You ' re welcome ! Thanks for the trade ! <| sep |> google did this You don ' t need to create a Google account and you can avoid it by using startpage , duckduckgo or others search engines RiseUp , Protonmail , Tutanota or others as email providers FDroid instead of Google Play , NonGAPPS Android ROM like CyanogenMod instead of the default on Samsung or other manufacturers devices etc . apple did this It ' s been so long since I used an Apple Device iPod Touch 4 in my case , so I don ' t remember if you can use a Mac , iPod or iPad without associating a Apple Account . If that is optional then you can just install . dmg on MacOS X or use Cydia on Jailbroken iPodiPad . Again , take this with a grain of salt . facebook did this twitter did this You don ' t need to create a Facebook or Twitter account and you can avoid both pages and use a plugin like Privacy Badger so that it blocks the TwitterFacebook buttons . and nobody cares and when ms is about to do it , people freak out . 1 . It ' s an Operative System . An online service only knows what you visit , like , etc . An Operative System knows what you store , what you use , what you type , etc . 2 . It ' s hard or impossible to avoid Windows for some people . Yeah , there ' s Linux but you have to be confortable to try the new environment and hope that most software you use is on Linux . be patience if the software you use is not natively supported and you are okay to use Wine to execute those be willingly to try other alternatives or forget about that software if Wine is not an option for you . or be rich and get a decent computer system capable to run a virtual Windows machine so you can do GPU passthrough and be able to use the software you couldn ' t without a hinch of performance normally 3 D software and games . Although this last point may or may not add to the Windows is unavoidable problem