I've posted this before, but I think it's relevant to post it again.
I'm not a technophobe (like the rest of us around here seems to be) and I don't much care either. I understand that "my data" just becomes one of billions of entries in a database that robots parse in order to serve me ads which I block anyway. There is no one who actually knows my name and is looking at data about what time of day I usually search for porn on Bing.
The only security and privacy I'm interested in is ensuring that people who actually know who I am and where I live can't access my data. And they can't. I have close to zero interest in what Google or Microsoft's data centers "know" about me. The only strangers I need to fear are government agencies, and the NSA already knows what I had for breakfast anyway because I make electronic payments for nearly everything (or they can see what ATMs I used to withdraw cash from) and carry a phone with me everywhere, that can listen and record me whenever they please. And let's not forget the cameras all over my city, where they can track me down going to the supermarket and back to my apartment.
The life your grandparents lived back in the '50s wasn't any different either; people used to have their phone numbers listed in a big, fat, indexed catalog called "phone books". Your grandparents' phone number was listed there, just like everyone else's (and that was the norm!), and they had to (gasp) PAY to have the privilege of removing their number from it... and by doing that, they may or may not have been included in another list, quite possibly labeled "The Commie Scum Watch List".
...But by all means, let's freak out at Microsoft/Google/Mozilla/Evil Corp for being creepy assholes.
Too many Reddit users think their internet browsing habits are way more interesting than they actually are. Chances are a human being is never even going to see the data Microsoft is collecting, and on the off chance one does, they won't care.
You ought to see it the other way - privacy as you know it doesn't exist anymore. The second you plug in your computer to the internet is pretty much like living in a glass house. Even if you were so hell-bent on living off-the-grid, feel free to build a cabin in the middle of the woods, with no electricity or running water... only to be seen regularly by satellites over your head.
Y'all worry too much over an overly invasive OS when there's this, this and this. Hardware backdoors are damn near unavoidable and impossible to patch these days, yet no one seems to care about them. All they care is about not letting Microsoft or Google know what kind of porn they're into, or whatever. Such things are, and should be, the least of my worries.
Just accept that you have almost NO control over the data sent and received on your computer/cellphone over the internet, other than your online presence and your browsing habits. Be sensitive about what you really want to protect and be done with it, you'll get a lot less headaches.