[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Windows Defender considers W10Privacy to be...
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       Tell HN: Windows Defender considers W10Privacy to be malware
        
       I tried installing W10Privacy earlier this week from
       https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/ and I found Windows
       Defender coming up with a notification saying that it is malware
       and it then immediately deleting the executable.
        
       Author : tareqak
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2023-01-20 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
       | Someone1234 wrote:
       | You don't even indicate which download link you used, it was
       | "earlier this week" so nobody can try and reproduce it, and you
       | don't even say what it was detected as? Plus you linked to a site
       | that has a whole article talking about them getting regularly
       | flagged for false-positives due to the sensitive settings they're
       | changing within Windows (see "Virus?" link).
       | 
       | Like what is it you expect to happen here? Plus why are you using
       | this sketchy looking tool instead of one of the many scripts
       | available[0] or Open Source tools[1] that do the same thing while
       | making the source code readily readable?
       | 
       | I don't personally endorse any of this stuff, in fact I recommend
       | against it. A lot of these scripts disable or remove security
       | features and break functionality that has nothing to do with
       | privacy. Plus users that use this stuff are self-selecting as the
       | exact kind of users without the technical knowledge to know what
       | they're doing, why, or how to undo it (or else they'd just make
       | the changes "by hand"). Breaking Windows Update is a common
       | symptom of this stuff (e.g. install -> rollback -> install ->
       | rollback, loop), and they won't know how to fix it then just
       | blame Microsoft.
       | 
       | I guess my point is: You try to get sketchy things, from sketchy
       | sites, and it gets flagged thusly, it is working as intended. If
       | you're here to complain that Microsoft pointed your gun away from
       | your own foot, well too bad? Better luck next time, guess?
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-
       | privacy#po...
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-
       | privacy#os...
        
         | tareqak wrote:
         | Sorry, I used this download link
         | https://www.w10privacy.de/app/download/12302828636/W10Privac...
         | . I assumed that my use of the URL
         | https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/ would have implied that
         | I downloaded it from there, but it looks like there are other
         | hosts for this program elsewhere on the Internet.
         | 
         | The last time I used this tool successfully without issues was
         | around the end of last year (November-December 2022) in Windows
         | 11 without any complaints from Windows Defender.
         | 
         | I thought I came across W10Privacy for the first time from an
         | HN post years ago before I ever saw any of these scripts and
         | open source tools even being mentioned on HN:
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
         | .
         | 
         | Thank you for the links `Someone1234 : I will try to learn and
         | use these instead later.
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-20 23:02 UTC)