system
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Technical,
I hear you, but they wrote the OS, so if they’re intent on invading your privacy, there are far more surreptitious ways to do it. I’m sure they have the expertise to do an end-runaround a firewall for example (personal firewall at least). Besides, there are enough conspiracy theorists monitoring communications with packet sniffers, that it wouldn’t remain a secret for long. Worrying about it is like pissing in the wind.
You don’t necessarily have to open your system up to them on all the sites I listed, they are just the ones that I’ve noticed problems with when the security settings were too restrictive. Said problems went away when I allowed certain things to happen.
I judge the risk to be low and the value of the information to be high. Aside from that, I trust SurfinGuard Pro to alert me to any shenanigans from scripts and ActiveX Controls. 
Tight security settings may or may not be the cause of CoJo’s problems at MS. As I mentioned in my original response to her, sometimes their servers just flake out, and their web pages don’t display or perform properly. Then later, everything is working fine.
Regards,
Hornus