Is this a real issue in some countries? I live in the UK and unless you are buying from the High Street there is usually always the option to purchase without Windows included.
We decided to be democratic in our office and arrange a vote for the name of the new server. Unfortunately this resulted in the server being called "Ron's Electric Love Machine". (Thankfully this abbreviates to RELM which is a bit easier to deal with)
So information is collected regarding what IP addresses are accessed from our network, it isn't traceable back to customer accounts (in its usual form anyway, I’m sure if some data forensics people got hold of it they could maybe do something, but that’s outside my scope of knowledge) this information is used to improve customer experience and reduce network traffic.
For example, in 2012-2013 almost 40% of traffic on our Network was Youtube related, not just streaming, Youtube specifically! Obviously millions of these requests are going to be for the exact same video, say for example Gangnam Style. So instead of us pulling the data from Youtube every time a user requests that particular video we store that video on our Network, so when a user requests it (even for the first time), it actually comes from us. All my company needs to do is check for any changes to the specific page. The result is a better customer experience (faster streaming) but also far less network traffic (this literally saves millions).
Without the storing of IP addresses accessed we wouldn't have the information needed to determine what sites/data we should be cashing and what we don’t need to bother with and this sort of thing would be considerably harder to pull off.
I work for one of the ISPs in question as an Analyst and work is in progress to stop the storing of certain data after a certain time period.
The main reason for holding call data is for billing purposes, no e-mail information has ever been stored (other than in customer's own inboxes and sent items in their e-mail accounts). All browsing data is anonymised and only used for optimisation purposes.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent annually on data storage, it’s welcoming that there is now a reason to reduce the amount of useless data we hold.
From a related article:
"But the eco-system also uses cellular respiration to break down decaying material shed by the plant. In this part of the process, bacteria inside the soil of the bottle garden absorbs the plant's waste oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide which the growing plant can reuse."