How exactly are big techs spying on users?

indigomadelin I could write my own long paper on how Microsoft spy on people, I’ve been a long time windows user and I’ve written privacy guides for windows users how to minimise the spying bloatware and services from Microsoft.

Basically many many components and services in windows log everything a person does by default
There are logs that show everything from what websites you visit, when you visited them, when you powered on and off your system, where and when you last run a program, when you last opened a file what you opened, the list goes on and that’s without the telemetry calling back home to Microsoft to send copies of your personal data. With windows 10 and windows 11 it not forces the installation of copilot so by default and if you uninstall it, Microsoft reinstall it in the background without consent and that’s its own nightmare, the ai if enabled will log everything you say, do and type under the false pre-tense of being “helpful” you know in case you forget something, but really 🤔 I suspect it’s something law enforcement will be so happy about because forensically it will be a gold mine of data and for all you know that could be, being sent to Microsoft.

As a windows users I learned to disable each and every privacy risk and I blocked telemetry both at dns router level and at a firewall level and my operating system is set to log nothing, remember nothing. I expect if you used wireshark to monitor network packets to any Microsoft service you would be shocked at what data gets sent

One could go as far as to request a copy of all of your data from Microsoft and you’d probably be shocked what comes back. I know google is just as bad, a lot of these companies are but I poured years of research in to how Microsoft snoops on its users. Windows isn’t my daily driver it’s what I use to game and to encode my videos but with windows 11 privacy is getting a nightmare for Microsoft users since now they force you to login with a Microsoft account to even use a fresh install of windows 11 and each update they patch the ways in which user can bypass the online account requirements.

Forcing users to link a pc or laptop to an account forces everything you to do be linked to an online Microsoft identity and they probably log hardware identifiers, gps information. The best way to approach researching any company that spies is to look at their system in the eye of a forensic examiner even going as far as to analyse the network traffic with wireshark or similar open sourced software and if that’s not possible set up new accounts for research, keep them on a VMware or virtual system and do a request for a copy of the personal information they hold related to your test accounts after using them for a little while.

In relation to google I know that google assistant sends recordings back to google and they hold those recordings and if they do that I’m sure they do that if you use voice with lost google services from home nest to assistant to voice typing and voice calls again you could request such information.

I’m forced to have google nest in my home but I have it on a remote on off switch, controlled over an infrared remote control and it lives off 99% of the time and only powered on when it’s needed for voice controls but even then I’m weaning on to an open sourced offline assistant and encouraging the household to move over to that instead.

If you want to find out how Microsoft spy on you, I wrote a privacy search guide on my GitHub under the same username and it goes in to details of which windows services and feature logs information and how it’s disabled.