> Do you mind if I paraphrase your comment and add it to the article?

Sure.

> Everything is checked on by default. They go out of their way to make it difficult.

During install of recent versions of W10, there's a privacy settings dialog that comes up and allows you disable the majority of the privacy settings before installation. (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/03/06/windo...)

> There are no more than 2 dozen privacy related switches in Control Panel.

There's a lot of different settings because that's what people asked for. When W10 released, a lot of privacy options were bundled under a handful of toggles and it wasn't very clear what each of them did. Now it's explicit and far easier to understand for people that actually go looking for them.

> This whole thing reeks of insiduous tracking, spying and surveillance, despite of what the privacy guide says.

I'd honestly suggest spending some time on the Microsoft Privacy portal and related pages. They go into quite a lot of detail of what each individual setting does and what the data is used for, as well as Microsoft's internal policies for data management.

These two pages are targeted towards IT peeps and I think provide the best summary if you have some time:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-10-...

Your theory also doesn't make sense considering Microsoft's current market strategy as a cloud services company. Its advertisement business is barely a blip on the radar.

> ...has the risk of being hacked. I presume Microsoft has taken enough steps to anonymize personally identifiable information or as they call it PII in the circles.

Per the above link: "The principle of least privileged access guides access to diagnostic data. [...] We strive to gather only the info we need and to store it only for as long as it’s needed to provide a service or for analysis. Much of the info about how Windows and apps are functioning is deleted within 30 days"

PII might be contained within full crash dumps, however access to potentially PII-containing telemetry requires internal approval:

"If a device experiences problems that are difficult to identify or repeat using Microsoft’s internal testing, additional data becomes necessary. This data can include any user content that might have triggered the problem and is gathered from a small sample of devices that have both opted into the Full diagnostic data level and have exhibited the problem.

However, before more data is gathered, Microsoft’s privacy governance team, including privacy and other subject matter experts, must approve the diagnostics request made by a Microsoft engineer."

> Why make it difficult for user to opt-out of privacy related settings?

Given the privacy dialog shown on install, and the ability to opt-out of personalised targeting globally via a single page, what part is difficult?

> Why push Cortana across the board from "Home" to "Enterprise" editions, where no one has asked for it, no one uses it and it is impossible to get rid of?

Search was actually separated from Cortana in a recent update. It was completely integrated at some point in an effort to compete with Apple/Google but is slowly being pulled apart and hidden away in the OS as, like you said, barely anyone uses it. Fun fact, if you never pick a language for Cortana it never enables. I just have a plain search box.

> Why employ dark patterns to trick users into submitting their data? Why not make it an opt-in process as opposed to opting out?

Both of these questions are effectively asking the same thing. Because nobody would go out of their way to enable it. The data Microsoft would receive would just be a mix of "Technically competent people that would like to send Microsoft diagnostic & usage data" and "People who enabled it accidentally". Your average joe isn't going to read the descriptions of 10 toggle boxes and go to enable them. Not a great dataset when you're looking for a niche driver problems affecting 0.005% of users.