindows has a P2P update distribution feature so I would not be surprised
- lini 5y agoPerhaps they mean BT Beacon advertising? A small BT device can broadcast a notification to other BT devices nearby. It is used in some places for marketing.
- ThatCaio 5y agoAdvertising as in broadcasting, not as in marketing. Some Bluetooth LE devices use advertising as a way to constantly send out payloads without a direct receiver.
- Saris 5y agoBLE Beacons, they send your device ID a couple times a second as a broadcast.
- inside65 5y agoI've been using this since W10 came out. It works, but as others mention, some parts seem to stop working magically over time.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoIts not magic. Its windows update happening in the background I went from perfect system health , progressively into blue screen death, it got so bad that it happened every 2 hours after spiking my i7 to 100% cpu use. The decline happened within a month of a win10 update back in Aug/Sept. A couple of MS support tickets and a windows reinstall later, I finally gave up had to do a complete fresh PC install to fix. No issues since but i still get the occasional 100% cpu clock. Ive also turned on windows10 selective update download.
- rkagerer 5y agoI went from perfect system health, progressively ... it got so bad ... decline happened ... I finally gave up had to do a complete fresh PC install to fix Sounds like every Windows since 3.1. Instead of telemetry I wish they'd focus on making an OS that stays robust and performant indefinitely.
- gizmodo59 5y agoOff topic: Unfortunately I can only use windows 10/11 as AMD has no driver for RAID on Linux. https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-strx4/trx40 https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-strx4/trx... Using Asus hyper with 4 nvme drives on RAID. Anyone else in this situation?
- switch007 5y agoDoes it do a kind of raid that Linux software raid doesn’t support?
- nix23 5y agoYou don't need a raid-driver for linux: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup That AMD-"raid" is Software too..the same as linux. ~pure Hardware raid's never need drivers, because you tell the hardware (raid controller) to present the hard-disks as one (or whatever you want) device to the Operating-system. Some management tools are sometimes used (start raid scrubbing etc). BTW: Don't use Raid5 if you don't have a UPS (if you use software raid), or a battery buffered write-cache (hardware raid) aka write-hole: https://serverfault.com/questions/844791/write-hole-which-raid-levels-are-affected https://serverfault.com/questions/844791/write-hole-which-ra...
- gigel82 5y agoThere are a lot of open source scripts and tools on GitHub for accomplishing the same goal (in various state of being out-of-date, abandoned, etc.); I started collecting the ones that appear somewhat active here: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy I plan on going through them to weed out duplicates and duds. You shouldn't trust any of those blindly, but definitely read through the code; I'm particularly interested in coming up with a list of services and scheduled tasks that can be safely disabled without impacting any of the applications and services I'm using (I want Windows Update, OneDrive, Office, Defender, Store and store apps, MS Account login and Xbox Gaming for example, which most tools want to disable).
- stevenicr 5y agoI want similar, although I don't want oneDrive - the level of spying that's used for is unacceptable imho.
- cma 5y agoI noticed a media disk drive grinding away the other day, nothing made sense to be causing it. Turns out Chrome now scans all your drives and sends executables back to Google by default or something (software_reporter_tool.exe), even if you are a software developer in competition with them (practically all software developers since Google are essentially all-encompassing at this point). Is it intuitive to anyone that a third party web browser would be doing this by default?
- U8dcN7vx 5y agoThe gracious guess would be an attempt to detect malware by sending or fetching hashes to match.
- blibble 5y agoI have... noticed something similar to this too I have a single remaining windows box that is completely idle with a rust disk and it's started spinning up for no apparent reason how did you figure out it was Chrome? edit: going to try procmon with the filter set to the disk
- dartharva 5y agoA lot of recommendations here, but it's surprising no one has suggested Sophia Script yet: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows IMO the best and most holistic solution for debloating and de-botnetting Windows.
- Krasnol 5y agoProbably because of this: > Due to the fact that the script includes more than 150 functions with different arguments, you must read the entire Sophia.ps1 carefully and comment out/uncomment those functions that you do/do not want to be executed.
