This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Managing Cortana Permissions
As you can imagine, with a personal digital assistant like Cortana, in order to provide you with information relative to your likes and dislikes, your location, and your interests, Cortana has to know a lot about you. In this day of cybersecurity concerns, you need to be able to manage how your information is stored and used.
For that reason, you can choose how you want Cortana to gather information on you and manage how it is used. You do this using Cortana settings.
Managing Your Permissions
Microsoft has been working with a focus on security and privacy across the last several iterations of Windows 10, and the overall security effort is coalescing into an organized permissions-based system. Now your Cortana settings are organized as one part of a large Windows-wide security system designed to give you the flexibility you want to control your information while balancing that with the permissions you need to get to the information you seek.
You can view and change the permissions Cortana uses to search for, display, and update your information by choosing Settings in the Cortana panel.
Click in the Search box or say, “Hey Cortana.” The Cortana panel opens.
Click Settings.
Click Permissions & History.
Click Change What Cortana Knows About Me in the Cloud to view and modify the types of information Cortana stores about you.
Click or tap Manage the Information Cortana Can Access from This Device to limit what Cortana will find and share about your location, communications, and browsing history.
Leave this set to on if you want Cortana to be able to display information you’ve stored in the cloud in searches.
Leave My Device History set to On if you want Cortana to learn from past searches and questions on this device about the types of information and topics that interest you.
Click or tap Clear My Device History to erase past search data.
Set to Off if you want to stop Cortana from keeping a history of your searches.
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Setting Notifications
One of Cortana’s strengths is that it can use notifications to remind you of things you want to be reminded about: upcoming appointments, grocery items, work tasks, and times for the kids’ after-school practices. You can control how and when Cortana notifies you about various events in Cortana settings.
Display Cortana settings by clicking in the Search box and choosing the Settings tool. In the Settings window, click Notifications.
If you want Cortana to send notifications to all your Windows devices (tablet, computer, phone), leave this set to On.
If you want Cortana to make suggestions for items you might want to add to your collections (for example, when you search for a specific recipe), leave this set to On.
Click Manage Notifications if you want to leave notifications on for some items but turn them off for others. The collection choices are Books, Movies & TV, Recipes, and Shopping. By default, all are turned On.
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Free Time with Cortana
Like any good assistant, Cortana isn’t all work and no play. In fact, you can play games with Cortana (just say, “Hey Cortana, play movie game”), ask Cortana to share some interesting trivia, or even ask it to tell you a joke. Here’s the result when I said, “Hey Cortana, tell me a joke.” Not bad.
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