If we call every issue equally important privacy violation, one day we will overlook the one really important issue, which this issue isn’t.

Or another analogy. If Google threatened to blow a nuclear bomb over Manhattan, Google gaining knowledge about competitors would not be an issue.

Yeah, Google spying for other apps is bad. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees.

(Also, please don’t use ad hominem arguments, the conversation becomes emotionally loaded rather than coldly rational.)

Edit: also, your entire justification for this spying is that it could be worse. That reads to me like an ad hominem attack in itself.

I use some numbers which are my estimations, and not random numbers. I could explain how I made these estimations if you asked (Short version by definition of risk which is damage multiplied by probability). Also if you disagree with these estimations, you are welcome to suggest your better estimations, how these three scenarios compare to each other.

> your entire justification for this spying is that it could be worse. That reads to me like an ad hominem attack in itself.

It would be ad hominem attack if I said it could be worse for you. But I didn’t, and not everything is about you, so my argument wasn’t ad hominem.

Also, probably best to admit this conversation is derailed and stop it for the good.

"Within 38 hours of resuming transmission, the flag was located by a collaboration of 4chan users, who used airplane contrails, flight tracking, celestial navigation, and other techniques to determine that it was located in Greeneville, Tennessee.... after a field at the location was set on fire, the artists were again forced to relocate the project." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaBeouf,_R%C3%B6nkk%C3%B6_%26_...

And it gets better (at another location): "In the early hours of October 25, 2017, vandals unsuccessfully attempted to set fire to the flag using a flaming drone, before crashing the remotely-piloted aircraft."

Never underestimate how much can be gleaned from leaked information, or the extent to which harm can be done with very little information.

Also, being able to reach a person on the phone regarding my Azure billing was radically different to being in contact (or lack thereof) with Google.

¹Watch out for your privacy, though, if you don't remove Google "services" from your devices.

You can see what information (broadly) Microsoft collects through Windows 10 in the opt-in screen for telemetry. More detailed information has been published here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-wi...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/diagnostic-data-viewer/9n8...