User Account Control (UAC)

User Account Control (UAC) is a Windows feature that sets levels of user authorization within the operating system: with User Account Control, a standard user starts with basic privileges until an administrator authorizes new privileges for that user. User Account Control comes with Microsoft operating systems like Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 8 and Windows 10, along with some Windows server OS versions.

Part of the purpose of User Account Control is to limit the impact of malware and restrict unauthorized access to software applications or higher-level manipulation of an operating system. A process called mandatory integrity control provides different privileges status for various parts of a system. The nature of User Account Control depends on the concept of developing multiple user accounts on an operating system, which began with Windows NT in 1993.

Using User Account Control involves administering application requests, doing configuration and manually providing these specific status levels for users.

Microsoft has published guidelines for the use of User Account Control, and detailed tutorials online explain UAC settings as well as how to disable this feature on Windows operating systems.