- dartharva 5y agoYou can have a GUI for that, it's also mentioned in the README: https://benchtweakgaming.com/2020/11/12/windows-10-debloat-tool/ https://benchtweakgaming.com/2020/11/12/windows-10-debloat-t...
- p1peridine 5y ago> Free antispy tool for Windows 10 and 11 > Gold Microsoft Partner Why would MS partner with a company that makes software to "bypass" their spyware? Why would O&O partner with a company that has spyware in the OS, then proudly display the Gold MS partner badge on the same page? Why is the source code obfuscated? Think about it.
- ro_bit 5y agoThe company makes more than just that tool, and particularly makes other W10 apps. The company itself is a gold partner, which, as nix23 posted - Gold competency: To attain a competency, partner must: Pass required exams and skill validation. Meet performance requirements. Pay the annual fee. $4,730 It seems less malevolent in that light
- neilv 5y agoDebian and Linux are here to help: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/ (The easiest Debian install experience might be to ignore the scary official documentation, simply burn that hybrid installer image raw to a USB stick or DVD+R, boot it on your target PC, and have an Ethernet cable handy until you boot your installed pristine Debian and then can enable install of "non-free" firmware. If you need help, I'd use Web search.)
- Shadonototra 5y agoBeautiful app, lightweight, and great UX, straight to the point An example to follow
- tomc1985 5y agoSounds like this does the same thing as Blackbird
- RachelF 5y agoSpybot anti-beacon is also good. It also stops MS Office from "phoning home"
- mmgutz 5y agoThe UI is confusing (double negatives). Does Red "Disable Inventory Collector" mean that is enabled? Red, to me, usually means off on a toggle switch. It's explained in the help.
- zalebz 5y agoagreed. I've been using this and similar tools for several years and the cognitive load for every single setting is infuriating. especially given the very obvious underlying reason everyone is launching this tool.
- userbinator 5y agoIf only they would just use normal checkboxes, available on Windows since the 80s, instead of these stupid ambiguous slider-switches, they would be perfectly clear with the additional advantage that you can use them while colourblind. Check to disable, uncheck to enable. It's the result of another idiotic attempt at UI "modernity". (Then again, the double negatives in Windows' own Group Policy Editor, where some if not all of this stuff is also configurable, are just as confusing sometimes; but there, at least the UI controls themselves don't add any more ambiguity.)
- rkagerer 5y agoAgreed, UI's may look "sexier" these days but they're less usable.
- soylentnewsorg 5y agohere are some checkboxes in winaero inder the "disable windows ads" title: [x] stop unwanted apps windows auto-installs [x] start menu suggestions [x] ads in explorer notice how the first checkbox has "stop" and the second and third don't? to me, if "ads in explorer" is checked, it means you have ads in explorer. not to the winaero guys though. if "ads" are checked, no ads. sometimes. sometimes if "stop ads" is checked, no ads. my favorite is android, where you have a toggle, and depending on how it's set, the description of the toggle changes. so you have the toggle "off" and it says "disable this feature."
- 5y ago
- kaffeeringe 5y agoNowadays you need an operation system and a system to keep it at bay. Weird. Linux is so much easier.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoI'm thinking about buying a Windows box just so I can run Flight Sim 2020. I was hesitating because of all the malware, telemetry, and advertising that is Windows today. This is helpful. Sure wish I could run MSFS 2020 in Linux. (I have X-Plane for Linux but the whole-earth scenery of MSFS 2020 is pretty compelling.)
- tipoftheiceberg 5y agoNextDNS offers “ Native Tracking Protection “ Which is currently in BETA. … “Block wide spectrum trackers — often operating at the operating system level — that track your activity on a device. This could include all the websites you visit, everything you type or your location at all times.”
- SiliconVallet 5y agoAlso helpful: https://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/4378-windows-10-decrapifier-18xx-19xx-2xxx https://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/4378-windows-1...