Protect Yourself From Tech Support Scams
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July 29, 2020
Protect Yourself From Tech Support Scams
Tech support scams are an industry-wide issue where scammers trick you into paying for unnecessary
technical support services. You can help protect yourself from scammers by verifying that the contact is a
Microsoft Agent or
Microsoft Employee and that the phone number is an
official
Microsoft global customer service number.
When a box is blue that means not all of the subfolders are checked. To view the subfolders, click the + next to a folder.
You can turn any of the listed features on or off - but you will not be able to use a feature while it's turned off. Unless you need to turn a feature on or off, the settings can be left as they are.
To turn Windows features on or off, follow these steps:
Click the Start button, click Control Panel, click
Programs, and then click Turn Windows features on or off. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
To turn a Windows feature on, select the check box next to the feature. To turn a
Windows feature off, clear the check box. Click OK.
You can customize your Windows installation even more.
What can you remove?
Internet Explorer 8
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Center
Windows DVD Maker
Windows Search
Handwriting Recognition (through the Tablet PC Components option)
Windows Gadget Platform
Fax and Scan
XPS Viewer and Services (including the Virtual Print Driver)
Microsoft does note there are consequences for removing certain features since third party programs and other Windows Features may have certain requirements or dependencies on functionality built into these critical components.
Application Dependencies are still a factor when removing features like Internet Explorer or Windows Search.
“It is worth describing the details of remove†since this too is a place where there are engineering and customer decisions to be made. We’ve already seen one decision which is to make sure we keep the features staged for future use so that a DVD is
not required. A second decision is that we also continue to support the APIs available for features where these APIs are necessary to the functionality of Windows or where there are APIs that are used by developers that can be viewed as independent of the
component. As many of you know these are often referred to as dependencies†and with Windows the dependencies can run both internal to Windows and external for ISVs.”
Windows Team member, Jack Mayo
Best, Andre Windows Insider MVP MVP-Windows and Devices for IT twitter/adacosta groovypost.com
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