The local machine only needs a manifest of available updates and its local state to determine what updates it requires. The potential size of the manifest doesn

The local machine only needs a manifest of available updates and its local state to determine what updates it requires. The potential size of the manifest doesn’t strike me as a good reason to exfiltrate more data from the local machine. There are myriad options for limiting the size of the manifest into something more manageable—say, splitting it into many smaller manifests—and let the local machine identify the updates it needs. An access log isn’t going to provide the Update Provider the same level of data that transmitting local settings, capabilities, applications, and drivers would—or the Update Provider will have to write additional software to turn access logs into best-guess approximations of, at most, apps & drivers being downloaded by a particular IP. However, the local machine still retains more information about itself than is otherwise given up by blanket data collection of its settings, capabilities, applications, and drivers. The collection of massive amounts of data is not necessary to provide a collection of available updates and leave it up to a local machine to determine which of those updates it needs to apply.