alt Hacker News> The printer thing seems pretty unrelated
It's a simple example of how the arcane telemetry they demand is actually far more dangerous to you than it first appears.
This is incredibly common when it comes to security and privacy issues, where it's not immediately obvious how things can be abused. (The truly obvious things tend to get fixed, after all.)
> I don’t think [...] your Microsoft account has anything to do with telemetry
My brother in tech, I think you're blinding yourself out of forlorn hope here.
Microsoft has spent over a decade increasing the mandatory "telemetry", which contains a complete profile all your computer hardware with serial numbers plus all the software you run and when you run it [0]. The same company has consistently made it harder and harder for anyone to not sign up for an account in order to even install the OS.
They already collect the data in a very deliberate and strategic way. What you ought to be seeking is evidence they don't keep it.
I appreciate the fact that you sent over a very good paper.
After reading it, I am still not sure I see how this is particularly alarming information. I can see how it would help a forensic investigator who has physical access to the device.
The most personal aspect seems to be the list of installed and removed programs, which I would agree is stepping across boundaries of privacy.
The paper notes that this whole studied telemetry package is part of the telemetry service you can opt out of.
The rest seems to be device identifiers and connected devices. They mention that the device identifiers could lead to having part of an encryption key but that part of the paper seemed really vague. My takeaway from that section was that maybe it could lead an investigator to knowing which specific piece of hardware to use in order to decrypt something, but they’d likely need physical access to that hardware.
I get the impression is that the intent here is for an IT department or Windows developers to be able to respond to cyberattacks and deal with malware and the like. The paper you linked made that aspect pretty clear.
The printer thing is a good example, but again, just too unrelated to this particular subject. At least, in my opinion.