This is the part I don’t understand. Mobile data would work in your houses too, right?

Actually, first - ironically mobile coverage is terrible right at my new home since I moved. Great about 200 yards from home and most everywhere I go, but there’s a weird blind spot at my address specifically.

Second, Most mobile data plans are 30-80 Mbps†, most home WiFi plans are 300 Mbps-1Gbps†. WiFi isn’t just faster, it’s a lot faster. † your milage may vary, these are based on my experience

Finally, again this is another case of maybe I’m weird, but my friends and I are into retro gaming, and self-hosting and both of those have LAN-specific options that only work within the WiFi and home network.

Oh, so to clear up confusion - switching to Linux destroys the local storage of the GDID, and Linux has generally much better privacy (to the degree the OS is involved - browser privacy is a related subject). However, it doesn’t undo the past - if you previously signed in with your MS account on that system, Microsoft will have that record in perpetuity.

Best solution would be to wipe any system you acquire without ever signing in to Microsoft. While switching to Linux will not change any of the components serial numbers that Microsoft has, you will at least not be actively associating most of your web activity with your M$ account.

Tangent - if you’re gonna do shady stuff, use VMs or TailsOS.

I use WiFi at home and friends. I use cellular for work and travel (usually between home and friends). I’m glad you have a simple enough arrangement that it’s worthwhile to manage it by hand.

Further, in recent versions of Android, factory settings are set to automatically turn WiFi back on if turned off - plus there’s several methods to indirectly turn WiFi back on (https://thedroidguy.com/stop-android-turning-wifi-on-automatically-1261625). This is that dark patterns thing. Getting people to do what you want by being frictionless with your preferred options and ‘polite’ but obstinate about options you wish to steer people away from.

Cannot wait for the Motorola/GrapheneOS collab phones.

Please note: I didn’t say you had to connect to these networks. This happens as a background process unless you do a ritual to shut off location services and actively work to keep it off. Most people do not know/care to do this. And even if it’s off in settings, some apps have the permission to temporarily override this (and will ask you once to grant it such permission and then have that permission for the lifetime of the app). And regardless of which app overrides said setting, Google gets a copy of whatever the background scan finds (for all Android phones that have the Play store installed, which is most of them).

Yup!

Motherboard, CPU, GPU models and serial numbers. Ram size and speed. Those were used during Windows activation as old as windows 95. But likely yes, a full list of every component connected.

Your Android phone collects every WiFi network it has ever seen and sends it to Google, so we should assume Microsoft does the same (Android can locate you without GPS by using your neighbors’ WiFi signals as position identifiers, and can triangulate you to a few feet using the relative networks’ signal strengths)