Microsoft Windows 11 in 2025 - the constant battle for privacy

Microsoft and the Ongoing Battle of Privacy

In this day and age of A.I., online phishing, data brokers, and other nefarious ways big tech and scammers try to collect (steal) information through the fine print of service agreements or electronic communication, it is vital that everyone reviews and acknowledges what they are agreeing to when using a service or buying a new device of any kind.

I recently have been doing research about OEM and app's permission clause when signing up or using a service (SAAS). Recently, Microsoft has been the main culprit on my list over Google simply because I had always thought that when I buy a PC, it's mine. I own it. What I do on my PC is my business. Google, for the most part has become very transparent in their data collection practices, and being that they are always under scrutiny for how they collect data I trust Google more than Microsoft or Apple.

When Microsoft started allowing upgrades for Windows for free (years ago there used to be a one time $99 upgrade fee), it never crossed my mind that they would become so aggressive in collecting data from their customers. I just assumed that they started offering the complimentary upgrade in order to keep their market value higher than the competition. In light of idea, Apple followed suit. Apple used to charge a $49 upgrade fee on Macs years ago and today they do not. Why? They are collecting data from their users.

So what do we do to protect our information on these systems? In a Windows environment, there are several settings you can change about what Microsoft collects, beyond the minimum required data collection within the Settings --> Apps section on your PC. Under this setting, you have to access each and every section to turn off information that you do want to share with Apps and Microsoft. There are additional settings that you can access to turn off telemetry in addition to these default settings, but the only downfall of doing this is that once Microsoft updates your PC, you may have to go back and change the settings again. The transparency of settings on a Mac is not quite as easy access - it's very limited in Mac OS unless you know how to code, so most people put their personal information blindly in Apple's hands.

In the past, I have dabbled in Linux Distros, and I really love how privacy focused the OS and the Kernel is (Linux is the Kernel (Core) of a distribution, and the Distro is the actual OS like Windows and Mac OS), but I never stayed with a Linux Distro due to my dependency of many Windows only apps. Today Linux has become a huge community of developers and contributors that there is usually an application that could easily take the place of many, if not all, Windows and / or Mac OS apps.

Back when I used a Linux Distro, coding in the terminal was something that you needed to learn so you could download apps from GitHub. Today, again thanks to the devoted community of developers and contributors to Linux, you don't need to learn code, but it helps to know the basics in case you do need to access Terminal.

Linux is privacy focused, and so are the app developers / Linux Distros, so why wouldn't I switch back since Microsoft (and Apple) have clearly gotten out of hand with data collection of their users? Well, there could be an issue with hardware compatibility, depending on the Linux Distro you choose. However, the most popular distros which are trusted by many large corporations and used on data servers worldwide are compatible for new and older systems. The two that I would suggest looking over are Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora Linux. These distros are also offered by a few large tech laptop manufacturers, such as Dell and Lenovo as an alternative to Windows.

In conclusion, I think simply be writing this article, I've talked myself into installing a Linux Distro on my laptop as a trial to become familiar with Linus once again. I value my personal and business privacy more than anything else in this data collection driven era.

What do you think about trying a Linux Distro or if you're currently using one, which one do you prefer?