>lots of people just don’t want to use the terminal at all
That's unfortunate, since the article notes: "Another method of bypassing the account lockdown still exists. You simply have to enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO in the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup process, which allows you to skip the connection to the Internet and thus also the link to a Microsoft account."
your [0] is just silly. If a person is at risk from their state's law enforcement, handing over their search data to yandex just makes it easier for Russia to convert them into spying/sabotage activities through, e.g., extortion.
As you have noted, Russia is at war with the ~English-speaking world~ West, so it is much more likely to use this data against the users than in the past.
But in your example the person involved would rather cooperate with the Russian authorities than turn their data over to local law enforcement. So it clearly makes sense to this hypothetical individual.
Besides, it'd be a struggle for the Russians to even figure out who they are. They'd only have search data. That is powerful but probably not enough in many cases.
A couple percent of Firefox's user base turn off telemetry. That is a target group, but they're hardly representative.
(I'm not bullshitting. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years, including in the Netscape era. Brendan Eich and I built the Mozilla 1.0 roadmap. I was a co-creator of Firefox along with Blake and Ben. I was Firefox's PM at Mozilla when we deployed telemetry and I was a Firefox and A11Y PM when me and Andre Natal introduced local LLM-based language translation to Firefox a couple years ago (Nightly only, release came last year after I left.) If those credentials aren't enough to make my claim believable, then I don't know what else to say.)
Yeah, though telemetry wouldn't help since this level of attention to UI design doesn't (practically ) exist, and it's unrealistic to expect it from FF, so the next best thing is allow user configuration.
Also you can even have a dynamic sorting section part within some menu based on how often you use a given menu item or depending on which profile you're using etc.
>The lawsuit claims that Google improperly shared Class Member search queries with third-party websites and companies between October 25, 2006 and September 30, 2013. Google denies any wrongdoing and the Court has not decided who is right or wrong. Defendants are entering into this settlement [...].
>You are included as a Settlement Class Member if you used Google Search and clicked on a Search link at any time on or between October 25, 2006 and September 30, 2013.
>Under the Settlement, Google will pay $23 million to make payments to settlement class members, payments to class representatives, attorneys' fees, litigation costs, and settlement administration costs related to the Settlement. Google will also revise its "FAQs" and "Key Terms" webpages to include conspicuous, clear and concise explanations of how and when search queries may be disclosed to third parties via referrer headers.
And if the online bank wasn't sending a bunch of requests to a bunch of third party ad networks on every click, it would save even more.