Control and Manage Your Windows 8 Privacy Settings

4 Parts:

Introduction

Steps

Video: Control and Manage Your Windows 8 Privacy Settings

Comments

Contents

1 Introduction
2 Steps
3 Video: Control and Manage Your Windows 8 Privacy Settings
4 Comments

You're watching VisiHow and today we're going to show you how to set up the security settings on your Windows 8 install.

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1
To get started, the first thing we're going to do is press the Windows key
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That's the key next to your space bar that looks like a little Windows icon.

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2
Press that key, that opens up our window
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That's the key that opens up your Start screen with all the tiles.

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3
Now we're going to scroll down to Settings
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Click on PC Settings. PC Settings is going to open up an area for us, and as we discussed earlier, we've changed our lock screen and our account picture. We've not done a picture password, we'll get to that in a little bit.
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4
For now, what we're going to do is go down to our privacy settings
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Click on Privacy.

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5
That is going to open up a series of privacy options for us, where we have General, Location, Webcam, Microphone, and Other Devices
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6
Let's start with General
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We'll go over each of these quickly so that you can easily understand them.

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7
"Let apps access my name, picture, and other account information"
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This means that any information you put on the account can be accessed by apps. Apps includes anything that you install or download from the Windows application store, or any other type of application you install. This can be set to on or off. I have it set to on, however if you're particularly concerned about your personal information, you may want to keep it off.
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8
"Let apps use my advertising ID for experiences across apps"
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Now, your advertising ID is basically a little bit about you that shows what you like, what you're doing, what's happening, and these are the experiences that will be shared across apps. You may not want to have this on. Again, I run some tests on advertising things from time to time, so it's interesting for me to keep it on and see what I get shown.

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9
"Turn on smart-screen filter to check web content (URLs) that Windows Store apps use"
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This is a good thing to turn on, because sometimes you may have an app that was hacked or is just a dishonest app, or it really shouldn't have gotten through the Windows Store, and they may have bad links in there. So having this filter on can help protect you from some of that.
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10
"Show suggestions based on what I type and write on this PC"
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This is another thing - if you, for example, are married and you're searching for "discount roses," you may not want your wife to notice that you're searching for discount roses. Likewise for ladies, if you're searching for something, you may want to buy something for your husband - cologne or perfume - again, you might not want him to see that you've searched for that.
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11
Finally, "Let websites provide locally relevant content by accessing my language list"
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In this case, if you have several languages, you may want your Russian results, or your Spanish results in that language.
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12
You can also manage your "Microsoft advertising and other personalization info," and your Privacy statement
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13
If you click on this, it opens up a separate browser window, where you can see your personalized ads, etc for Microsoft
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As I mentioned earlier, this isn't something that I'm terribly concerned with, so we're going to ahead and close that.
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14
Do know that when you have a split window like this - you see I have PC Settings on the left and the Explorer on the right, you can just close that
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Alternatively you can press the Windows key and an arrow key, and switch them around. You can also make them larger or smaller, depending on what you'd like to do. Press the Windows button and press some keys to experiment with it and see what you like.
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15
Now we're going to select Location
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16
These are the applications which can use my current location
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Weather is usually a good one to have on. Travel is nice, there might be some hotel deals. News is also good. Maps is good. Health and Fitness, and Money - not so much unless you're into trading, or you're planning on a hike, but again weather is probably more relevant than actual health and fitness there.
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17
Webcam - this one..
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personally I don't like anyone to turn my webcam on other than me. I don't let anything use my webcam. Some people like to have the webcam able to be turned on by Skype. The problem with this is you may be sitting there and you might get a Skype call, and your webcam turns on by itself. And maybe you just got out of bed, maybe you just look horrible.. it's just, you don't want someone staring you in the face. Sometimes it can be a complete stranger. I have let apps use my webcam turned on because there are times when I do use my webcam and I may want to allow a program or an application to use that temporarily, and it's just inconvenient for me to run in and out of here every time I need to update and change that, when I can change it in the settings of something I installed, and then uninstall it later.
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18
Microphone is another big one
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Let these apps use my microphone - Skype, Sound Recorder. Again, I use other programs, so Sound Recorder isn't something that I'm often using. Skype works just fine for me with this set to off because I can use Skype itself to control it when I'm logged in. The difference is, Skype cannot contact me and use it without my explicit permission.
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19
Other Devices - this is where any other devices you may connect that have access, or the ability to be controlled through apps, can be granted any types of privacy permissions
.
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20
So that's everything for Privacy
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Thanks for watching VisiHow, and we look forward to your questions and comments. Let us know if you need anything else. Thanks very much, have a great day!
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