awesome-windows-privacy

The issue is that it's the way Microsoft conduct business at all. The default should be opt-in not hard to find opt-outs for every patch. I would say no, there is no way to make it more tolerable unless you run something like shutup10 or https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy but then again if you care that much you should simply just run Linux because in reality there is no real good solution since spyware is baked right into the product.

You don't even indicate which download link you used, it was "earlier this week" so nobody can try and reproduce it, and you don't even say what it was detected as? Plus you linked to a site that has a whole article talking about them getting regularly flagged for false-positives due to the sensitive settings they're changing within Windows (see "Virus?" link). Like what is it you expect to happen here? Plus why are you using this sketchy looking tool instead of one of the many scripts available[0] or Open Source tools[1] that do the same thing while making the source code readily readable? I don't personally endorse any of this stuff, in fact I recommend against it. A lot of these scripts disable or remove security features and break functionality that has nothing to do with privacy. Plus users that use this stuff are self-selecting as t

Appx packages are not where the bloat is. These are "store" / UWP apps which are generally sandboxed / very restricted in API access - so they take up disk space but not much else after you close them. Sure, if your goal is to save a bit of disk space, this will help; but I suspect when most people think about "bloat" they think of things that slow down their computer (things that actively consume memory / cpu / network). In my experience, that bloat is mostly services and scheduled tasks. I started collecting scripts / documentation on debloating with a primary focus on restoring privacy here: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy (it's not very maintained but maybe someone finds something useful there)

I keep a list of (mostly) open source tools, scripts, etc. for debloating Windows 10/11: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy This thing is not on the list, because it's obviously extremely sketchy (in addition to it being illegal / piracy / etc. the actual "functionality" of removing Windows Update and Windows Defender is bonkers).

There are a lot of open source scripts and tools on GitHub for accomplishing the same goal (in various state of being out-of-date, abandoned, etc.); I started collecting the ones that appear somewhat active here: https://github.com/TemporalAgent7/awesome-windows-privacy I plan on going through them to weed out duplicates and duds. You shouldn't trust any of those blindly, but definitely read through the code; I'm particularly interested in coming up with a list of services and scheduled tasks that can be safely disabled without impacting any of the applications and services I'm using (I want Windows Update, OneDrive, Office, Defender, Store and store apps, MS Account login and Xbox Gaming for example, which most tools want to disable).