Windows 10 How to disable Connected User Experience

Just when you thought it was gone!

The Diagnostic Tracking Service Has been renamed to

(Connected User Experience Telemetry)

Microsoft finally went on record admitting that automatic spying within Windows 10 cannot be stopped. This sparked a lot of outrage and  it appeared Microsoft had done a sharp U-turn because the background service at the heart tracking (the ‘Diagnostics Tracking Service’ aka ‘DiagTrack’) appeared to have been removed. Critics celebrated and it was another well deserved pat on the back for Microsoft.

Well what Microsoft really did was just renamed DiagTrack. It is now called the ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry Service’ – which is both a) deliberately vague, and b) misleading (don’t ‘Connected User Experiences’ sound great).

If you check Services after the last major update Windows 10 Build 1511, you will notice that the Diagnostics Tracking Service is gone. Well not really, It seems that Microsoft has renamed the service to (Connected User Experiences and Telemetry instead) as shown below.

The Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service enables features that support in-application and connected user experiences. Additionally, this service manages the event driven collection and transmission of diagnostic and usage information (used to improve the experience and quality of the Windows Platform) when the diagnostics and usage privacy option settings are enabled under Feedback and Diagnostics. 

 To disable this service, do the following:

Windows-key or magnifying glass in lower left corner

 Type services.msc and hit enter

1. Locate the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service
2 Double-click on the service.
3. Select Stop
4. Change the Startup Type of the service to disabled.

Check back regularly, not only in Services but also the privacy settings that Windows 10 lists in the Settings application and the changes that you had to make in the Group Policy Editor or the Registry directly, as there is no telling if things will be reset or changed again in the future.