Entertainment
Privacy and malware woes
I just installed Windows 10 and hear that it has a lot of privacy issues. My friends tell me that the new Windows tracks you and is constantly sending information about you and your location to Microsoft. Is Windows 10 really a bad OS by Microsoft?Prajesh SJB Rana
I just installed Windows 10 and hear that it has a lot of privacy issues. My friends tell me that the new Windows tracks you and is constantly sending information about you and your location to Microsoft. Is Windows 10 really a bad OS by Microsoft?
—Kailash
Hi Kailash,
Windows 10 does have a lot of privacy issues but this is mainly because of some of the in-built features of Windows, like Cortana and Weather. It tracks your location and sends out some information to Windows servers to give you the best Windows experience possible. Windows 10 also uses up some of your internet bandwidth to send and receive updates in a Peer-to-Peer fashion. These decisions are uncalled for but fortunately, there are ways you can stop Windows from accessing your information. These settings aren’t easy to find because they’re scattered all across the Windows settings, so one alternative would be to use an application called ‘O&O ShutUp 10’ that brings all of your privacy settings under one Window. You can easily choose which setting you want on and turn everything else off from here and protect your sensitive information from big companies like Microsoft.
I had lent my computer to a friend for a few days but after I got it back, I realised that my computer was infected and many ads would pop-up on my desktop by itself. Google is not my default search engine and random pop-ups with ads keep coming up on my desktop. This is really annoying; how do I fix this?
—Sahil Dhungana
Hi Sahil,
There are a lot of intrusive malware programmes on the internet and if you’re not careful in your browsing habits, you will catch a few of these. The best way to get rid of all of you Ad-ware and malware problems would be to use Malwarebytes. It’s a free application that works like an Anti-Virus programme but focuses more on the Malware side of infections rather than viruses. Malwarebytes can be used alongside your Anti-Virus so to perform a complete system scan, both from Malwarebytes and an Anti-Virus of your choice. This should stop all of the misbehaving applications from your computer. If this doesn’t work, Google the name of the ad that you’re receiving and the online community, most probably, will already be working on a fix.
I am having this problem on my phone where I cannot open Play store. It keeps crashing every time I open it and because of this problem, I can’t install any new apps on my phone. What can I do to get my phone running like it used to again?
—Hritika Bansal
Hi Hritika,
Just like your computer, applications on your phone also misbehave from time to time. This happens because of age: accumulation of corrupted data or an update that might have rendered them useless. To fix this, find Apps within your Settings and navigate to Play Store and remove all of its Cache and Data. This will remove all the information that Play Store referenced from, turning it into a fresh copy of the app. If this doesn’t work, follow the same procedure for Google Play Services and Google Services Framework. This should remove all remnants of your account data. Re-enabling your account should refresh your Play Store.
If your technological devices are giving you a hard time or if you’re just curious about certain technological questions, please drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try to
answer your questions as best we can