By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft... location data, text input, voice input, touch input, webpages you v

By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft... location data, text input, voice input, touch input, webpages you visit, and telemetry data regarding your general usage of your computer, including which programs you run and for how long. Unprecedented for Microsoft or everyone? This is inline with what Google collects on Android. ...the fact remains that many users would much prefer to opt out of these features in exchange for maintaining their privacy. Which they can do at any time, the initial setup permits opting out of almost all of this. A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives. While Microsoft insists that it aggregates and anonymizes this data, it hasn’t explained just how it does so. Microsoft also won’t say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes. Microsoft has been doing this since Windows XP as do Apple, Google, and Amazon for their respective OSes. Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won’t function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level. This is interesting because Windows 10 won't let you disable telemetry data entirely which upsets people. But most people probably want updates and the data necessary to determine which updates you've got installed on your computer are considered telemetry data by Microsoft and that information is essential in order to determine which updates are applicable or available. So does the minimum setting in Windows 10 collect more telemetry data than is necessary for Windows Update to function or not? But this is a false choice that is entirely of Microsoft’s own creation. There’s no good reason why the types of data Microsoft collects at each telemetry level couldn’t be adjusted so that even at the lowest level of telemetry collection, users could still benefit from Windows Update and secure their machines from vulnerabilities, without having to send back things like app usage data or unique IDs like an IMEI number. Did Microsoft actually say that the lowest level of telemetry data collection includes that information? That sounds like an assumption. And if this wasn’t bad enough, Microsoft’s questionable upgrade tactics of bundling Windows 10 into various levels of security updates have also managed to lower users’ trust in the necessity of security updates. Sadly, this has led some people to forego security updates entirely, meaning that there are users whose machines are at risk of being attacked. Right or wrong, this is what Apple, Google, and Amazon currently. Sure it's nice to be able to look at each and every update to scrutinize what's going in but very few people do that. If you've every looked at the updates in earlier versions of Windows they're usually just KB numbers that you have to copy/paste into a browser to see what they actually fix.