For me a bigger concern is that Windows 11 requires MS account, and making harder and harder to bypass it. This is a disrespect for my freedom and privacy. The hardware is not the biggest issue because it might catch up eventually. https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-...
It’s creepy as fuck, and for no real benefit to me that I can tell.
The privacy-destroying "telemetry" continues to transmute from a theoretical problem to a realistic concern too.
For example, many printers puts forensic marks onto pages identifying their serial number, while MS/Apple log all your device serial numbers, which in turn is subject to seizure/threats/theft.
The upshot is you can't print an "anonymous" flyer stating I Dislike The Regime without the risk that thugs of said regime will be outside your door later.
> memory ‘live sampling’
"Citizen, the signature of a Wrongthink picture was detected in your telescreen..."
What is stopping similar authoritarians from cracking down using these kind of features and registrations?
https://newrepublic.com/post/212340/ice-poll-worker-election...
You can obviously send a lot of personal data through Microsoft services that use that account, but merely logging in that way doesn’t seem to just upload your life to Microsoft, either.
It's a simple example of how the arcane telemetry they demand is actually far more dangerous to you than it first appears.
This is incredibly common when it comes to security and privacy issues, where it's not immediately obvious how things can be abused. (The truly obvious things tend to get fixed, after all.)
> I don’t think [...] your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry
My brother in tech, I think you're blinding yourself out of forlorn hope here.
Microsoft has spent over a decade increasing the mandatory "telemetry", which contains a complete profile all your computer hardware with serial numbers plus all the software you run and when you run it [0]. The same company has consistently made it harder and harder for anyone to not sign up for an account in order to even install the OS.
They already collect the data in a very deliberate and strategic way. What you ought to be seeking is evidence they don't keep it.
After reading it, I am still not sure I see how this is particularly alarming information. I can see how it would help a forensic investigator who has physical access to the device.
The most personal aspect seems to be the list of installed and removed programs, which I would agree is stepping across boundaries of privacy.
The paper notes that this whole studied telemetry package is part of the telemetry service you can opt out of.
The rest seems to be device identifiers and connected devices. They mention that the device identifiers could lead to having part of an encryption key but that part of the paper seemed really vague. My takeaway from that section was that maybe it could lead an investigator to knowing which specific piece of hardware to use in order to decrypt something, but they’d likely need physical access to that hardware.
I get the impression is that the intent here is for an IT department or Windows developers to be able to respond to cyberattacks and deal with malware and the like. The paper you linked made that aspect pretty clear.
The printer thing is a good example, but again, just too unrelated to this particular subject. At least, in my opinion.
Now they could prove it was your printer (and that has happened multiple times in prosecutions!), even if you printed it years ago.
You don’t see how that is a problem?
Nobody can come in my house without a judicial warrant. And, hopefully, someday there are better privacy laws in the US that mean that Microsoft must handle its collected data more responsibly.
If your society has succumbed to serious oppression, does evidence really matter anyway? If the cartel is knocking on your door, do they need evidence to do what they want to do?
Evidence itself is just evidence. It can condemn you and it can exonerate you. If it can be proved that something came from my printer, that means my lawyer can also prove something didn't come from my printer.
I am by no means saying that I would personally willingly sign up for telemetry, or that I think it's better to have than not. I'm just not in alarm over it because I think that response is disproportional.
Can you elaborate on the "or pay them $30 a year not to spy on you" part?
Ctrl-F isn't finding any mention of that in either https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-10-quietly-gets-one-more... or https://waspdev.com/articles/2026-03-12/i-ll-probably-never-....
I really don’t know how a no-brainer security implement like that became such a lighting rod.
As far as React being used in the OS, well, if we are arguing about underlying technology there are plenty of flawed implementations to be found on a number of platforms. I don’t think the end user is concerned.
I say all this as someone who does not recommend Windows and no longer uses it, to be clear.
Now you have system level events tied to a user, that might also purchase an office product and pump out more events.
This is not a new concept. What's new is that microsoft is enforcing it. But making it less obvious on how to disable the requirement when you install the OS. Or in most cases require hacks to do so.
iOS is worse than MacOS. I was only talking about MacOS.
Their goal is to help their OEM buddies sell new computers despite the fact that PCs have been “good enough” for a decade or longer, because those new PCs will come with Windows and the cycle is what keeps each one relevant.
Otherwise they'd risk being usurped, which almost happened circa 2006 with the one-two-three-four punch of GNOME2 (great UI), Compiz (‘wow’ factor that gets people to jump in and try it), OpenOffice-dot-org 2.0 (when OpenDocument Format was getting a ton of press), and Windows Longhorn/Vista being famously late-and-then-hated. Luckily for Microsoft, the Desktop Linux community decided to throw all that out with Wayland (which is Fine but set us back two decades) and GNOME3 which is irredeemable — *James Rolfe voice* what were they thinking??
Windows has to be just functional enough to keep businesses that use it from raising a stink about it.
Some old versions of windows also had newer hardware requirements (95 dropped support for 16 bit systems, Vista required a DirectX9 GPU).
There's nothing really new here.
The people I've switched from windows to Mageia since win11 all love it.
(As great as Mageia is, it does have small repos compared to Debian or fedora.)
I doubt they've even heard of Mageia.