[ekianjo]

Is it that hard to keep existing settings, or is it just that there is an obvious incentive for them to revert said settings to spy on you as you use Windows?

If they had nothing to gain, you could claim it's a misunderstanding or a bug, but when there are obvious benefits into letting such things happen, I'd say you should be suspicious as to why it's even occurring.

[ocdtrekkie]

This is true, but I think we also see a lot of Windows issues that have no obvious gain for Microsoft, to the extent that it definitely seems like incompetence is a common source for issues over malfeasance. It is possible Microsoft is vastly smarter than I give them credit and has carefully buried their malfeasance in their incompetence, but I don't think we have any evidence of nearly that much cleverness on Microsoft's part any time recently. ;)