Windows 10 is recording every single key you press on your computer. But is this a cause for concern? Learn more about Microsoft’s invasive technology and how to turn it off.
The early test versions of Windows 10 came with a piece of software that recorded every keystroke users made, as well as recording every request they made to Cortana (the voice activated personal assistant). It was thought that this piece of software, which is quite essential to the development stage of creating software, would be removed for the final product. However the creepy keylogger has not been removed and is still in place with the new version of Windows 10 that has been rolled out to millions of users worldwide.
Should you be concerned?
Recording data like this to help improve the accuracy of programs is becoming more common these days. This is because as technology and software become more and more complicated, it takes more effort to develop, bug test and release them onto the market. Approximately 10 years ago, all of this monitoring would have been performed by a dedicated team of software testers, which takes longer and costs a lot more. Microsoft would certainly still employ plenty of these testers but, with the internet, they now also have access to millions of testing and quality assurance testers – the consumers who are using the end product.
Whether or not you should be concerned comes down to your personal views on privacy.
This type of testing comes as a double-edged sword: you get a more polished and accurate final product at the expense of some privacy and/or peace of mind.
This double-edged sword is well represented by the choice to deactivate these settings in Windows 10, as doing so will deactivate the ability to dictate to your computer or use the voice activated assistant Cortana – features which rely on this data gathered.
How to turn it off
If you wish to deactivate the ‘service’, open up the Start menu then select Settings > Privacy > Speech, inking, and typing. From here, select ‘Get to know me’ to turn the services on, or select ‘Stop getting to know me’ to turn the services off.
Next, navigate back to Privacy and then select General and then turn ‘Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future’ off.
Read more about these Privacy settings at Microsoft.com
