Ask Leo! #593 – Software That Doesn’t Work, Open Hotspots, Cloud Safety, and more…

"For example, what business does Adobe PDF Reader have to be sending out information from your computer, especially if you've turned off the auto-update feature?" - Could be any number of reasons, including the document pulling external content.

Really, if somebody has so little confidence in a company that they feel it necessary to block - or attempt to block, anyway - that company's product from making external connection, then it'd like to better to switch to a different company's products.

Let me add an additional comment here:

"Now an outgoing firewall can be essential to minimize Windows 10 mining data from your hard drive and sending it out to the mother ship." - How do you know that ZoneAlarm - or whatever firewall you use - isn't "mining data from your hard drive and sending it out to the mother ship"? I can only assume that you trust developer of the firewall more than you trust Microsoft - but this is a stance that really doesn't make sense given that the firewall company will be subject to much less scrutiny than Microsoft: a company whose every move is put under the microscope by independent security researchers and regulators.

The bottom line is that you shouldn't be using an application which your do not trust. Or an operating system.

Our senior computer club in a retirement park has around 470 members who are becoming quite sophisticated users thanks to our continuing educational efforts and through our recommendations of articles and tips from sources such as Ask Leo!. If we want our members to learn about a specific topic, and Leo has addressed that subject, we usually just provide a link in our newsletter to the article so our members can read it themselves. I know many have subsequently subscribed to Ask Leo! for themselves.

Occasionally, we have used Leo's articles as an idea source for our own adaptation more specific to our members' needs or our recommendations. In these instances we would always provide reference to Ask Leo! as the idea source for our discussion or refer to his article if it served a broader purpose.

Thanks for helping our club grow in knowledge and understanding.

Actually yes there is a way.. Send you email as an html email with the "letter image" being stored on your website or other specified image storage site then after an appropriate time delete the image!

Note: This doesn't work with embedded image but true html email.

Nope. The recipient can then just copy or take a screen shot, and then forward that on as desired.