Comment by CursedUrn

Just be aware that these "fixes" aren't 100% complete and will likely break in the future when Microsoft patches Windows. For example, when people tried to block telemetry in Windows 10 via the hosts file, Microsoft first moved the telemetry servers from named domains to a series of new IP addresses, then after a year or so they patched the telemetry sending code to bypass the hosts file. Similarly if you ran the scripts to disable Cortana/Windows Search, that worked for a while but nowadays you'll find SearchApp.exe doing Cortana work in the background whether you like it or not.