I have read some articles saying the use of a non-admin account or daily use does not add any security to your system. So is it still recommended to do this or not (in WIndows)?
Could you provide the link to where you read this?
The official Privacy Guides Windows guide has not yet added any information for security/hardening. But the community wiki does explicitly instruct us to
Create another
standarduser account to reduce the attack surface enormously as most vulnerabilities today come from the fact that the user is always inadministratormode.
The pull request which added that official guide is partly authored by the one who created the community wiki.[1][2] The discussions in that wiki also do not indicate that there are any issues with the instructions, so I would trust overall that it does add security in the way the wiki describes.
What were the reasons your articles listed for why standard user accounts don’t add security? Can you give us the source, as @Blackbird suggests?
Furthermore, I think this discussion would be better had within the discussion section of the guide. But it’s up to you if you want to switch it over there.
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In Windows you get reasonably high enough security by increasing the UAC slider to full (which is not the default, the default setting is insecure) on an administrator account that as long as you do that I don’t think most people need to create a separate account. However, using a standard account will still always decrease your attack surface further.
More: Windows administrator UAC question - #4 by jonah & Using windows as a non admin - #11 by sha123
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Even when setting the UAC slider to full, it still isn’t a security boundary and there’s numerous known bypasses that work with any slider level. Only creating a separate non-admin account or using the new Administrator Protection feature actually gives a reasonable level of security against automatic elevation to admin
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Or just add yourself to a domain and have a separate admin account that you use to login with to authenticate things and give your user least privileges possible if you wanna be fancy with it! 
Indeed this is a further improvement. I didn’t realize this finally came out of preview last week, we should add it to our group policy recommendations.
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Unfortunately I can’t remeber where I read about it, will try to find it again. But thank you for letting me know that you would still recommend it. As a newbie, could you please let me know how you would recommend setting up a new Windows install then (and in what order):
- Set up the very first time(only possible with admin account) , using local account
- Customize all your settings, registry entries etcas the admin
- Create separate standard user account
- Adjust standard user account in the settings that were not already being adjusted by the admin account
WOuld this be the correct way and how would youa dvise to install programs then? As the admin or as the standard user with entering the admin password? And what about programs like Tor which when installed as an admin are not visible to the standard user?
Thank you very much for your help!
Could anyone let me know if my steps above are correct and maybe have any input on my questions? I appreciate your help, thank you.
Of course standard account is more secure, less attack surface for things like cached credentials.
But it’s also more annoying, and you still have be safe. A kernal/exploit-based privilege escalation is just as dangerous on a standard account, because it means they will be admin anyways.
So for example on group policy, enable “User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation.” It’s also a bit annoying, because it asks you to press ctrl + alt + delete everytime, but more secure. Or set firewall to block all outbound by default. And 2fa for everything.
Then the common things to be smart about, like if you used any pirated software, use it in a sandbox or a dedicated PC for that stuff. Regardless if you have a standard or admin account. There are huge lists you can search for of how to harden Windows, but some of it comes down to what your time is worth. For anything truly risky (e.g. cryptocurrency is risky, while traditional banking online not as much as you can generally recover it), you should probably use dedicated hardware anyways, like a Trezor.
You have an admin account and standard account, but you use the standard account for daily needs. When you need to install something requiring admin permissions, you input your admin password from the standard account each time.
For Tor, did you install like that? If it’s portable, you should be able to install places like your standard accounts Documents folder.
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The new Administration protection is quite cool but it has its shortcomings 
When not to enable this feature:
For devices that require Hyper-V or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
I hope they will come around the limitations in the next releases.
Hehe, nice 
Windows in general is not secure at all! It looks as if guys at MS does not have a clue about security.
@nblke72 get out of Windows ASAP; this OS is disaster.
For Tor, did you install like that? If it’s portable, you should be able to install places like your standard accounts Documents folder.
No, not portable. Just the regular desktop version. You need admin rights for it, and if you install it from the admin account, it is not visible for the standard user.
@extremelyBigGuy thanks, I would love to switch to another OS, but it is not only about privacy, but also about security, and Linux for example needs a lot of manual work to be a secure desktop.
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Thats the case only if you are messing with more advanced distros like Arch, Gentoo and alike. Ubuntu/Debian and derrivates are pretty well secured OOTB.
I think the opinions on this vary a lot 
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Sure thing. Im speaking as someone with 20+ years of experience in server security.
Yes, like iPhone vs Android
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