Stop Bing spying on your Windows activity
EVEN IF YOU DON’T USE MICROSOFT’S ONLINE SEARCH ENGINE, IT CAN STILL COLLECT A LOT OF INFORMATION ON YOU. HERE’S HOW TO LOCK IT DOWN.
SO, BING... WE know you don’t consciously use it. Nobody does. But even as you’re not using it, if you’re a Windows user, it’s still gathering data about you. Every time you use the search bar in Windows 10, you’re actually performing a Bing search (it’s where the web results come from). And in doing so, you’re providing Microsoft with a lot of information that you may not wish it had. So it’s time to turn that stuff off.
DELETING YOUR BING SEARCH HISTORY (AND STOPPING FURTHER RECORDING)
Our first port of call in de-Binging ourselves is on the Bing site itself. Like Google (see sidebar), Microsoft keeps a complete record of every search you’ve ever performed while logged into your account — information that it uses to provide targeted ads. But if you know how, Microsoft allows you to both delete your Bing search history and to stop it from linking further searches to your account. Follow these steps: * Head to bing.com and sign in with your Microsoft account if you’re not automatically signed in thanks to your Windows login. * Click on the gear icon on the top right, and select ‘Search history’. * Click on the down arrow next to ‘Change history settings’ to make them visible. * Change the ‘Search History’ switch to ‘off’. This will stop it from attaching future searches to your account. * Click ‘Clear All’ to remove its existing records. You can also remove individual items by clicking on the ‘x’ next to them.
Unfortunately, like Google, Microsoft is rather opaque when it comes to breaking down exactly how records are stored or might be recovered. We know that Microsoft (again, like Google) still links searches to IP addresses, regardless of account login, and it keeps those records for a period of time before anonymising them. We also don’t know if there are backups of those records or other ways Microsoft might still access them. So there’s more to do here.
USING A LOCAL ACCOUNT
One thing you can do to de-link yourself from Bing is to use a local account login instead of a Windows account login for Windows 10. If you use a Windows login, you might be automatically logged into Bing and searches
MICROSOFT KEEPS A COMPLETE RECORD OF EVERY SEARCH YOU’VE EVER PERFORMED WHILE LOGGED INTO YOUR ACCOUNT.
will be linked to your account. It’s easy enough to switch to a local account. Go to ‘Settings > Accounts’ in Windows 10 and click on the link to ‘Sign in with a local account instead’. You’ll be asked to confirm your current Microsoft account login, then you’ll be asked to provide a username and password for the local account that you’ll use to log into Windows.
Once you’ve done that, you won’t automatically be logged into Bing, and searches won’t be linked to your Bing account. As noted above, however, Microsoft can still record your IP address when you perform a search and link the search terms to that IP.
TURNING OFF WEB SEARCHES IN WINDOWS 10
Now for the big move: turning off web searches from the Windows 10 search bar altogether. The search bar will become a local search only, looking for matching documents and images on your system but not reaching out to Bing/Cortana.
Unfortunately, since the Anniversary Update of Windows 10 late last year, Microsoft has made it hard to turn it off (it really, really wants us to use Cortana). There’s no longer a settings option to switch off web searches. You have to edit the Windows registry. To do that, follow these steps: * Press ‘Win-R’ to bring up the run box and then type regedit into the run box. Confirm that you want to launch it. * Navigate through the registry key structure (it works folders in like File Explorer) to find:
* Right click on the Windows key and select ‘New > Key’. Call the new key: Windows Search
(Note that if you already have a Windows Search key, you can skip this step). * Right-click on Windows Search (the key you just created) and select ‘New > DWORD (32-bit) Value’. Name it: AllowCortana
* The new DWORD you’ve created should have a value of ‘0’, which is the default.
When you next reboot the PC, the search bar should have changed. It should now say ‘Windows Search’. It will no longer poll Bing/ Cortana for results.
If you ever want to enable Cortana again, just go back to regedit and either delete the DWORD by right clicking on it and selecting Delete, or double click on it and change the value to ‘1’.
That should be it — you’ll no longer send any information to Bing when you perform a Windows search, and Microsoft should remain blissfully unaware of what you’re searching for.