One of the prominent upgrades in Windows 10 is the remarkable introduction of cloud-based personal assistant Cortana. Cortana performs tasks quite similar to the apple’s assistant Siri or Samsung’s Bixby. It appears as a search bar on the bottom of the screen which can be activated with voice or with typing command. Its key features include learning about the user using the data from the system, searches, contacts or location to provide the user with much more personalized experience. But in order to eliminate the risk of your important information being stolen and misused, Cortana also provides its users with the ease to delete personal information. In this article, we will tell you how you can clear your personal information from Cortana Windows 10.
Before clearing the data collected in Cortana cloud, you need to sign out from Cortana which disables further data collection from the cloud because it works best while signed in.
Signing-out of Cortana
Click on Cortana search bar; go to notebook under the home icon on the left.
Click on your account to view the sign out button.
Click sign-out button below your email address.
Now you have signed out from Cortana.
Moreover, turning off the Cortana Speech services and Typing suggestions feature clears the data stored on the device and erases the dictionary suggestions.
Turning off Speech services and Typing suggestions
Open Settings
Click on the Privacy settings, and then click speech, inking, and typing.
(Or simply just type speech, inking, and typing in the search bar on the settings page)
Press the button saying “Turn off speech services and typing suggestions”.
Click again on Turn off.
This stops you from being able to speak to Cortana but speech services which do not rely on the cloud will still be in working condition.
In combination with the above-mentioned steps, In order to completely erase the data, now comes the final step to delete data from the cloud.
Clear personal data from Cortana
Open settings.
Go to Cortana settings.
Click the option “Permissions and History”
Click on the button “Clear my device History”.
After clearing the data saved on the device, now we have to clear the data saved on the cloud.
Go to Cortana settings.
Click the option “Permissions and History”.
Click on the link saying “Change what Cortana knows about me in the cloud”.
Finally, Click on the Clear button on the new window appeared.
Now you have successfully cleared your personal information from Cortana.
Conclusion
By following the steps discussed in this article, you will easily be able to clear personal information from Cortana in Windows 10. Every step is clear, simple and the screenshots provided along with the steps act as a visual guide. However, if you sign in to Cortana again it will continue to store your data but, feel free to clear the data anytime by using the steps described in this article.
