Blackbird was designed to alleviate spending hours on tweaking your privacy settings by using some known and less-known techniques to fully disarm Windows without leaving behind even the smallest possible footprint.
There are other tools that claim to block Windows spying but they are cumbersome to use and not as powerful or are limited in scope. So the author took Windows apart, piece by piece, analyzed web traffic, system calls, file changes,etc., compared different configurations, designed and built a stand-alone tool and spent hundreds of hours on beta testing so anyone can use it and it gets the job done right.
Block Windows spyware, on both the application and network level, with dynamic filtering and without editing the HOSTS file or firewall settings as well as preventing diagnostic, password, contact, URL, SMS, handwriting, location, and P2P-update sharing.
Features:
- Disables OneDrive
- Disables Cortana
- Disables Bing-integration
- Disables Wi-Fi Sense
- Disables system-wide Telemetry on all Windows versions
- Disables Xbox Live services
- Disables web content evaluation / URL check-in ("SmartScreen")
- Disables Windows Media Online DRM
- Disables Windows P2P Update sharing
- Disables all application metric collection agents
- Disables all AutoLoggers
- Disables start menu ads
- Prevents all location/contacts/handwritting/password sharing
- Prevents cross-device synchronization
- Patches various data-leaks (IE/EDGE/Defender/Explorer/MRT)
- Removes Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA)
- Disables Diagnostic Tracking / "Connected User Experiences and Telemetry" service
- Disables WAP-push Message Routing service
- Removes your unique Ad-ID tracking token
- Removes Windows 10 upgrade setup files on Vista, 7, 8, 8.1
- Removes a bunch of Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 telemetry updates
- Blocks 100+ different Microsoft tracking/telemetry/ad servers (supports IPv6/IPv4, Wifi/Eth)
- bonus (some) Youtube, Skype, Facebook ads blocked
Blackbird can also be used via CMD Prompt with the following switches available:
- blackbird -v > Verbose mode. Displays additional information on all changes as they're being made.
- blackbird -s > Silent mode. No additional user interaction required, good for scripts.
- blackbird -r > Recovery mode. Restores all values changed by Blackbird to default Microsoft values.
- blackbird -k > Kill Cortana completely (prevent searchUI.exe from loading).
- blackbird -d > Disable Windows Defender.
- blackbird -h > Disable Hibernation (deletes hiberfil.sys file).
- blackbird -u > Disable automatic installation of updates / Sets to manual download and install only.
- blackbird -m > Disable automatic installation of Windows Malicious Removal Tool (MRT) updates.
- blackbird -? > Displays help information.
Changelog
v0.9.98 - Added a switch to fix LAN connectivity problems after running Blackbird v0.9.97 or later (blackbird -l) - Fixed Recovery mode not properly restoring some registry keys - Fixed startup scanner sometimes not detecting autologgers as disabled - Fixed most used apps not displaying in start menu after using Blackbird on older Windows 10 versions - Fixed Blackbird 32bit version inconsistencies (reupload)
Direct download:
64-bit: http://www.getblackbird.net/download/BlackbirdV6_v0.9.98-x64.zip
32-bit: http://www.getblackbird.net/download/BlackbirdV6_v0.9.98-x86.zip