Have you read Windows EULA?

>Your entire post is an attempt to deflect the discussion from your claim: Microsoft monitoring is opt-in, not opt-out.
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>This statement is plain garbage as I have shown in the previous post. MS monitors users extensively and by default and usually with no opt-out option at all.
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>I have a Hotmail account and I get adverts related to South Africa which is the location I was at when I created the account. Hence I have am being advert-targeted. I can change the country location under profile to a false one but I cannot remove it. No opt-out. They use my IP address, which is now UK, for similar targeted adverts. They might not scan the emails for keywords but that will be only as a marketing and publicity stunt because Google thought of it first.
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>>Can you show me where those items carry personal information about YOU?
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>Obviously I cannot since the traffic is all HTTPS encrypted. But for sure they know the IP address and ISP and from that you can easily determine country and probably city and even more. Search for products like IP-2-Location.
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>But much worse than this (and this will be of interest to anyone who has not installed Windows 8 yet) - if you install Win8 you get asked during the install for an email address which you cannot bypass. It is going to be used as your login to Win8 and to "help" users connect to their Hotmail, App Store, etc. I didn't want to use my company address so I ended up using my Hotmail address and I wasn’t sure what would happen if I entered a fake address – would it send me an install key, something I need, etc.? This address cannot be removed once entered - there is no opt-out, no obvious way to remove this information from the system. You can switch back to using a plain username for login but that email address is there forever and always available to switch back to. You can’t even change it.
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>So to recap - Win8 -> they have my Hotmail email address (which has basic profile info which cannot be removed e.g. country), they have my IP address, my ISP, my hardware details. They can track me and monitor me when I use Bing, Hotmail, App store, 3rd party apps I download and try and install, websites I visit (Smart Filter), etc. etc. So I am being totally monitored as to my usage and surfing habits.
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>Now your defence of MS is that they use this information for product improvement and not advertising. Well quite frankly Craig you do not know that - you are not sufficiently in the need-to-know camp to have access to that information. Furthermore your “defence” detracts from the real issue; the real issue is not that I am being monitored for the purposes of targeted advertising, tsk, tsk. The real issue is that I am being monitored, period. And finally your defence does not support the claim that Microsoft monitoring is opt-in, not opt-out.
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>>I'm guessing you're running Chrome or Firefox for your browser. How do you think those applications know there's an update available? Or do you block those calls?
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>This is another attempt to defend MS by arguing that two wrongs make a right.
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>>In the case of Google, the information they collect contains PERSONAL information and it's then used to turn around and send me ads. It is not used to make Google products better. It is used to track WHO I am, what I'm looking at, what I'm searching for, and then to push ads to me.
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>Garbage – Google do not know my personal information like my name, age, address, etc. But yes they use targeted advertising and they are at least upfront about that (my statement is not an endorsement of Google practices). Your claim that they scan emails – you try to make it sound like people are reading emails when that is not the case at all. Amazon also use browsing history and purchases to push more products . You are being marketed to all the time; your credit card purchases, your cable television viewing habits (if you watch TV, I don’t), your purchases if you use cards. MS do all this when you purchase from MS, use their app store, use Hotmail, etc. Do you honestly think that they do not promote what they feel are products I might be interested in based on prior purchases? The only difference between Google advertising strategy and MS advertising strategy is variations of implementation.
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>>Google's entire business model is built for pushing ads. It is not a tech company. It's an ad agency.
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>Wrong, they are not an ad agency either. They are a billboard company, an ad-space agency. So … ? The west spends billions upon billions in advertising per year; every company of any size uses advertising. You advertise yourself with your blog and your cam-link and your posts and your bio and your book and your MVP and, and, and …. So?