I'm not convinced. I run a Pi-Hole [0] to redirect all advertising-related queries to a black hole. When tracking the most-blocked domains, Microsoft is at the

I'm not convinced. I run a Pi-Hole [0] to redirect all advertising-related queries to a black hole. When tracking the most-blocked domains, Microsoft is at the very top [1]. For instance, when I enter "Office" into the start menu, Microsoft immediately sends a ping to bing.com and Microsoft's telemetry servers. That is, Microsoft is sending all of the data entered into the start menu to Microsoft's servers, even when using the 'Pro' version and with 'full' telemtry off. When it was first detected that Microsoft was adding telemetry calls to all compiled programs in Windows [2], Microsoft said it was mostly for event debugging for programmers. Now I'm not so sure -- look at your Microsoft account privacy settings to see that Microsoft tracks when you open applications. (They say on the page that not all data is shown there). Unforutnately, there is no way to opt out of this. You can "disable" full telemetry, but you still have to opt into "Basic" telemetry, which still sends your advertiser ID, the programs you run, and the queries you put into the start menu. I'm concerned that Microsoft is not going to stop here. They have a real incentive to capture as much data about you as they can -- they currently earn about $1 billion in advertising through Bing.com search queries. Unlike Google or especially Facebook, however, it's much more difficult to opt out of Microsoft's tracking -- so many people depend on Microsoft Office or other Windows programs that I can't fully switch to Linux. I don't know how this is acceptable through GDPR. There are so many problems with what Microsoft is doing: 1. There is no way to opt out of telemetry 2. There is no way to see all of the data that Microsoft has collected 3. Microsoft has severe lock-in because so much software is written for Windows-only 4. Microsoft has an incentive to increase their telemetry, not decrease it. [0] https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/ [1] https://imgur.com/a/MbjtYJe https://imgur.com/a/MbjtYJe [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/4ibauu/visual_studio_adding_telemetry_function_calls_to/ https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/4ibauu/visual_studio_a...