That is not how telemetry works. It is not spying or a privacy issue. Categorizing it as such only dilute the meaning of both terms so the real issues won't be taken serious.

If you feel like a bunch of developers getting info about how many times the world clicks on a button hurts you personally, then don't install it. Calling it a privacy issue it taking it too far.

It is absolutely both a spying and privacy issue. What I decide is private, or what information constitutes spying is arbitrary.

I love windows terminal, but it should collect nothing by default. Another subjective opinion.

Arh yes, the good old "everything means nothing" argument. I'm sorry to say, but words have meaning [1][2], and most of them are formally defined.

And yes, I think that an HTTP POST to Microsoft's Windows Terminal team saying "UserUsedTerminalInInterative = true" is not a privacy issue, nor is it spying.

Can you explain to me how this information hurt users of Windows Terminal? If it indeed is spying, it should be possible to demonstrate how it is used for hostile purposes or why such an innocuous piece of information must be kept a secret.

Until then, I think it is fair for the Windows Terminal team to collect such basic telemetry for their software

[1]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spying

[2]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/privacy

What a low effort comment.

Yes, words have meanings.

Company A May decide telemetry exposes too much internal information to a potential competitor.

Company B May decide that telemetry does not release anything they want kept secret.

Those are subjective opinions. If I want the data to be kept secret and somebody takes it without my explicit approval, that is a privacy violation. If I don’t care, it’s not. Same thing with spying. If I deem it a secret, it is now spying to take it from me.

It appears to send back the names of programs, so MS is learning when their users do shady activities (torrenting, youtube-dl) or use competitors' products (aws) or even the names of internal tools.

No you wouldn’t. It is taking data you haven’t explicitly approved for release. Potential sensitive info.

That is the definition of spying.

You know most of what an actual spy collects isn’t super secret stuff right? Aggregated unclassified information can still reveal secrets.

What is sensitive about knowing some unidentifiable person clicked a button 10 times?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

All that shows is a lack of imagination on your part.

It’s very easy to de-anonymize telemetry data, track users across IP addresses, collate with other application’s telemetry data, determine which users are in the same places at the same time, and generally extract a huge amount of data about people, who they spend time with, where they spend time, and what they do there.

Telemetry is unequivocally spyware.

It feeds a firehose of data to the internet, and both data brokers and state actors do absolutely everything they can to gobble it up.