What if I did a sensitive activity in the past on Windows/macOS?
Before reading this blog post, please keep in mind that any information given about Microsoft, Apple, or Google applies equally to all of them. Most of the text focuses on Microsoft to make it easier to read, but the same principles apply to the other operating system providers.
Introduction
Most people start using computers on devices running Windows or macOS. These are the most popular operating systems and are widely used around the world, at work, at school, and at home. People who are not aware of how this can affect their privacy perform most of their daily tasks on these systems. However, there is a problem: anything you do on a device running Windows or macOS is logged and stored in large companies' data centers and will never truly be erased. This leads to a simple question: what can you do if you have carried out a sensitive activity on such an operating system?
What is a sensitive activity?
First, let's define what a sensitive activity is. While a standard definition might be:
"A sensitive activity is any action or operation that could lead to negative consequences if it were observed, identified, or linked to a specific individual. These consequences may be legal, political, financial, professional, or personal in nature"
The reality is more complex. The complexity comes from how we perceive our own actions. What might be considered highly sensitive by one person could be seen as completely insignificant by someone else.
This perception varies greatly depending on your personal circumstances, values, and the context in which you're operating. What is sensitive to you, perhaps something related to privacy, safety, or beliefs, may not hold the same weight for others, making it difficult to establish a universal standard for what counts as a "sensitive" activity.
Anyway, here's my definition of a sensitive activity: Anything you do that could be considered illegal or that could expose personal information to people you don't want to know anything about you should be treated as a sensitive activity. From my perspective, as I don't want governments and big companies know anything about my personal life, I'd say that any activities related to it are sensitive. So, I basically don't want them to know what articles I'm reading, what I'm saying when interacting with people online, what I'm coding or what I'm downloading on my computer for example.
Scenario
Let's go through a quick scenario. Imagine that you only have a computer running Windows at home (the same applies to any macOS or ChromeOS based device). Suppose you want to play video games without paying for them, so you decide to find a torrent-sharing website and download the games you are interested in. Once the downloads are complete, you install the games and start playing. You enjoy your time, and when you finish a game, you uninstall it and store the ISO on a dedicated hard drive. A few weeks later, a new law is passed in your country stating that people who own pirated video games may face serious legal consequences. You then decide to delete all your downloaded ISOs in order to avoid prosecution.
What could go wrong? You deleted everything, did not play online, and the only identifiable trace should be that you downloaded a few games via torrents, assuming the website even shares that information, right? That assumption is wrong. The torrent-sharing website is only one of many elements that could expose you. From the moment you downloaded the torrent file to installing and running the game on a Windows-based device, all of these actions may already have been logged and stored in Microsoft's data centers, just like much of what you do on your computer. If Microsoft decides to cooperate with your government, and it is safe to assume that it would, you could face serious consequences.
What to do ?
Now that we have seen that performing sensitive activities on a device running Windows, macOS, and similar operating systems is a bad idea, the question is: what can you do if you have already done it? The answer is quite simple, there is nothing you can do to change the past. If it happened, the data is already stored somewhere, and there is no way to go back. This may sound a bit defeatist, but there is something important you need to understand about how Microsoft stores data.
When Microsoft uploads your data to one of its data centers, it is backed up in one or multiple other data centers. However, there is no way to know exactly where it is stored or replicated. Moreover, you cannot know in which country your data is located. And this is not the end of the bad news: Microsoft regularly transfers data from one data center to another, and from one country to another, without notifying its users.
Here is a map of Microsoft datacenters:
So, unless you know the exact location of every Microsoft data center and are able to destroy them completely, there is no way for you to erase your actions from their servers. Anything you have done is logged, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Now that we know you cannot change the past, let us see how you can change the future. Even if you cannot erase what you have already done, there is a way to continue certain sensitive activities in a secure manner. And it is quite simple: use only free and open-source software (FOSS).
From the operating system to every piece of software you use, you must choose only open-source solutions in order to avoid being monitored by large corporations and governments. The OPSEC Bible contains many blog posts and tutorials that will help you conceal your activities and remain private and anonymous online.
Here is a quick list of FOSS software you should look into to get started:
Conclusion
As stated before, you cannot change the past, but you can still control your future. It is never too late to start improving your OPSEC, and in the event that past activities cause issues, you can at least reduce the impact by protecting your future ones. Free and open-source software is not only an effective way to secure yourself, it is also a way to stop feeding the parasite. By using software that is not controlled by governments, you limit the power they can exert over you.
Suggest changes
Crabmeat
2026-01-02
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