There was a connection between the search bar for awhile, if you typed in pants you'd get potential amazon links. It was easy to turn off and disappeared awhile later.
Linux operating systems don't spy on their users. This is false. Stop repeating misinformation.
The Ubuntu Amazon fiasco is, if anything, evidence of extreme resistance to this kind of thing. The Linux community rejected Canonical's opt-out ad partnership with Amazon collectively and almost unanimously. The program was relatively benign, but it went against ideals of both users and developers, and there have been no repeats.
I'm fairly sure Windows does upload at least some hashes if you have it enabled in Windows Defender (which it is by default). Don't expect Ubuntu does this though.
That said, "this has happened forever" is false too. These behaviors are relatively new and relatively under the radar. Many people don't know they exist to get upset about it.
