By Oluwaseun Bamisile
Publication Date: 2026-10-11 14:00:00
User data is like gold right now, and it’s more valuable than ever. Software companies will do anything to collect this data, just like Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones. In fact, these companies thrive on it.
This data is usually used to serve you personalized ads, train AI models, improve products, and sometimes sold to third parties. A lot of this happens without explicit consent, often through tracking tools or by burying permissions and data-collection practices in long-term service agreements.
To no one’s surprise, Microsoft is one of the biggest players in the user data-collecting game. What surprised me, though, is just how much data Windows is feeding to Microsoft.
