[tripzilch]

Sounds like you're arguing against a very specific meaning of the term "spyware". One that I'm unfamiliar with. It's not even the historical meaning of the term. I remember when it used to mean any application that "phones home" for any reason whatsoever--when apps ran locally.

It's pretty clear what they are worried about. That's not really arguing in good faith. And "intent" has nothing to do with it--also there is no singular intent from an organisation, if it goes wrong it's just stuff that happened but nobody to point a finger at whose intent it was.

Also, anonymization measures are a joke. It just shows an "intent" to anonymize. But when it turns out that the data is in fact easily de-anonymized somewhere between the browser and the aggregation unit, or in combination with the newest "opt in" monitoring feature, again no fingers to point and your only recourse is better having been safe than sorry.