Opting out of Microsoft’s Cortana still subjected users to unprecedented data capture

Evidence

According to an analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), even users who opted out of Cortana were subject to an “unprecedented” amount of information capture, including text, voice, and touch input; web tracking; and telemetry data on their general use, programs, session duration, and more. The EFF also found that the company chose to hold security functions hostage to personal data flows, claiming that security updates for the operating system would not function properly if users chose to limit location reporting. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 515

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s broader thesis about surveillance capitalism’s extraction logic and to the EFF’s technical findings; also links to the reader’s surveillance-literature library (e.g., Hito Steyerl, Kate Crawford work on platform capture). — connects to: Microsoft’s platform metrics reveal the sheer scale of the instrumentarian apparatus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1270
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the trees/infrastructure piece in that both concern hidden, quasi-infrastructural capture systems that users cannot easily exit.

Broader Connections

• Microsoft’s platform metrics reveal the sheer scale of the instrumentarian apparatus #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1270