For more comprehensive protection of your location, you could consider disabling radio-based components of your device such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular modem, and GPS components, which might be used by an app to determine your precise location. Microsoft requires third-party software developers that develop apps for our Microsoft Store or develop apps using Microsoft tools to respect the Windows location settings unless you’ve provided any legally required consent to have the third-party developer determine your location. LocationĮven when you’ve turned off the device location setting, some third-party apps and services could use other technologies (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular modem, etc.) to determine your device’s location with varying degrees of accuracy. There are varying degrees of exceptions to how a desktop app may access and use personal data on the device beyond the privacy controls available in Windows.

To further reduce the risk that an app or service can access personal data when a privacy setting is off, you should only install apps and services from trusted sources. You should also check if the desktop apps you have installed have provided their own options to control access to personal data. Please read the privacy policies of any desktop app you install to learn more about how they might use personal data stored on your device. Why do some apps in the Microsoft Store say “Provided and updated by” the app’s developer?Īpps that have this label are downloaded from the developer’s website and updated by the developer, instead of being updated through the Microsoft Store. MSI, or .DLL file, and they typically run on your device, unlike web-based apps (which run in the cloud). They can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store, downloaded from the internet, or installed with some type of media (such as a CD, DVD, or USB storage device). Desktop apps also won’t appear in the list of apps in the privacy settings pages that allows you to choose which apps can use data associated with that privacy setting. Some desktop apps may not even ask for permission to get access to personal data stored on your device. Lessĭesktop apps are a specific type of app that won’t ask for permission to access data associated with privacy settings in Windows.

Zoom phone desktop app