Potentially unwanted applications (PUA) are a category of software that can cause your machine to run slowly, and display unexpected ads. Or install other software that may be more harmful or annoying. In this guide, you will learn how to enable or disable Reputation-Based Protection on Windows 10 and 11. Windows Security has reputation-based protection that can help protect your PC from potentially unwanted applications. Please see how to protect your Windows PC from potentially unwanted applications.

Potentially unwanted app blocking was first introduced in the Windows 10 May 2020 update and is turned on by default for enterprise customers, but off by default for consumers.

In a nutshell, Reputation-based security classifies a file as safe or unsafe based on its inherently garnered reputation.

If you are using Windows 10 and would like to make some changes to Reputation-based protection settings. You can choose to enable Reputation-based protection settings. Kindly refer to these related guides: Core Isolation: Enable or Disable Core Isolation Memory Integrity in Windows 10 and Windows 11. Also, see how to view, clear, and print Norton security event on a Mac PC

Enable or Disable Reputation-Based Protection

To enable or disable Reputation-Based Protection on Windows 10, and Windows 11, follow the steps below. For Windows 10, you will need to do the following by ensuring that you have the latest version of Windows installed on your device.

To do this, open Settings, then go to Updates & Security and click Windows Security in the left-hand pane.

This will open a new window where you will need to click App- and Browser Control in the left-hand pane. Click on Reputation-based protection settings as shown below.

Please see how to enable Smart App Control and Reputation-Based Protection in Windows 11, How to hold comments for review on YouTube, and how to fix CPU at 100% when nothing is running problem on Windows.

View Reputation-based Protection Settings on Windows

When enabled, you can click on the reputation-based protection settings link. It will take you straight into the central area of Reputation-based protection settings as shown below.

Below are the reputation-based settings available once the service is configured. Please scroll through to the bottom of the screen and you will see different options that are capable of blocking unwanted apps, phishing protection etc.

Please see Fix Google Chrome redirects: How to remove unwanted site redirects or pop-up from Google Chrome on Mac and Windows, and Sudo Error on Ubuntu: Fixing ‘unknown uid 1000.

Enable Potentially Unwanted App Protection via PowerShell

To enable Potentially Unwanted App Protection via PowerShell, you can use the cmdlets below to enable, audit, disable, and view events.

To enable PUA protection: Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection Enabled
To set PUA protection to audit mode, which detects PUAs without blocking them: Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection AuditMode
To disable PUA protection: Set-MpPreference -PUAProtection Disabled
To view threats processed by PUA protection: Get-MpThreat

Enable Potentially Unwanted App Protection via GPO

Group Policy can be used to roll out uniform PUA protection across many desktops. Configure the Windows Defender PUA settings using Group Policy. You will need to download and install Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 11 October 2021 Update (21H2) in order to have access to the configuration.

In the Group Policy Management Editor, go to Computer configuration and select Administrative templates.
Expand the tree to Windows Components > Microsoft Defender Antivirus.
Double-click Configure detection for potentially unwanted applications.
Select Enabled to enable PUA protection.
In Options, select Block to block potentially unwanted applications, or select Audit Mode to test how the setting works in your environment. Select OK.

Lastly, I will recommend you to verify the PUAProtection settings (value) via PowerShell and check if the group policy has been deployed successfully. To do this, run the cmdlet below.

Get-Mppreference | select PUAProtection

The PUAProtection setting (value) of 2 indicates that PUA Protection is enabled with Audit mode as configured via the GPO.

PUA protection is enabled by default in the Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Current Branch).

I hope you found this blog post helpful. In this article, you have successfully learned how to enable or disable Reputation-Based Protection on Windows 10 and 11. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.