Regarding your internet privacy, Try Google Chrome with your User Id signed in and select Custom Encryption Passphrase (This is not stored on Google's Servers) to sync your entire web history with Google servers, This way Google themselves would not be able to detect your web history that is being stored on their servers, without them breaking the encryption on Chrome Sync, something that would be impossible with a complex and lengthy passphrase, and it's pretty convenient to access your web history anywhere .Of course that excludes your ISP..To further strengthen your privacy/taking your ISP out of the equation, try a Secure/Encrypted and a trusted VPN to stop your ISP from snooping around, Most importantly, If you're paranoid about your privacy, Try an alter ego..
I cannot fully understand what was written above but I thought using Chrome we'll have more privacy...?
By default Windows 8 "phoning home" about everything your are doing on your computer, about every program you are running/installing/uninstalling, about every music/video file your are listening/ripping/burning, about every system/program crash, about every security certificate in your system, about every changes in system components, about your "user experience", about every changes in your home network including statistics and detailed information about you hardware and software and so on. If you are using Windows 8 "as is" then you totally naked before m$ and anyone who can you use this information against you. Disabling Windows 8 "phoning home" features will improve overall system security and your privacy Windows 8 STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide) nopasara.com/860/windows-8-stig/
The only sure way is to disconnect from the Internet! Even you disable all what's possible, Windows will still call back home, no way to avoid that. I know some guy who's paranoid about his privacy and security. He was try everything over several month and could do it and he's a IT Professional with an PhD in Informatic and Computer Science! If you like to get to know what really is send out of your machine, you should install an so called "Network Sniffer". In reality that's something for people with an paranoid mind! In my company we only use an "sniffer" for very specific reason and scanning. To check those logfiles, you'll have to invest and terrible amount of time and will may not have any success to find what you're looking for.
You could do one thing that I did on Win 7 as well. Open the Task Scheduler and under Microsoft - Windows disable Application Experience - AitAgent and ProgramDataUpdater Customer Experience Improvement Program - Consolidator, KernelCeipTask and UsbCeip This should help a lot.
You have better privacy in Chrome especially if you're using a custom passphrase for complete data encryption in Chrome Sync.
Thank you very much. It's a long article but I'll start with what it says "Some features may communicate with the..." first. Thanks again