What is devicecensus.exe on Windows 10 and why does it need Internet connectivity?

[harlan4096]

If you are using a firewall on your Windows 10 PCs and have configured the protective layer to inform you about new processes that try to establish outbound connections, you may have noticed that a program called devicecensus.exe attempting to establish a connection regularly.

I noticed the process on a Windows 10 version 1809 machine. The process would try to establish an Internet connection shortly after startup.

A few questions may come to mind:

* Is devicecensus.exe a legitimate process?
* Why does it require Internet connectivity?
* Is it related to Telemetry?
* What kind of information is it transmitting?

What is devicecensus.exe on Windows 10?

The program devicecensus.exe is a legitimate Windows file provided that it is signed by Microsoft and found in the folder C:\Windows\System32 (the Windows installation location may vary depending on how this was set up during installation).

Users or system administrators cannot delete or rename the file in the location.

The process is started by a scheduled task that is run once per day. The task was set to run at 3:00 AM every day and by custom triggers as well on a test machine running Windows 10 version 1809.

You may check the task in the following way:

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. Type Task Scheduler and load the result once search results are displayed.
3. Go to Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Device Information
4. There you should find a single task called Device.

If you check under the Actions tab, you will find devicecensus.exe listed there as the action.

Tip: system administrators may right-click on the task and select disable to turn it off.
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