Be that as it may, I think it’s very sinister.
But it’s common knowledge that the other “big boys” are at it too. Not only do they use your data for targeted advertising (which they sell for profit), but it’s all made available to the US NSA too.
73,
Walt
Part of the Windows 10 advanced install, allows you to chose what data you authorise to be sent to Microsoft. This was the same in Windows 8.1 (and probably 8 as well). If a user simply accepts the default, quick install, I agree, it would seem that they automatically agree to the options that Microsoft want. Whether such a method of agreement is legal (especially in Germany) is questionable.
I’m not a Microsoft fan, never have been, but if they are being open now about what they would like to do with certain data, that has to be better than some other companies who used to change their agreements with users almost on a mothly basis and you had to keep going back in and turning things off (facebook).
A lot of Hyperbol is generated by Microsofts competitors - as does Microsoft on their opponents (remember the Google Ice Cream man ad?). It’s a reflection on how immature the computer industry still is after over 50 years of existence!
If the service is free then you are the product.
At least there are some software knobs to turn off the collection. Lacking in Android.
Ha ha ha! How do you know the “software knobs” work?
Well, there’s a thing. Surprise, surprise!
73,
Walt
'Coz I is clever Walt!
All “the bogeyman is watching you” issues aside, you have to be able to stop this or no business will buy your software. Now businesses buying volume licences of Windows and Office etc. is currently where the money is. The move to the cloud and SaaS (software as a service) is great idea but no company is going to put commercially sensitive info on the cloud. We have people in the office I work in working on customer semiconductor design issues and they can’t get copies of the customer’s docs. They have to go to a separate room and VPN to the customer’s network and access the data online and they can’t save it local. There’s no way that data will end up on cloud servers or the docs will be written with Office365. Ironic because it’s the design for a network card aimed at servers which will be used for cloud hosting
So you will be able to turn data collection settings off. From a business view, group policy settings allows you to force all machines in your domain to keep the settings off. Whether you will need a Pro or Enterprise licence to fully disable the collection is another issue.
But specifically you can watch what happens at the network level. On the Windows machine you can use TcpView to see which network sockets are open but that does require monitoring the window. More effectively is to firewall off things like vortex.microsoft.com in your router and get the router to notify you of access to forbidden domains. Even if your router doesn’t do level of firewall control and notification, you can use the Parental Controls in you router to lock out the data collection domains.
You can also use a “hosts” file on Windows (and other operating systems). This is a file of domain names and IP addresses and you can set up what is known as hosts.deny. Any access to an IP or URL in the hosts.deny file is dropped and this is checked before the data even leaves the network card on your PC.
I’ll grant you that the average Joe Schmoe may not be aware of these features and the default enabling of data collection is insidious for that reason. But life’s a bitch and then you die. 
Very interesting indeed!
Is there a similar guide for Windows 7?
73,
Walt