Privacy: soon dedicated managers in Windows and ChromeOS

Mobile OS has made a lot of effort to strengthen privacy control in recent years, desktop OS is following the trend.

Giving users more control over the data they share: respect for privacy has become a real issue for tech giants. Microsoft and Google are preparing solutions to improve their desktop experiences in this area.

More control for webcam, mic and location

For Windows 11, Microsoft is developing a new dedicated privacy edge screen in the operating system’s Settings menu.

This interface will allow users to monitor the permissions granted to installed applications, including their access to the webcam, microphone and location. An activity log is also included to know when applications have accessed sensitive data or hardware.

Instead of going to check what each application has been able to access, this dashboard proves useful by informing which applications have had access to a specific authorization. By selecting “Location”, you obtain the list in chronological order of the applications and services that have used this information.

A privacy hub on ChromeOS 105

Among the competition, ChromeOS is also active to offer us better options for controlling our privacy. On the Canary channel (beta), the system has been upgraded to version 105.0.5121.0, which adds a new hub that focuses on privacy-related options.

For the moment, this hub is still very incomplete since it only includes one functionality for the webcam. We can guess that as on Windows 11, it will be supplemented at least by functions for the microphone and localization.

The interface seems at first designed for one thing: to deactivate the webcam (and the others that will follow) with one click to ensure that it cannot be triggered. It’s not sure yet, but two additional features could be integrated.

The first is a system that uses the webcam to detect if someone behind us is spying on our screen, then sending an alert notification when this is the case. The second is automatic screen locking when the user walks away from their PC. But all of that wouldn’t happen for several months on a stable version of ChromeOS.

Sources: Windows Latest, Chromium Unboxed