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What are the “layers of spyware and adware cloaked in dark patterns and requiring extraordinary measures to back out of hidden spyware installs done without permission” in Office 365?

Specifically you can’t back out for office 365. That part was windows 11. The rest of their products offer no option to bypass the spyware and adware.

And Windows 10, IIRC.

What are the “layers of spyware and adware cloaked in dark patterns and requiring extraordinary measures to back out of hidden spyware installs done without permission” in Windows 11?

Everything you type in the start menu gets sent to microsoft by default and this can only be changed with Group Policy, so anyone on home edition is stuck with that.

Thanks for giving me an answer, all the other posts in this chain just seem to be people naming Microsoft products (I get it, people love bashing Microsoft...)

This does a fairly detailed analysis of the various vectors and wraps up patching in an enormous script plus related tools.

https://simeononsecurity.com/github/optimizing-and-hardening...

There’s also a lot of extensive details of the dark patterns in the installers where no means yes with the privacy preserving option hidden behind rolled up options etc. Even then you need to do other patches to avoid telemetry and data collection. Even then you end up with ads surfaced in the start menu, etc.

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