privacy

Microsoft’s Copilot has quietly begun ingesting usage signals from other Microsoft products — including Edge, Bing, and MSN — and the setting that permits this cross‑product data flow appears to be enabled by default for many users, creating a privacy decision point that every Windows user...

Microsoft’s Copilot may feel like a pop‑up co‑worker: sometimes helpful, sometimes intrusive, and for many users it raises questions about control, privacy, and billing. If you want Copilot out of your Microsoft 365 apps—or off for your whole organization—there are now documented, supported ways...

Microsoft’s most recent Edge experiment — automatically opening the Copilot side pane when you click links from Outlook — is a small UI change with outsized implications for privacy, user control, and how Microsoft positions AI inside everyday workflows. The feature is being tested on the Edge...

Paul Thurrott has quietly begun publishing chapter previews of a compact, pragmatic new guide called De‑Enshittify Windows 11, and says the full book is available now on Leanpub (PDF/EPUB) for a minimum price of $4.99 with Thurrott Premium members receiving a free copy when the work is...

Discord's decision to push its global age‑verification rollout into the second half of 2026 — and to pause while it retools vendor relationships and adds lower‑friction verification options — is a rare and revealing moment for a platform that has tried for years to square user privacy, community...

Firefox’s latest desktop update leans into a rare — and deliberate — user-first stance on artificial intelligence while polishing the browser’s accessibility, backup, and drag‑and‑drop workflows, plus closing out legacy Windows support with a final security nod to older systems. Background /...

The mainstream AI assistants sweeping into everyday workflows are now being built and operated by companies whose core businesses are, in many cases, advertising and attention monetization — and that structural fact reshapes every privacy, legal, and architectural decision engineers and IT...

Apple’s quiet retreat from the infrastructure arms race is no accident — it’s a deliberate reallocation of capital, partnerships and product focus that could either protect the company from a brutal depreciation cycle or leave it vulnerable if the AI era rewards those who own the stack...

The seven free apps How‑To Geek lists as “must‑haves” for a fresh Windows install are a solid, pragmatic starting kit — but each choice deserves context, caveats, and practical alternatives before you click Install. The original shortlist (Microsoft PowerToys, Everything, LocalSend, LibreOffice...

People often treat ChatGPT and its peers like private assistants — but when you type, upload, or speak sensitive material into a chatbot, you may be handing away control of that information in ways most users don’t expect. The short list published by mainstream outlets — identity documents...

Microsoft is quietly putting a one‑click internet speed check where most Windows users already look for connectivity, adding a “Perform speed test” / “Test internet speed” control to the Taskbar network menu and Wi‑Fi quick settings in recent Windows 11 preview builds. Background Windows has...

Microsoft’s mobile Microsoft 365 Copilot update that swaps the old document viewer for an AI‑first, chat‑centred workflow is now colliding with real world expectations — and, according to multiple user reports and one recent Windows Latest investigation, that collision can result in local files...

The living-room television is supposed to be simple: a large, passive window for moving pictures and sound. Increasingly, it isn't. Over the last year that simple promise has been compromised by a steady industry shift — from displays that show content to platforms that serve content, ads, data...

Paul Thurrott’s short chapter on “De‑Enshittify an Existing Install of Windows 11” is a focused, practical walkthrough that hands users a low‑risk, high‑reward pathway for reclaiming control of an existing Windows 11 installation without wiping the machine. The chapter centers on one...

Microsoft’s latest pushes to weave Copilot into the innermost seams of Windows 11 — now extending deep into File Explorer with right‑click AI actions for summaries, previews and inline edits — have crystallized a familiar debate: is this useful progress or feature creep that breaks the...

The pendulum that moved much personal and enterprise IT into public clouds is swinging back — not because clouds have failed, but because free, self-hosted Linux server platforms are finally mature enough to make on-premises privacy and control practical for households, small teams, and even...

If you’re ready to stop surrendering your documents, calendars, and chat history to distant data centers and start running those services where you control the power button, the network, and the backups, five modern Linux-based server projects give you that option today — and they’re all usable...

Linux still beats Windows 11 in a handful of quietly significant ways — not because it has prettier UI animations or a bigger marketing budget, but because of fundamentals: cost, hardware fit, user control, the absence of baked‑in AI agents, and a privacy model that treats telemetry as optional...

Microsoft’s recent AI-first push for Windows 11 has reopened a debate many thought settled: can an operating system that records and interprets your screen activity ever be trusted with sensitive data? Critics argue the answer is no — and recent reporting, expert tests, and Microsoft’s own...

If you want to leave the public cloud, run key services at home, and regain control of your data without paying subscription fees, you no longer have to assemble a server from scratch and become a full-time sysadmin. A new generation of ready-to-run Linux server projects packages privacy‑first...