regbox, Good on you for using Brave. Firefox is good too.

regbox, chances are PP is trying to use the hosts file to block outgoing connections to known or suspected telemetry servers. you can look at the file itself it is a text file just open it in notepad.exe google "what is hosts file" for more information.
TK

regbox, from the product home page https://www.softorbits.net/windows-10-privacy-protector/ :

"Blocks more than 60 Microsoft IP addresses engaged in user activity tracking on host level (by modifying the hosts file)"

Kaspersky just detects the writes to the hosts file and assumes it's malicious towards the user instead of towards Microsoft.
TK

regbox, like any other privacy protector software, it is expected to see the virus warning signs or malware signs on any virus protection software installed. But that is not the reason you should not install software like this, the primary problem created is the privacy protection by itself. Win 10,11 will do some sort of update (at least once a week in the background) and will reset everything back to the default OS, effectively nullifying the setups to the defaults and all of the privacy setting do not exist. You have to run this software again and again and again until the 6 months are over as an extended trial.
In my opinion, not worth the trouble and the efforts involved to maintain it as useful protector. Some web sites do not run properly if the location services are disabled or if you nave VPN.

TK, thanks for the response. I looked at the link you gave to the product home page and it's frightening what they say Microsoft is receiving from Windows 10. Is it true what they say? If so, who needs hackers. What do MS do with all that information? It sounds like a programme like PP is needed. I presume the advice is to ignore warnings like the ones I've shown as PP is doing its work.

However, the reply from mike seems to say that even though PP is working it is of only limited use and protection if all or most of the settings which it Fixes are automatically reset to Microsoft's defaults on a regular basis so that they have to be Fixed again and again.

I notice the programme's publisher doesn't tell us in advance about the possible virus warnings, or the resetting of boot-up PIN. I wonder if they will respond to these comments.

"Should I accept that the hosts file is malware ..."

TK gave good advice to Google the Hosts file. You'll find what it does -- per Microsoft: "The Hosts file is used by the operating system to map human-friendly hostnames to numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses which identify and locate a host in an IP network." -- how to fix things if it's not working, how to reset it to defaults etc.

partitionwizard.com/news/hosts-file-not-working.html

support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-reset-the-hosts-file-back-to-the-default-c2a43f9d-e176-c6f3-e4ef-3500277a6dae

"Win 10,11 will do some sort of update (at least once a week in the background) and will reset everything back to the default OS,..."

I've seen/had times when it would actually have been nice if that were true, so I could skip fixing something myself. ;) But Microsoft makes much [most?] of its money from biz using its products & services, & it's NOT going to muck around changing stuff in Windows that's been set up by the IT folks. Google's too anxious to get that biz to risk ticking IT off. At the same time, the SoftOrbits team is NOT going to release any app that's guaranteed to flood them with support requests because it stopped working.

That said, it's easy to set up a local account in Windows that's not tied to you as an individual. It's easy to set up a VM [Virtual Machine] that can be completely reset and can use random MAC addresses -- Microsoft has free VMs to download. It's easy, if slow, to use the TOR browser. You can use the Enterprise version of Windows, which won't activate outside a corporate IT environment, and has very little if anything tying it to you personally, though you'll give up some features like wallpaper or a PIN. You can run Linux -- the experience is much closer to running Windows nowadays -- either installed or from a USB drive.

regbox, much of the private data sent to Microsoft falls mostly into two categories, the most annoying (to me) is the Customer Experience Improvement Program, used to be optional under Vista but gradually became mandatory. That shares usage and error reports with Microsoft behind the scenes. It is an extension and obfuscation of the old Windows Error Reporting system that used to be an upfront optional feature.
The rest are cloud computing service features like hand writing recognition improvement, the new desktop search engine/assistant, voice recognition, and various cloud optimised features I can't be bothered to look up. Privacy involves disabling all the cloud services and crippling the Customer Experience Improvement Program and similar reporting functions. Are Microsoft even interested in your data, not corporately but might use it anonymised to train it's AI engine(logical deduction based upon how aggressive AI engines are in scraping data from sources that never consented to being used in training AI engines)

Softorbits and other so called privacy protector vendors have an agenda to try and sell their product so you WILL see concerning fear, uncertainty and doubt and veiled libelous claims of malicious intent by Microsoft. They amplify the concerns and negate any negative side effect of loss of cloud service functionality. Take their rhetoric with a pinch of salt. I have personally disabled cloud services myself and disabled CEIP to reduce unnecessary processes and resource hogs rather than any data privacy concerns as I'd never have used the features anyway.
TK