Updated: September 11, 2021
The telemetry feature in Windows is enabled by default and there is no option to completely turn it off or disable it by default. The telemetry feature collects users activity and then sends it to Microsoft. The telemetry disables feature is only available for Windows 10 Enterprise edition of users. Now, what if you are a Windows 10 Pro or Home user? You can still disable this feature by tweaking your registry editor.
Even though, the telemetry feature in Windows 10 is enabled by default, you can still restrict what kind of data will be sent to Microsoft. If you can go to Settings > Privacy > Feedback and Diagnostics, you can find an option to select between Basic, Enhanced, and Full (Recommended) as diagnostic and usage data sent to Microsoft from your device.
Settings your Diagnostic and usage data to Basic will only send data that is related to an operation of Windows. This would allow Microsoft to know what is installed on your device, functioning of Windows, capabilities of your device.
The other two options are Enhanced and Full. Enhanced – With this you will be sending everything under Basic settings plus information about how you use Windows, which feature you use the most, the most frequently used apps by the users, diagnostic information including memory state of your device at the time of an app crash etc.
Full – In addition to Basic + Enhanced, this option would enable advanced diagnostic features. The data sent to Microsoft could include, system files, memory snapshots, part of the document you were working on when the app crashed etc. However, Microsoft says that, if the documents include any personal information they will not use that info to identify, contact or target advertising. Even though Microsoft recommends this option, enable this only if you are okay with the kind of data it collects.
Now if you want to completely turn off or disable send your device data to Microsoft feature, here is how you can do it by tweaking the registry. This will disable telemetry and data collection in Windows 10 Pro and Home.
Use Registry Editor to Disable Telemetry and Data collection
1. Begin with opening the Registry Editor.
2. From the Registry Editor window go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection
3. Here you need to make a new 32-bit DWORD called AllowTelemetry and set it to 0.
4. Close the Registry editor and go back to Start Menu. Right-click the File Explorer and select Manage from the context menu.
5. Now go to Services and Applications > Services, and from the services, list disables “Diagnostics tracking service” and “dmwappushsvc”.
6. To disable them, double-click on the mentioned services, from Startup type select Disabled from the drop-down menu.
Alternatively, you disable these services using the Powershell. Run PowerShell as administrator, and enter the following commands:
Get-Service DiagTrack | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled Get-Service dmwappushservice | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled
Once done, restart your Windows 10 PC to save the changes. That’s it. You have successfully disabled send your device to data to Microsoft in Windows 10.
Follow these steps and do let us know if you have any better alternative to do the same.
