I've been recovering my old #Minecraft server data to bring it back up - then I've been slowly making my way tryna upgrade it from version 1.16.3, to the latest stable release: 1.21.8.
Anyway, while I was doing so, I realised that in the newer versions, there was a setting to configure whether to configure whether or not to send telemetry data to #Mojang (a.k.a. #Microsoft)... or so you thought. That setting only exists to tell you that you ARE sending telemetry data to them, NOT for you to decide whether or not you even wish to do so. Happy to report that I found out that this telemetry is not anonymised either, and directly links to you.
Having this shit in a paid game (Minecraft isn't cheap either) is bizarre. Forcing scummy shit like this in a paid product really screams Microsoft, doesn't it? It's one thing if they do this on Minecraft #Bedrock edition - which is entirely Microsoft's, but to also do this in Java edition... is a big freaking yikes. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this, I'm sure lots of people made noise of it when this happened ~4 years ago now.
🔗 https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC/issues/MC-237493