The only times I’ve ever opened wordpad was on new Windows installs when I hadn’t installed another word processor or hadn’t changed the default editor for RTF files.
Not a dumb question! I wouldn’t be surprised if it does though I can’t say for sure it does. With how little development it’s gotten recently, I want to say no it doesn’t spy nearly as much because it likely hasn’t been updated with more spying, though. But I obviously don’t know for sure, they might have went in and added telemetry while changing little else UX or functionality wise.
LibreOffice has its flaws but it’s functionally superior to Wordpad and (IMO, and this is probably an unpopular opinion) not far behind Microsoft Office, almost on par. It’s also open source and still gets regular updates. So if you’re looking for a privacy friendly alternative to Microsoft Office I’d suggest that and not risk it with Wordpad.
Though, the Windows OS itself’s spying definitely swamps whatever spying Wordpad does or doesn’t have, so the point is kind of moot, you’re being spied on about the same with or without Wordpad, same applies to LibreOffice as it can’t do anything about Windows’s spying. I encourage everyone to at least try Linux as a dual boot or on a second computer if you already have one of those, even if you can’t fully migrate away from Windows for whatever reason.
The only times I’ve ever opened wordpad was on new Windows installs when I hadn’t installed another word processor or hadn’t changed the default editor for RTF files.
Dumb question but does it spy on you like everything else?
Not a dumb question! I wouldn’t be surprised if it does though I can’t say for sure it does. With how little development it’s gotten recently, I want to say no it doesn’t spy nearly as much because it likely hasn’t been updated with more spying, though. But I obviously don’t know for sure, they might have went in and added telemetry while changing little else UX or functionality wise.
LibreOffice has its flaws but it’s functionally superior to Wordpad and (IMO, and this is probably an unpopular opinion) not far behind Microsoft Office, almost on par. It’s also open source and still gets regular updates. So if you’re looking for a privacy friendly alternative to Microsoft Office I’d suggest that and not risk it with Wordpad.
Though, the Windows OS itself’s spying definitely swamps whatever spying Wordpad does or doesn’t have, so the point is kind of moot, you’re being spied on about the same with or without Wordpad, same applies to LibreOffice as it can’t do anything about Windows’s spying. I encourage everyone to at least try Linux as a dual boot or on a second computer if you already have one of those, even if you can’t fully migrate away from Windows for whatever reason.