[German]David Xanatos has updates his open source tool WinTen (Private Win10), with which you can control the privacy and firewall settings of Windows 10. Now we are at version 0.60.
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Regular blog readers may still remember my blog post Private WinTen, a new Windows 10 privacy tool), in which I introduced the first version. The description at that time:
PrivateWin10 is an advanced Privacy tool for windows it provides a simple and comprehensive UI for tweaking privacy settings, as well as options to block system access to files and registry keys in order to enforce privacy whenever Windows does not provide a satisfying setting for that.
To solve privacy issues with other software the tool includes a powerful custom firewall frontend for the windows built in firewall.
The source code of the open source tool can be found on GitHub. During execution, the program requires administrator privileges. If you don't trust the program, you should keep your hands off it. In addition, it is not for users who are little experienced.
New Version 0.60
David Xanatos had already contacted me by mail at the beginning of November 2019 and wrote:
After long delays there is now a new build of my Privacy Tool for Windows with a lot of improvements, bug fixes and new features. Maybe this is worth a mention in your blog.
The mail has been left in my inbox, cause I haven't time to publish an article, but I've made up for it now. Here is the excerpt from the description of version 0.60, which was released on November 30, 2019:
This new build includes a major new feature, a DNS proxy that can be used to blacklist domains using Pi-Hole blacklists, as well as a manual wildcard and regex supporting blacklist. Using priv10 as system wide DNS proxy ensures effective domain blocking as some MSFT components are known to bypass the regular system hosts file and query DNS servers directly, with a DNS proxy intercepting the requests this bypass becomes ineffective.
The default blacklists contain a lot of ad blocking such that in addition to improved privacy the new feature provides system wide ad blocking.[0.60] – 2019-11-30
Added
- added DNS proxy to monitor all DNS requests
- added ability to set priv10 as system DNS
- added DNS Query Log based on DNS Proxy events
- added system DNS cache monitor
- added dns proxy page
- added dns querry log
- added dns blacklist/whitelist page
- added dns blocklists page
- added blocklist update mechanism
Changed
- reworked DNS Inspector class
- changed from tne .NET reverse dns facility to using native windows API's for better performance
- dns inspector can now be switched on or off
Fixed
- issue where the accept button in the notifiction window would get disabled again
- issue with aplpyung rules when some rules were already present for the given programm
- issue saving gpo's, sometimes it failed with a file is in use error
- issue where file blockign tweaks were never shown as available after a recent change
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