This is framed with OSs in mind but the place where this actually happens the most is mobile apps.

It's difficult to protect your contact info when everyone with you in their contracts gives access to candy crush. It's the one I see the most and know who does it because those people will show up in the "you might know this person" shit.

Valid. I also don't have the "I don't care" stance but rather that medical providers etc should go to jail for storing data on unsecure infrastructure

That's why I demand (nag constantly) that everyone around me run Linux 🤣

Jk we're all doomed to live in an Orwellian dystopia

Using Linux does not make you safe either. Given that almost every server runs Linux, you can bet good money that most intelligence agencies have a few full time employees adding backdoors to the kernel XZ Utils style, and at least one of them has succeeded.

My wife and I just had this conversation a couple days ago where she pointed out that she has all the same documents as me on her computer and she uses Windows. I had to acknowledge that was definitely a hole in my privacy, so we concluded the conversation with the decision that she will start using Linux too. But you're right, the solution needs to be bigger.

I think there's some confusion at play here. That argument is about security, not privacy.

Is the concern that Microsoft is ingesting your data and thus your actions aren't private? Or is it that Windows is not secure and so you don't think data stored in Windows systems is safe from third party access? That distinction matters, because in both cases the way it's framed here isn't really accurate but for different reasons.

I made a similar point in one of My blog articles

https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/why-we-cant-just-protect-smart-people-from-data-tracking-c05d308e799f

Maybe we should tell people to use Linux