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(Continued from page 3) just an annoyance built into Windows 10. She mostly
gives users annoying pop-ups, she is constantly gath-
ready fast enough to satisfy our present needs – so ering data, and does little more than try to force us
this should not be a current issue.
into Bing searches. In this day of actually useful voice
Meanwhile, scammers are continuing to seize every assistants, such as Google or Alexa, Cortana seems
opportunity to steal information and money from eve- oddly dumb. I have learned to disable Cortana during
rybody. Garmin just got hit with a ransomware attack the installation of Windows but if you have not had
that immobilized a big portion of their services to fit- this opportunity shutting her off is easy. Go to Cortana
ness buffs, pilots and others – although my Garmin under Settings and toggle all sliders off.
golf rangefinder continued to work just fine. The bad
guys supposedly demanded $10 million as ransom Go back to the main Settings window and under Pri-
for the encryption key. Garmin has been very close- vacy Settings you can turn off the sliders for speech
mouthed about the details, so we do not know wheth- and inking and typing to reduce the amount of data
er they paid the ransom or not. Meanwhile, their ser- Cortana gathers on your computer usage. You can
vices are slowly coming back online – and it appears also block Cortana from accessing your microphone
they are almost back to normal. It will be interesting and camera on the privacy page. This is also a good
to learn the full story (and to verify that the personal time to review all your privacy settings to make sure
data stored on their servers by their fitness customers you are putting as little information as possible out
is still available to them). there.
There have also been numerous reports of scams Disable Notifications
associated with COVID-19 – offering fake cures or
preventative potions, offering “help” in receiving
$1,200 government checks, filing bogus state unem-
ployment claims and so on. As always, be wary of
any unsolicited phone calls or emails!
And, in and around all the turmoil and conflicting in-
formation, stay safe and carry on….
Many users are unaware of why they are constantly
Best,
getting popups from the Notifications icon on the
Phil lower right-hand corner of your Taskbar. These
popups use system resources and can be a pain
when they interfere with your computer use. Go to
(Continued from page 1) Settings, System, Notifications, and actions and tog-
gle off Notifications. Like magic, they will no longer
box shown). Under Advanced Settings you can appear! You will still have many web pages offering
make sure auto-updates is checked. notifications, but you can just say “NO!” by hitting
“Block” or “Don’t Allow”.
Disable Cortana
Disable Startup Apps
Go to your Task Manager Startup tab and disable
any programs you do not need running immediately
every time you go into your operating system. Mi-
crosoft OneDrive and speech recognition ore a cou-
ple of major resource hogs. Toggle off anything you
do not need running all the time. Remember, you
are not removing any programs and you are not pre-
venting them from firing up when you need them.
She needs to just shut up. For most users, Cortana is (Continued on page 5)
July/August 2020 4
