Hasn't Windows Update been pulling this kind of data forever though? And you can go to Steam's hardware survey and get the gist of this for free. What would be far more valuable to Microsoft is knowing issues with a driver, they are major source of critical bugs. I think part of the problem here is that some have turned the issue into nothing but rampant paranoia about the unlikely and not so practical and glossing over obvious benefits in knowing "Hey, this nVidia is having issues with Office."
Yes windows update has been doing it and it pisses a lot of people off as well. I think they are adding a opt out for driver updates though at last.
As for steam... sure that applies to games played on steam. If I don't want steam having that info I don't buy from steam, not many developers that don't sell their software direct.
As for driver issues... right cause MS is constantly updating Closed source Nvidia drivers ? Issues with Nvidia hardware drivers are sorted by Nvidia not MS.
Its not paranoia when you know for a fact something is happening. Yes MS sells install base data. That isn't a secret or something.
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