[nigma]

Telemetry at the OS level bothers me to the point that I'm not Windows user anymore and I I'm not planning to become one anytime soon.

But to be fair one should point out that Apple is also collecting telemetry data (search system logs for com.apple.telemetry) without any toggles in the system preferences.

Search results don't bring much info on what is collected and how it is being used. Does anyone here have insight into Apple telemetry granularity?

[sametmax]

Fun thing is, they probably do the same, but:

- will do it well enough so that you can't find out

- control PR well enough so that it won't leak out

- have enough fan boys that if by any miracle people learn about it they'd be cool with it anyway

[hedora]

My take on this is that Microsoft is stuck in an awful compromise. Google's stuff is free because their business model is surveillance. Apple compromised the user experience to preserve privacy until it could push the machine learning algorithms to user devices. Siri lagged (lags?) Google, but it can now find all my locally stored cat pictures, even though Apple doesn't have a copy of them. There are toggles in iOS to prevent Apple from gathering personal info.

Microsoft is trying to double dip: Windows wants to be a premium product like Apple, and the cloud division wants to be Google. The CEO is from the cloud division.

To get more user data, many teams in Microsoft backported data collection to existing Windows devices without an opt-in (or even opt-out) at the same time they made telemetry mandatory, effectively compromising millions of devices.

This completely destroyed any trust privacy-minded users had in them. Now the telmetry team (which is probably actually acting in good faith, and just trying to make stuff better) is the lightning rod for all the other inappropriate data collection being done in Redmond.

This is why there is such a disconnect between Apple's response to privacy issues (usually: "oops, crap. We'll fix it in the next release") and Microsoft's responses, like this article, where the spokesperson doesn't have the knowledge or authority to provide honest answers.

[pseudalopex]

Microsoft allows more control over data collection in Enterprise than in Home or Pro. That seems like a calculation about how much each group could push back, not acting in good faith.

[dawnerd]

When you setup macOS and after updates it asks if you'd like to send diagnostic data to apple and crash logs to devs. That's probably what you're seeing.

[api]

Are there any good analyses out there of what telemetry OSX sends?

I did find this which is interesting and helpful:

https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide

[hendersoon]

MacOS telemetry can be opted-out.

That's really the problem. Microsoft doesn't allow you to opt-out.