In this digital world, it’s all about showing advertisements by collecting your personal data. Nowadays, Microsoft is showing ads everywhere in Windows 11 OS. In addition to the ads you see in Edge Quick Links and Taskbar search, there is also another thing called Advertising ID. It is a unique ID generated in your Windows computer for each user account. Here is how you can disable Advertising ID in Windows 11 and stops apps from tracking you.
What is Advertising ID?
App developers collect your personal information in multiple ways to show personalized ads. Advertising ID in Windows is one such way for app developers to collect your account details to show related advertisements. Disabling this Advertising ID in Windows will prevent anyone from accessing your details. However, there could be other methods like cookies to collect data and show personalized ads.
1. Disabling Advertising ID for Single User from Settings App
As mentioned, Windows will generate Advertising ID for each user account in the system. If you have multiple users accounts, follow the below steps by logging into each account separately.
- Right-click on the Start menu icon in Taskbar and select “Settings” menu.
- This will open Settings app and go to “Privacy & security” section from the left sidebar menu.
- Scroll down on the right pane and click “General” option showing under “Windows permissions” section.
- On the next page, disable “Let apps show me personalized ads by using my advertising ID” option.
You can also disable all other options to prevent Windows from showing suggestions and related content.
2. Using Registry Editor to Disable Advertising ID for Current User
Through it is not recommended to edit Registry entries, you can use this is as an alternate option.
- Press “Win + R” shortcut keys to open Run prompt.
- Type regedit and press enter to open Registry Editor app.
- Copy and paste the below path in Registry Editor’s address bar and press enter to navigate to that location.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AdvertisingInfo
- The “AdvertisingInfo” key will have an item with value name as “Enabled”.
- Double click on that “Enabled” value name and check the “Value data” box.
- The value 0 indicates the Advertising ID is disabled and 1 indicates it is enabled. So, make sure the value data is 0, click “OK” button and close the Registry Editor.
Now, open Settings app and navigate to “Privacy & security > General” section. You should see the Advertising ID option is turned off. You enable this anytime later if you want.
3. Disable Advertising ID for All Users from Local Group Policy Editor
If you have multiple user accounts in the system, disabling Advertising ID by logging in through one-by-one account is a tedious job. Alternatively, you can use Local Group Policy Editor to disable the relevant policy and turn off Advertising ID for all user accounts. This is also useful if you are a network administrator controlling multiple user accounts.
Remember, Local Group Policy Editor is a default app comes with Windows Pro, Enterprise and Students edition and NOT with Home edition. However, you can follow the steps outlined in our earlier article to enable the app.
- Right-click on the Start menu icon and select “Run” menu.
- This will open Run prompt and enter gpedit.msc in the text box.
- Press enter or “OK” button to open Local Group Policy Editor app.
- The app has two sections – Computer Configuration and User Configuration.
- Expand the “Computer Configuration” section and then expand “Administrative Templates” option.
- Select “System” folder, scroll down on the right pane and find “User Profiles” folder.
- Double click on the “User Profiles” folder where you can find the “Turn off Advertising ID” policy. As you can see, this policy is in “Not Configured” state by default which means the users can enable or disable it in the Settings app as explained above. You can select the policy and read the description to understand the details.
- Double click on the “Turn off advertising ID” policy to open its settings.
- Select “Enabled” option and click “Apply” and then ‘OK” buttons.
Remember, enabling the policy will disable Advertising ID for all users.
Now, go to “Privacy & security > General” section in your Settings app. Since the policy is enabled, you will see the Advertising ID option is disabled with the message saying, “Some of these settings are managed by your organization”.
4. Using Registry Editor to Disable Advertising ID for All Users
This method is useful when you can’t access Local Group Policy Editor app in Windows Home edition.
- Press “Win + R” shortcut keys to open Run prompt.
- Type regedit and press enter to open Registry Editor app.
- Copy and paste the below paths in Registry Editor’s address bar and press enter to navigate to that location.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
- Check you can find “AdvertisingInfo” key there. If not, right-click on the empty area and select “New > Key” option and rename the key as “AdvertisingInfo”.
- Now select the newly create “AdvertisingInfo” key. Right-click on empty area and select “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value” option.
- Rename the item as “DisabledByGroupPolicy” and double click on that. Change its “Value data” to 1 and click “OK” button.
Close the Registry Editor, open Settings app and navigate to “Privacy & security > General” section. You will see the Advertising ID option is greyed out with a message saying it is managed by your organization. You can anytime delete the newly created “AdvertisingInfo” key along with its “DisabledByGroupPolicy” subkey to enable Advertising ID option in Settings app.
Note: When you are checking back in Settings back, make sure to close and reopen the app for the changes to reflect. If you are not seeing the changes, then restart your system and then check.
