this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
13 points (84.2% liked)

Privacy

39154 readers
1307 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Could Windows and installed apps upload all my personal files?

Dear all

I have deleted Onedrive and disabled File system access in Privacy.

  1. I would like to know, which other ways that my personal files could be uploaded in a non-malicious non-hacker way?
  2. Just by using Windows, Microsoft could upload all my personal files to themselves if they would?
  3. Does every installed App / software have full access to my whole drive? How can I found out, how much access it has?

Thank you for your interest and reply

Best regards


@Rikudou_Sage@lemmy.world

Yes, every application has access to everything. The only exception are those weird apps that use the universal framework or whatever that thing is called, those need to ask for permissions. But most of the apps on your PC have full access to everything.

And Windows does collect and upload a lot of personal information and they could easily upload everything on your system. The same of course applies for the apps as well, they have access to everything except privileged folders (those usually don’t contain your personal data, but system files).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Kernel-Level AntiCheat has joined the chat

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Well, that is fair. Those anti-cheats are in user-land on not-windows. Don't think I have given admin permissions to any game, including those with Easy Anti-Cheat, etc.

I'm still surprised Microsoft allows those to exist. Particularly for something as mundane as games.