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Old June 22nd 18, 05:03 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul[_32_]
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Default How do I turn off Cortana's connection to Bing on the net?

Arlen Holder wrote:
On Thu, 21 Jun 2018 06:46:39 -0400, Paul wrote:

https://www.howtogeek.com/226638/mak...stead-of-bing/


Hi Paul,
The original quest was to kill *all* the Internet searches from Cortana.
If I wanted to search, I'd search using a web browser of my choice.

I guess you're indicating that we *can* use a web browser of our choice,
where I'd choose Epic or Opera since they're already enabled with so-called
VPN (really a glorified proxy) which at least obfuscates the IP address,
and, where Epic uses an epic-specific search and where Opera can be told to
use DuckDuckGo as opposed to Google (which is as bad as Bing on privacy).

So if I ran that sequence, it would be to make Cortana go to Opera and
DuckDuckGo, or to Epic and Epicsearch if Opera didn't work out.

1) Download EdgeDeflector from here
https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector/releases
Specifically:
https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector/releases/download/v1.1.3.0/EdgeDeflector_install.exe
I saved it to C:\software\browser\http\ms_based\edge\edge_deflec tor\.
2) Doubleclick on the installer executable
It will want to go into C:\Program Files (x86)\EdgeDeflector\
I put it in C:\app\browser\http\ms_based\edge\edge_deflector\
Contrary to the instructions (why are instructions always wrong?) it asks:
"How do you want to open this?" where you're supposed to
Choose EdgeDeflector from the list and check "Always use this app."
But if you skip that popup, you'll get it again when you run a Cortana search.
3) I ran a Cortana search for "snafu" which brought up Opera to Bing.
At least that's half the victory, where it is very clear that Opera
is normally set to search using DuckDuckGo. So we're halfway there...

The article says we can redirect Bing searches to use Google instead with
an extension called Chrometana for Chrome or Bing-Google for Firefox.
Chrometana:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrometana-redirect-bing/kaicbfmipfpfpjmlbpejaoaflfdnabnc?hl=en
Bing-Google:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bing-google-1/

Since Opera is "chrome like", I tried that, but I couldn't get Chrometana
to install on Opera. The *only* options for the default browser are Opera
or Epic (due to the inherent built-in proxy), so I tried Epic next. But
Chrometana wouldn't install on Edge either. So that's a bust.

Nonetheless, at least now Edge is out of the picture on Cortana searches.
When I search with Cortana for "snafu", Opera comes up with the horridly
descriptive URL:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=snafu&form=YHBGYO&qs=SW&cvid=db79a3670dae 4fd0ae7ad819828956df&pq=snafu&cc=US&setlang=en-US&nclid=D6C76A80D5D19F03A43A998DD7E7BC4A&ts=15299 82513744&nclidts=1529982513&tsms=744
Which I'm sure carries with it a load of privacy-related personal
information.

I guess it's a separate thread to decode that privacy information.


The closest thing to local info on the machine,
is the "Diagnostic Data Viewer". That installs from
the Store, and required time (a few days) to collect
a trace.

The events in there, a tossed salad of junk nobody cares
about, labels some of them with a "cv" number. Which might
be similar to the "cvid" in the Bing search.

Needless to say, anything typed in Cortana, can be labeled
and sent to Bing, as well as labeled and sent to Vortex,
so it could conceivably be recorded more than once.
But don't expect to find a web page explaining the
(varied on purpose) identifier strings they use.
It's not like you will find an "SSN-like" identifier
stamped on everything. That would be... too simple.

Paul
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