I feel like I see this exact article every year or two and then it always comes out that you can easily get around this with some type of easy loophole. Of course that might still get the majority of people switching to an online account but..... if you are practically giving away an OS for free is that really so bad?

Not that I am saying I support this change personally of course - I would much rather have microsoft give a CLEAR and easy way to set up a "pro" OS without internet. Why am I paying for something that spys on me again?

For a completely legal way to get around this: Get a copy of Windows 10 LTSC 2019 or 2021.

LTSC 2019 is officially supported and updated for 10 years until 2029

LTSC 2021 is officially supported and updated for 5 years until 2027 (confusing I know)

LTSC 2019 IOT is supported even longer but I have not tested it and it may have additional restrictions that make it not useable as a desktop OS (2032)

Microsoft will officially try to steer you away from LTSC by saying it is for embedded devices and whatnot - this is basically just a straight up lie.

LTSC functions much more like Windows 7 in that it gets all of the regular security updates without the yearly giant "feature" updates. Managing it is much easier but you may not get the latest and greatest shiny microsoft new features. I have deployed it extensively in a corporate environment to certain people / situations and not run into any pieces of software that will not work on it.

LTSC also comes fairly stripped down compared to Windows 10 enterprise (a good thing in my opinion). However if you want things like the Windows 10 store its not hard to add it. If you enjoy talking to dumbest of the cousins in the Siri family then you can probably find a way to add Cortana back too :-D . It runs quite lean comparatively and with a few tweaks you can disable almost all Microsoft telemetry.

If you liked Windows 7 then LTSC is the closest you can get to that experience.

LTSC generally is only available to enterprise customers and education - no idea if you can purchase it stand alone. However an easy way to get a legal copy is simply to find someone with a valid school email or take some classes yourself - the microsoft volume licensing center generally gives away almost all of their software completely for free to students (even including their very expensive datacenter hypervisor licenses / server licenses / Config Management).