[zamnos]

Just because the DNS entry says telemetry in the name doesn't mean a thing. Just like if they'd called it medical-records-here.dropbox.com and were only sending telemetry to it.

Whenever the topic of telemetry comes up, I try and point out that just because someone says it's just telemetry, it doesn't mean a damn thing. If anyone thinks it's not interesting because they think things are obviously always wrong, I ask them: what does telemetry mean to you? What does it mean to the company?

Are you sure those two definitions are in 100% agreement?

[alkonaut]

If they were entirely transparent about what they transmitted yet didn’t stick to that, then that would be bad.

Similarly, they might have an opt out but not honor it (in the case of Dropbox it wouldn’t be noticeable)

So all those things aside, the interesting discussion is the discussion that assumes they are honest when they say they don’t store any PII in telemetry. That means, for example that the IP isn’t stored.

“Telemetry” as a term means nothing about what’s stored which is why I try to be specific and talk about “anonymous usage statistics and crash reports” or similar. Telemetry without PII tends to be exactly that.