Emergency Boot Kit: Enable Privacy in Already Installed Windows 10/11

With Emergency Boot Kit, you can apply two types of privacy improvements to already installed Windows 10/11 (enabled independently of each other):

1) Privacy tweaks in Windows Registry. These are officially documented by Microsoft and by vendors of third party tools. These registry options are supposed to make Windows 10/11 phone home less. In our traffic recording experiments, they reduced Windows 10/11 background connections, though they didn’t eliminate such connections entirely.

2) Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy. This lightweight service can block the following types of unwanted Windows 10/11 network activity, based on your preferences:

• Windows builtins: Telemetry, Windows Update, MS Defender and SmartScreen, Cloud Logon & MDM Enrollment, Windows Push Notifications, Windows Store, Parental Control and MS Licensing.
• Separate products: Cortana and Speech API, XBox, Zune and Groove, Cloud Graphics Apps, MS Edge, MS Wallet, Skype, OneDrive, MS Office 365.
• Miscellaneous: Remote Access / Remote Help, MS Cloud Search, MS Maps and Location Services, MS News, Weather and Ads.

If you tick all checkboxes within this option, this will make Windows 10/11 stop phoning home completely. That is, you can make Windows 10/11 completely quiet on the Internet — if you want to. This was confirmed in our traffic recording experiments.

Using Windows 10/11 Privacy Enablement Center

1) Boot Emergency Boot Kit, choose "Privacy enablement center" in main menu.

2) Just after starting the wizard you should see message like one shown on the screenshot. It will automatically disappear after a few seconds.

3) If your PC has multiple Windows 10/11 installations, then you should see a table, containing a list of all Windows installations. Please select Windows installation you are going to change enable privacy for, using ↑ (UP) and ↓ (DOWN) keys, and click Next> button. If there is only one Windows 10/11 installation on your PC, then this wizard page is not displayed (wizard automatically skips it to the next step).

4) On this page, you can apply privacy tweaks (which are politely asking Windows 10/11 to phone home less) to the Windows Registry. Also, here you can install Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy. This lightweight service is able block certain types of Windows 10/11 network activity, based on your preferences. By default, all types of potentially unwanted Windows 10/11 network activity are blocked.

5) After successful installation, a message like this will be displayed:

Tweaking Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy options from Windows

If you later change your mind about what types of Windows Internet activity should be blocked, e.g. you decide to install Skype, then you can update these settings through Control Panel using "Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy" applet:

Changing Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy settings from outside of Windows

Please run EmBootKit Privacy Enablement Center again after the installation of Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy. A choice between two options will be presented:

Click "Change Settings >" button to continue. This page looks similar to Control Panel Applet, but fully functional in offline mode. In particular, you can un-tick Cloud Logon & MDM Enrollment option if you need to login to your Windows 11 online account.

After successful change of settings, a message like this will be displayed.

Uninstallation of Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy

If you later decide that you no longer need Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy, you can reach uninstallation page via the maintenance page.

Uninstallation options page looks like this. Tick checkboxes as needed and click Next> button to continue.

After the uninstallation, message like this will be displayed.

To exit EmBootKit Windows 10/11 Privacy Enablement Center, press Enter or click the Finish button.