One implication of this that some people don't realize is that a brand new Ubuntu instance -- whether a physical host, a virtual machine, an EC2 instance, whatever -- immediately calls home to Canonical as soon as it spins up for the first time.

The functionality is included in the "base-files" package, which has a priority of "required" and is marked as an "essential" package. Thus, if you have an Ubuntu instance, it's nearly 100% guaranteed this is installed and enabled by default.

(If memory serves, this was added in 17.04 or thereabouts.)