[tossedaway334]

Stuff like this is fundamentally unworkable when the people pushing software updates are your adversaries. They already do stuff like ignore DNS settings and firewall rules to send harvested data back to microsoft. They will almost certainly break anything this does in the future too...

[frik]

Exactly. Windows 10 has a hard coded whitelist of IPs and donain names in the kernel mode part of the OS (it's 64bit, it's signed, you can't modify it) - those IPs and domains will be ignored from your hosts file or firewall rules. Good luck with an hardware firewall attached to your Win10 notebook. ...unrealistic, so it's wise to stay with Win7 (minus some telemetry updates). I hope Android/Fuchsia, and other desktop OS come along until 2020, or MSFT CEO gets fired and they make a 180 degree u-turn.