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<blockquote data-quote="South Park" data-source="post: 857715" data-attributes="member: 73194">I understand that &quot;basic&quot; telemetry, which Home users can now easily enable, just collects enough information for Microsoft to provide security updates and to be made aware of compatibility and update problems. &quot;Full&quot; telemetry, which is enabled by default and was previously difficult to disable, gave Windows 10 an early bad rap for privacy because it did collect detailed usage data, possibly including filenames viewed.*As to Windows Defender, its privacy policy is pretty good for a cloud-based product. They say that that they&#039;ll ask the user before uploading any file likely to contain personal information and that they&#039;ll never use such information to identify or contact the user. All modern AV products connect with the cloud to analyze suspicious files and provide updated protection, so I accept the small theoretical privacy risk.What Avast did was different: they tricked users into allowing intrusive and unnecessary data collection for marketing purposes by inaccurately implying the data could not be de-anonymized and would be used to vaguely improve the customer experience.* HTG describes MS telemetry in detail here (2017): <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/273311/the-difference-between-basic-enhanced-and-full-usage-data-in-windows-10/" target="_blank">What Do Windows 10’s Basic and Full Telemetry Settings Actually Do?</a>GHacks (2018): <a href="https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/12/configure-telemetry-windows-10/" target="_blank">Configure Telemetry settings on Windows 10 devices - gHacks Tech News</a></blockquote>

[QUOTE="South Park, post: 857715, member: 73194"] I understand that "basic" telemetry, which Home users can now easily enable, just collects enough information for Microsoft to provide security updates and to be made aware of compatibility and update problems. "Full" telemetry, which is enabled by default and was previously difficult to disable, gave Windows 10 an early bad rap for privacy because it did collect detailed usage data, possibly including filenames viewed.* As to Windows Defender, its privacy policy is pretty good for a cloud-based product. They say that that they'll ask the user before uploading any file likely to contain personal information and that they'll never use such information to identify or contact the user. All modern AV products connect with the cloud to analyze suspicious files and provide updated protection, so I accept the small theoretical privacy risk. What Avast did was different: they tricked users into allowing intrusive and unnecessary data collection for marketing purposes by inaccurately implying the data could not be de-anonymized and would be used to vaguely improve the customer experience. * HTG describes MS telemetry in detail here (2017): [URL="https://www.howtogeek.com/273311/the-difference-between-basic-enhanced-and-full-usage-data-in-windows-10/"]What Do Windows 10’s Basic and Full Telemetry Settings Actually Do?[/URL] GHacks (2018): [URL="https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/12/configure-telemetry-windows-10/"]Configure Telemetry settings on Windows 10 devices - gHacks Tech News[/URL] [/QUOTE]

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