Hi yar2190

 

Welcome to the Community Forums.

 

What you are asking about is quite a large topic, and there will be numerous answers to it. From my perspective I would say that the first thing to do is to make sure that you have a good anti malware application installed, and if you are running WSA then you have one of the best.

 

Next, you can do the following:



1. Check what is starting automatically on your system; you are looking for anything, other than Microsoft-related, that looks suspicious/is unknown to you

 

2. Check the list of applications installed; again for anything that looks suspicious, you do not believe you have installed, etc.

 

3. If you know how you can check the outbound connections your computer is making/which ports to see what is open; again, are there any that are unexpectedly so.

 

4. In terms of ypur browsing you should install extensions dedicated to proventing tracking; there are a number available depending on which browser(s) you use, etc.

 

5. To stop excessive information to Microsoft you should review your setting and turn off what you feel is not essential that they find out about you.

 

Above are just some general pointers, as each is almost a topic in its own right...but just note that when 'tweaking' in this way it is easy to 'break' something so before making any major changes in relation to them, especially 1., 2. or 5. please make sure that you as a minimum create a Restore Point first and better still either back up your data/image your hard disk as a precaution.

 

Hope that helps?

 

Regards, Baldrick

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