I'm a PC gamer. I have Windows 10 installed. If you think sticking with Windows 7, 8.1, or Vista, XP, 95, or whatever for that matter keeps you from the prying eyes of "the man"... You are wrong. Period. If you truly care about privacy go off the grid. I also care about privacy, but being a gamer and limited to Windows for the most part (lots of games, I have a problem, don't judge) I don't have a huge say in the matter. When I want to be more secure I use Linux on my laptop. I'm not condoning the state of things, I just don't want people to think that staying with an outdated OS will keep them "safe" because the fact is, it won't. Short of going completely off the grid, there's not a lot the average Joe can do about it. Oh, and you can uninstall Solitaire. I welcome any privacy tips in the comments for those interested.
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[–] mjmoore ago
I turned off the ad tracking. I'll give Cortana a go and see how useful it is. I have the leaked APK installed on my Android phone too, so it will be interesting to compare it to Google Now. If it proves to me useless over the course of a month, that will also be disabled. I think Microsoft is scrambling to learn more contextual data about customers because everyone uses Google for search, and carries around either an iPhone or an Android phone which has access to their location history. If you went from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and never really used Windows Phone, Microsoft is more or less starting from scratch. See what works for you, and what you consider to be useful. Turn off whatever tracking or contextual awareness features you find to be less than useful.