[hedora]

MS engineers can login to your machine and run programs / download documents. There also is some keylogger that sends data back without warning you. I can't remember which bits you can turn off, which bits got backported to 8/7 without warning, etc.

To make a long story short: From what anyone can tell, there is no way for consumers to obtain a version of windows that has security patches and has the ability to run with sane privacy settings. There is an acceptable version called Windows LTSB, but you have to pirate it.

This has been discussed ad nauseum on HN and elsewhere.