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France: Windows 10 Collects 'Excessive Personal Data', Issues Microsoft With Formal Warning (betanews.com)
France's National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) has ordered Microsoft to "stop collecting excessive data and tracking browsing by users without consent," adding that Microsoft must comply with the French Data Protection Act within next three months. BetaNews reports: In addition to this, the chair of CNIL has notified Microsoft that it needs to take "satisfactory measures to ensure the security and confidentiality of user data." The notice comes after numerous complaints about Windows 10, and a series of investigations by French authorities which revealed a number of failings on Microsoft's part. Microsoft is accused of not only gathering excessive data about users, but also irrelevant data. The CNIL points to Windows 10's telemetry service which gathers information about the apps users have installed and how long each is used for. The complaint is that "these data are not necessary for the operation of the service."
It's perfectly fine that Microsoft spies on you because Windows 10 is free! Unlike evil GOOGLE, who reads your email to find people who do things they don't like!
God, I'm tired of refuting this stupid shill argument. Google's services are free. They tell you explicitly what they do with your data. Google does not have a monopoly on email, you're free to use many other providers. Since I'm concerned about my privacy, I only use gmail as a spam box.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been evasive and deceptive about collecting peoples' data, completely silent about what they *do* with that information, and they collect all this info by leveraging their de facto monopoly on the desktop OS market (yes, you can use macOS or GNU, but billions of dollars of legacy Win32 programs and contracts are wrapped up on Microsoft's end, and so switching is not so simple for the privacy-concerned).