3 ms·
I have to use Windows once in a while (circumstances). Best way to forget about the existence of spyware (aka telemetry) that I found is to not connect a Windo
by jakobdabo 5y ago
I have to use Windows once in a while (circumstances).
Best way to forget about the existence of spyware (aka telemetry) that I found is to not connect a Windows box directly to internet. I configured my router to give it a gateway and DNS IPs which don't exist in the network. Eat that, Microsoft. And I can still connect to internet by manually setting a SOCKSv5a proxy to the router in Firefox and other software that I trust (make sure there is no automatic proxy discovery mechanism in the router).
- Jenk 5y agoSince the 21H1 update you might start noticing connection drops since a new wlan autoconfig feature has been added: if windows can't ping home reliably, it will restart your nic. Yep.
- dataflow 5y agoDamn, that's hostility on another level. Do you have a link to more reading on this?
- Jenk 5y agoSorry for the delay.. I actually couldn't find any official docs on this feature but this thread covers the bases: https://www.tenforums.com/network-sharing/178379-disable-wlan-autoconfig-wifi-auto-recovery-function.html https://www.tenforums.com/network-sharing/178379-disable-wla... And it appears it may be part of 20h2, not 21h1 update.
- dataflow 5y agoThanks for the link! I'm searching for 'reboot' and 'restart' but I don't see anything mentioned about rebooting -- only a restart of the network service. Are you sure it actually reboots the PC?
- mdiesel 5y agoLink please? I run Windows for work, which includes connecting to industrial networks with no Internet connectivity. If this happens, it's going to be a nightmare.
- Jenk 5y agoSorry for the delay.. I actually couldn't find any official docs on this feature but this thread covers the bases: https://www.tenforums.com/network-sharing/178379-disable-wlan-autoconfig-wifi-auto-recovery-function.html https://www.tenforums.com/network-sharing/178379-disable-wla... And it appears it may be part of 20h2, not 21h1 update.
- sydney6 5y agoRedHat's NetworkManager already does something pretty similar [1]. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager#Checking_connectivity https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NetworkManager#Checking_con...
- keewee7 5y agoI don't think the reason for this is malicious. Back in 2012-2018 many Windows laptops belonging to friends and relatives had frequent WiFi issues. The only reliable way to fix the issue was to restart the NIC.
- qwertox 5y agoWow! Thank you for that tip. Block the machine's internet access with a firewall but connect the browsers over a SOCKS proxy. I mean, I do have a couple of containers up and running on a Raspberry Pi offering nothing but intranet SSH services while the containers are connected via OpenVPN to differnt VPN servers, so that I can use different browsers which connect via SOCKS each to one container in order to have one browser per country on one machine. It never occurred to me that I can use this same technique (but without OpenVPN) in order to disallow that machine to connect to the internet but still have a working browser...
- mycall 5y agoMake sure to manually download the Windows patches every Tuesday, since Windows Update won't work by itself.