> There's also a warning the first time you use it

If you'd actually read the issue before commenting, you'd realize that this behavior was added after people complained about the telemetry not being obvious. It's the sixth comment on the issue (by guardrex) - not even that far down. The very next comment is an MS contributor saying that he makes a good point that it wasn't obvious, and that they'd improve it in a future release. Which is why there's now a warning when using it. I mean, the link is old, but it should be understood that an issue on preview tooling from over a year ago might not represent the current state of the tooling. But yeah, on first release, all the notice you got was a blog post, if you even bothered to look for it.

It's also a fair point that it's still not made very clear that what information is collected under what circumstances. It's a huge problem with Windows, so you can understand why people have their jimmies rustled even over something small. Especially since windows 10 makes it impossible to completely opt-out of telemetry. Even after disabling the visual options, it's still regularly calling out to Microsoft servers. Even if you disable the services, updates will turn them back on and other services will start it up. And then it chews through your system's CPU like it's starving. Which means it's probably collecting far more data than it needs.

Finally, sometimes it's not even about what's collected or that there's an opt-out procedure. Sometimes just having a mechanism for transferring data can cause problems. 'sushihangover' comments on that issue that someone failed their HIPAA audit based on this behavior. I've no idea if it's an accurate example, but there are government, medical and enterprise environments where any non-sanctioned traffic is strictly prohibited and can cause liabilities.

Telemetry needs to be easy, simple, and thorough in its opt-out mechanisms. Microsoft has failed its users on this frequently and recently. I don't think this particular instance is that bad, but they should be doing damage control in all products based on the public perception that they're spying on users.

SQL Server Management Studio, on the other hand, is much better about its analytics opt-in request. Microsoft is a big company with varied practices. Not every division deserves a high-five about their privacy practices.

> It's definitely nothing out of the ordinary and is common practice among many tools and apps you already use. Your smartphone sends back way more data if you're that concerned.

Let MS take their knocks when they earn them. And it's totally fine if people point out that Microsoft has a problem with opting users into unwanted telemetry. Even if it's not important data, it's data that someone didn't volunteer to give up. It's a horrible, common-place practice that needs to end.

Honestly, they might not need automatic telemetry if they just made volunteering information during a bug or slowdown significantly easier. If it was easy to, for example, enable telemetry for a Visual Studio session to track down why it runs like a whale, and then to review the information sent before it was sent, people would use it all the time to better the software. Instead, people turn off everything they can and don't bother to enable it (required for some MS feedback apps) to report issues because they don't know what'll sneak across.

When your telemetry is easy, open, and transparent, people will gladly opt-in when they think it's needed. Or they can hide the data they care about and share the rest.