H

How1

They will be collecting data no matter what, but the amount and type of data will depend on which of their services and products you use and if you're logged in or not. If you're paying a subscription you're probably using most of their services logged in? Whcih means you're more likely, not less likely to get your data collected and collated across different devices and services.

A snippet from the horse's mouth:

'How we use personal data
Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to:

Provide our products, which includes updating, securing, and troubleshooting, as well as providing support. It also includes sharing data, when it is required to provide the service or carry out the transactions you request.
Improve and develop our products.
Personalize our products and make recommendations.
Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers.
We also use the data to operate our business, which includes analyzing our performance, meeting our legal obligations, developing our workforce, and doing research.

In carrying out these purposes, we combine data we collect from different contexts (for example, from your use of two Microsoft products) or obtain from third parties to give you a more seamless, consistent, and personalized experience, to make informed business decisions, and for other legitimate purposes.

Our processing of personal data for these purposes includes both automated and manual (human) methods of processing. Our automated methods often are related to and supported by our manual methods. For example, to build, train, and improve the accuracy of our automated methods of processing (including artificial intelligence or AI), we manually review some of the predictions and inferences produced by the automated methods against the underlying data from which the predictions and inferences were made. For instance, with your permission and for the purpose of improving our speech recognition technologies, we manually review short snippets of voice data that we have taken steps to de-identify. This manual review may be conducted by Microsoft employees or vendors who are working on Microsoft’s behalf.'

All privacy and security aside for being obvious, I reinstalled Google/Stock in a moment of weakness and realized how much crap there was on there! There's just so much...Google. And everything comes with an algorithm/feed - something they can hook you in with. It's kind of obvious, but it's so overbearing once you've experienced the lack of it. That and every Google app is logged in all the time to your account, it's truly a suffocating experience. I came to my senses and moved back to GOS. The user experience of stock Pixel is not a good one for me.

So in a nutshell:

1. Minimalism - and the ability to have as much or as little on your phone as you like, which leads to number
2. Autonomy - the feeling your device belongs to you, like you did actually pay for it and can do with it what you like - one reason i originally moved away from Apple.
3. I really missed the storage scopes with stock and realised that was a big deal for me.

spring-onion

I've tried with the stock GOS keyboard and gboard (network revoked).

Same problem, same banks. I've tried from the Play Store and Aurora and with without/with all permissions enabled - no luck. The reason I switched to these banks was that they're not app only - glad I did now - it doesn't bode well for other banking apps. Seems like there's some kind of dark Google witchcraft afoot!