I was messing around with Windows 10 in a VM, just seeing what it took to truly make it secure.

I know what I am doing, and to completely prevent it from leaking gigabytes of data to Microsoft and others, it took me about three hours. Three hours of hacking and smacking the system into submission.

But now I have a working Windows 10 system where not a single packet gets out that I don’t wish to do so.

The sad thing is that almost no one seems to care that their data is being spewed hither and yon. I think we are in the midst of another huge cultural shift (that I want no part of) — one where people go from being concerned with maintaining some semblance of privacy to where surveillance is the default, and expected, and even desired.

Of course then people will insist that it was never any other way.

But some of us will remember.

Update: Just found this that does most of what I did, and a little more in some areas. But that is a great start to get you 70% of the way to my beating Windows 10 down.

I’ve done some really quite cool networking things, though, and I’ll write those up later. They involve creative use of proxies, fake default routes and of course some firewall fun. With an added sprinkling of DNS trickery.