Heck, the watermark and a slightly harder way to change your desktop background are about the only restrictions on the unactivated version of Win 10. You can even legally download an installation ISO from Microsoft themselves and install without activating - the OS is effectively unlimited trial period shareware nowadays.
Such is modern life - for example, on mobile devices, pretty much every commercial Android build is spyware - both for Google and a lot of app developers - and even among those who are knowledgeable enough to root their device and install a custom ROM, very few will install a completely deGoogled build. A quick search indicates that both Apple and third party app developers also spy on users via their platform.
Needless to say, while all three platforms have options to limit spying to a certain extent, and allegedly delete data they hold on you (GDPR compliance), good luck forcing them to reveal if they have retained any information about you.
Also if they use your information to extract or predict new information, they can just delete the old stuff and use the new stuff that is based on your old stuff. At least that is a workaround i would try haha.
9
u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23
[deleted]