I appreciate that it's tempting to add telemetry and crash logging functionality. The problem is that Microsoft gets the benefit (in reduced QA costs) but the c

I appreciate that it's tempting to add telemetry and crash logging functionality. The problem is that Microsoft gets the benefit (in reduced QA costs) but the consumer pays the cost (loss of privacy). Classic externality trap. Microsoft acknowledges that full documents along with stack traces (that can contain sensitive information) can end up on Microsoft servers when error log reporting is enabled. Sending a call stack consisting of function names and pointer offsets and register values to aid debugging is one thing. Sending entire globs of application memory along with the crash log is much less defensible. My objection about linking user data to real world people still stands. There is no technical reason why _personalized_ logging is necessary. Telemetrics can be pretty innocent (e.g. track which percentage of Windows users have multiple monitors), but as they become more personal it's again much harder to justify. The absence of a single switch (during install or first login) to get rid of all logging/monitoring/telemetrics and other privacy-invading nonsense is indefensible.