Well color me shocked and surprised that Microsoft would ever do such a thing! A basic rule of thumb is to assume that virtually all commercial apps or digital

Well color me shocked and surprised that Microsoft would ever do such a thing! A basic rule of thumb is to assume that virtually all commercial apps or digital tools (and many physical "smart" tools and products) pervasively, parasitically gather as much data about every aspect of your activity as they possibly can. This is the modern world's running business model: being constantly spied on by an ever growing range of objects and systems around you for possible monetization reasons at all times, even if you paid for them. Governments make noises about opposing this but many of them tacitly love it because it spares them all the legal and logistical bullshit of justifying doing the same themselves. Why bother after all? Now you can just buy or subpoena, or straight up illegally force (looking at you Snowden leaks) all of it from all the private entities that are given free rein to do what your "sadly archaic" laws still don't let you do. Most absurd of all, that these same private entities make minimal effort at keeping their own monitoring a secret. The majority of their users literally don't give a damn and in fact freely hand over permission in a nicely, legally justified bundle. We essentially live in a Stasi, KGB or Gestapo functionary's dream of near panopticon.