No, it is not "bad" because it is from a desktop app, it is bad because desktop apps generally do not tell the user if and when they send information to a remot

No, it is not "bad" because it is from a desktop app, it is bad because desktop apps generally do not tell the user if and when they send information to a remote server. How about collecting those statistics locally and asking the user every couple of days if he would be okay with sending them to a server, mentioning the reasons for doing so? I think if users had the control over that they wouldn't generally mind doing so.