Anyway, how many UWP apps are you running? Do you think every Win32 desktop app is now magically tracking you? Nope.
So, let's compare how many UWP apps that you actually want to run (I don't use any of them) and see if they're tracking you as much as all the mobile apps you're running. There's no contest here.
You are able to turn it down to "Basic" using the GUI, and if you are using the enterprise edition thru corporate volume licensing you can turn it down further to "Security" with admin tools.
There is no way to turn it off completely, and since its cranked up by default, that is where it will stay for the majority of installations.
As an anecdote, even Microsoft employees I've spoken with think it's overreaching and underhanded.
Incorrect. There are in fact three ways to completely disable it. You can get the Enterprise edition [0] or modify your registry configuration [1] or by a third party tool [2].
Even if you don't want to do any of those for some reason, reading about the Basic level of telemetry - it's nothing. At least it's nothing that I care about.
I’m a single-person sole proprietorship, and I have two seats of Windows Enterprise with Software Assurance as part of an Open Business agreement; “volume” doesn’t imply “high-volume”.
Bringing this back to the the story, one is assigned to a Mac Pro, where, per Microsoft’s bizarre licensing terms, it qualifies as an “upgrade” to the bundled copy of OS X (upon which I run it under VMware, permissible via further licensing gyrations).
Last time I asked, Enterprise SKUs were only available if I took 50+ licenses. Being a single person sole proprietor like yourself, that was obviously non-starter.
Another option was Action Pack, where I would get 10 licenses for a very nice price, with a bunch of other products, but that would be only usable for development or testing, not for production (i.e. not for daily use while running the company).
The problem with Windows tracking is not that apps track you (here the solution would be easy: just don't use the apps), but that the system itself snitches on you.
Are you starting an app or search for document, using the windows shell? Your phrase goes to Bing. That's much harder to avoid than just not using an app.
I did disable Cortana (it doesn't even work in the language version I want to use), but according to the firewall, it still tries to connects to bing.com.
They can track network connections or system calls for Win32. Also which DLLs the apps use. Any DLLs provided by MS can be instrumented and track any information that goes through them.
