Edit* Sorry guys and girls, but this loophole has now closed. However, the article is staying up as it has lots of great content on how to stop Microsoft shoving crapware on you and how to remove all their snooping and terrible adverts.
With the release of Windows 10 came a lot of press about the free upgrade. Microsoft allowed you to upgrade to Windows 10 free, with no catch. But as we all know, that ended in July. Except it didn’t. It’s still available. It’s just that Microsoft is being much quieter about it now.
So I’m going to take you through how to get it. Then I’m going to cover how to turn all the tracking nonsense off. Windows 10 is a good operating system and a massive upgrade on Windows 8. The only problem it has is the privacy concerns. And these can be navigated.
Firstly, let me show you how to grab your Windows 10 free upgrade. All you have to do is go to the assistive technology page on the Microsoft site (picture shown below).
Don’t worry about the fact it states you have to be an assistive technology user to upgrade. You don’t. And even if you did, it could be as simple as using the magnifying glass tool.
Once you are on that page, click upgrade now and follow the prompts to grab your free upgrade.
Once you have upgraded and are ready to install, follow the instructions below to turn off a lot of the tracking crap Microsoft wants you to have. During the install you will be greeted by this screen below:
Click where it say’s customize settings. We DON’T want the express settings as that leaves on all the tracking and location services. On the next two screens (pictured below), slide everything to off. This will remove some of the tracking and also mean your default browser, video player etc don’t change to the ones Microsoft recommends.
Last thing we need to do to get a good clean install is use win10wizard from Digital Care. once your Windows 10 install is complete, go grab your copy of win10wizard from their website and install it. Not only is this handy app able to disable all of Microsoft’s snooping within the privacy and location services, it can also tweak the security settings, check device and application compatibility and change the theme settings.
To tweak your Windows 10 installation, go into Privacy and tick everything you would like to disable. Then click done. Do the same within location services. You’re done! Congratulations, you now have a no snooping copy of Windows 10 free!
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