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I've read in a few places that you should not turn off Windows User Account Control (UAC), but there are guides all over the internet explaining how to do it, and some people say I should have nothing to worry about.

I don't even really know why UAC is even there, and it annoys me when it pops up, so why should it be turned on?

I'm not asking whether the risks outweigh the benefits, or vice-versa. Nor am I asking if I personally should turn it on or off:

Other ways of asking this question:

  • What are the potential risks of turning it off?
  • What are the benefits of leaving it turned on?
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    Turning it of is a bad idea because you don't know why it's there ;)
    – Rik
    Dec 24, 2013 at 13:45
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    Don't know how technical you want to go, but from here some programs installed before turning it off won't run after you turn it off. And that's besides the fact you're giving every program complete control over every aspect of your computer (without your knowledge).
    – Rik
    Dec 24, 2013 at 13:51
  • Why would you want to? ;p
    – Journeyman Geek
    Dec 24, 2013 at 15:38

2 Answers 2

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You should not turn it off because if you turn it off it will no longer ask you for permission when a program want to do dangerous things.

E.g. I create a game. You download it and run it. I decide that if you loose the game I will wipe your harddisk.

If you run this without UAC then the game will run and I can wipe the disk (or do something else).
If you leave UAC on then the game will still run, but ask for permission before doing dangerous things. This can be as annoying as "I want to install directX for the umtieth time" , but it will also warn for more serious things.

Thus the best course of action is to leave the UAC safeties on.

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UAC is like an embedded intrusion detect system in Windows. When a program needs to perform some high-privilege operations(i.e. Modify a very important Windows system file), UAC intercepts the requests and gives the user a prompt to decide whether the program should be allowed or not.Thus I don't think turn it off will do you any good. Although it can be annoying at some degree, it makes sure that a user knows what programs are running on his/her computer and which operations are they performing.

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