Privacy Policy for VS code makes me glad that Google doesn't own it. With so many people mentioning it here, I decided to look it up, looks nice. The privacy policy links to an actually nice and extra thoughtful, 'opens your eyes to all kinds of different scenarios where microsoft gets your data" kind of thing, which was surprising and pleasant.

However broad the policy shows people various things with different products, it basically doesn't say much of anything about vs code, and starts discussing enterprise environments are situations in which you need to talk to your enterprise admin about privacy stuff, yada yada.

Going back to the vs code page, it says they use telemetry and crash dump reporting. It does say that users can follow a link for info about turning off crash reporting.

I am not sure what the exact definition of telemetry is, and if it varies from company to company. After seeing that MSoft was sucking in every keystroke typed on a windows machine, and having a terrible experience with UN-removable one-drive with an office 201X install, I've lost faith in what Msoft has become, and trust them less than free products from google.

Maybe there is some way to run vscode in a VM that is 100% blocked from the internet and that would prevent it from sending tons of data?

Maybe I am missing something this early and no coffee yet.