[tomc1985]

You used to be able to download a trial off the open web on MS' download portal.

I ran LTSB for a year and it was brilliant. But on day 366 (or whever my slmgr -rearm trick ran out) you get locked out with no real way to change to a different SKU or reset without a clean install :(

There's a program called BlackBird (http://getblackbird.net/) that claims to strip out all that telemetry. I have been running it for a while and while I haven't closely inspected traffic to validate the author's claims my bandwidth monitor widget doesn't have a lot to report, rarely rising above 1kb/sec unless I'm doing something.

[phs318u]

Hadn’t heard of Blackbird. Sounded awesome. But...

1. “Note: Some anti-virus products may detect Blackbird as malware.”

2. “Last updated: Nov. 10, 2016”

...now, not so much. sigh And I really wanted to believe.

[nitrogen]

I've had software of mine flagged by overeager antivirus just for being new and uncommon. It labels it as "WS.Reputation.1". If that's the only detection it's most likely nothing to worry about.

[phs318u]

Thanks for the info. I’ll run clamscan over it and if it’s what you suggest I’ll snapshot my Windows VM and give it a whirl.

[aepiepaey]

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/b14abe7b4af30cbc5eddfc72e8...

So, probably safe.

[tomc1985]

No issues with my AV (or at all) and I've been running it for a few years now.