- they are showing "suggested apps" in the start menu, which can be turned off. The others are OneDrive and Edge suggestions and can also be turned off.

How about they ask users first if it is okay to do this? That is a better approach, opt in.

- those apps are installed at the time of installation and can be removed. If so, they are not reinstalled ever again.

That wasn't true for the first few years and even Microsoft admitted it in one of the release notes that they weren't retaining option to never reinstall the apps. AU update reinstalled these apps for me.

- telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.

Again, they should be opt-in, not forced and found out later that they were collecting more data than they should.

- MS found (via telemetry) that users don't like installing updates, and thus left themselves open to many vulnerabilities that antivirus systems don't even look for. So, MS has chosen to force users into a more secure paradigm.

If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.

>If they needed telemetry to confirm what everyone has known for decades, they have a bigger problem.

If there is any single thing that I've learned during my time on Earth, it is that people, collectively, "know" a lot of things that aren't actually true. Everyone knows that pouring sugar in a car gas tank will kill the carb or fuel injectors. (This is false.) Everyone knows that you taste sweet with a different part of the tongue as sour. (This is False.) Everyone knows that waking a sleepwalker is dangerous. (It isn't.) Everyone knows that Napoleon was short. (He wasn't.) ad infinitum... I will not fault MS for taking the time to actually prove a suspicion true or false, to themselves or to anyone else. This happens far too rarely, and a lot of people believe a lot of things that aren't true as a result.

The people MS are aiming for with the ads are not the type of people who would ever opt-in to these things. Microsoft know (again, via telemetry it is proven) that clueful users will either know how to opt-out of thing they do not like, or will know how to find out how to opt-out. An opt-in preference would be preferred to myself and probably a large portion of users, of course, and would probably result in approximately 0% participation, which is very likely not what Microsoft are aiming for.

With the Creator's Update, pre-installed applications, once uninstalled, will not be reinstalled when the OS is upgraded. I, personally can attest to this one. I've been installing the fast-ring builds since the Anniversary Update, and I uninstalled Candy Crush Saga exactly once. It has not returned.

removing Freedom from users is definitely anti-consumer no matter how you look at it.

>telemetry. Scary. Every application you install does this.

I'm really quite sure the applications on my machine don't. Then again I only run things I have some way to compile myself.

You have audited code for everything you run?

You don't need to audit the code to know if something sends telemetry. For many things (such as your kernel) you can rely on reputation/quickly searching through github issues. For others you can rely on packet sniffing.

I'm pretty confident that the only things I use regularly on my computer (not counting my phone here) that send telemetry are

- Firefox (opt out, but prompts you)

- Visual Studio Code (opt out, doesn't prompt you, requires re-opting out on updates)

- rustup (not sure if opt in or out, don't mind if it's recording telemetry)

I don't remember if we turned rustup's on, but we must not have, because everyone felt very strongly it should be opt-in.

My applications sure dont. If my word processor was phoning hone with encrypted data, ANY data, id be in serious trouble with many people (clients, professional associations, my insurer, a bunch of different police types). Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.

> Some of us do things with our computers that we legally cannot share with anyone. So no, not all aps do telemetry.

Unfortunately, "that would be bad for me" does not imply "that is not happening"

Telemetry is awesome for devs but totally opaque to end users. It's very difficult to know what your applications are really doing on the backend. You have to start packet sniffing, and that's a pretty deep rabbit hole.

Not opaque to me. I (and others) audit my machines. Unussual network activity from my secure work-only desktop will be detected and eventually traced to whatever process triggered it. That's basic network security imho that shouldnt go unnoticed on any regulated/secure network.

I find that very hard to believe. Also, telemetry comes in many forms, many of which are not visible as unwanted network activity.

An application could:

* send telemetry in URL parameters when it checks for updates

* send telemetry data exactly one time after, say, an hour of use.

* send telemetry data during a time when you are already sending a lot of traffic, and send it to an amazon web service endpoint (good luck plucking that out of normal network activity based on IP data alone, when so much software communicates with most likely the same AWS endpoints.)

My point is that there is probably < 5 people on the planet who scrutinize every scheduled task, every Wireshark trace, and everything else well enough to know for certain that nothing is going on. The only people who know for sure that no telemetry is going on are those who airgap their PC from any network at all.