Well, you make my point. What you linked to is definitely not telemetry.

So is your point that what Microsoft is doing is in fact spyware and not technically "telemetry", since what I linked to is what they are actually doing? In that case, to avoid confusion, we should stop referring to it as telemetry.

Yes, agreed. In that example, that was spyware, but calling "telemetry" spyware by default is wrong.

> What you linked to is definitely not telemetry.

So, the OP was correct in calling it just spyware?

Why do people jump into defending corporations that repeatedly abuse their customers when they do unknowable hidden actions?

We're not defending any company here, don't twist my words. I am saying "telemetry" is not spyware, if it actually serves its purpose. Companies abusing "telemetry" to extract more information than they should is a different story.

I disagree - they are correct because once collected, the data is fed into a blackbox, and a user has no way of knowing if the data collected is - by your definition - spyware or telemetry. The beat way to treat this Schrodinger's telemetry, is to assume it's spyware.