> How many times has a large corporation been able to indefinitely resist the pull of an alternative revenue stream where the majority of the cost has already been paid?

Agreed. They are mining and storing a mineral (our data) that they may enrich and sell (or lose via theft) one day in the future. This is the worrying part. This is a direct violation of GDPR which states that if you don't need the private data for an explicit purpose for the user (not your company) then you are not allowed to keep it.

But it’s not your data they are collecting.

They are collecting usage-stats, aggregated data, in a way which deliberately has been decoupled from your identity so they won’t have to face the kind of liability issues you just mentioned.

If anything, MS seems like one of the few big actors in IT which “gets” GDPR, and they are using it their advantage in the enterprise market.

Of course unwanted telemetry (no matter how anonymized) is going to taint that image somewhat.

If my actions generate the data then it's my data, decoupled from my identity or not. Without my actions there's no data for them, ergo it's my data.

If they'd like to give me some consideration for my data I'd be happy to entertain their offer. (Being granted the right to use the software, in cases where I'm paying for the license, doesn't constitute consideration to me.)

If there is transparency with regards to the algorithm used, name one good reason why anonymized data is verboten.

Not alleging there is such transparency here, just raising the question. It always seems like even anonymous telemetry is considered harmful, and I don't understand why that is from a conceptual standpoint.

It's conceptually difficult for me to understand how anonymised data can be useful in any way.

There's probably, like, a particular way I move the mouse from the bottom left to the top right corner of my screen. A 'mouse cursor gait', if you will.

To be frank though, there doesn't need to be a reason. You're treating this as a Stockholm-syndrome esque situation - I don't need to use Windows, I definitely don't need to justify why I don't like certain aspects of it.

Mine was more a general question, not specifically regarding Windows itself.

Some people do need to use Windows for various reasons. Consider yourself lucky if you don’t.

Your comment (action) just caused my aggregated cell-phone data-usage to increment by 200 bytes.

Do you own that data? Where do you draw the line?

Actually you don't. By that logic your order history on Amazon is your data but it is expressly not.