At one time, I was the co-author on The Practical Paranoia: Security Essentials books. I wrote the Windows versions of the curriculum. Once I learned the full extent of what the TPM was doing1, I could no longer in good conscience write books that guaranteed to teach a person how to secure their Windows machines. Why?
Well, because all of your online activity, every keystroke on your computer, every link clicked, every app or plugin installed in your system, in fact, all of your hardware, software, and activities are shared with a consortium of businesses inevitably secured by at least one person who is using admin/admin as their username and password or perhaps admin/password because they think that is clever.2
That is all it takes for your info to be leaked,
the inevitability of one unqualified hire in the HR process of a corporation that never thinks beyond its own next quarter profits.
I first wrote about the TPM issue in one of the first articles I ever posted here and then again here, here and here. This article is just to remind everyone that their expensive VPNs and everything else they are doing to try to obfuscate their activities are a pointless waste of time and money and that nothing is being done to fix this issue, at present.
My security against these things: I live on a small fixed income, my bank accounts have minimal funds, my available credit would not purchase bupkis, and I have PLENTY of time to harass in triplicate if I care to amuse myself suchly. 😜