Problem with Sample Submission

You can disable automatic sample submission in:
Defender -> virus & threat protection -> manage settings

cDreamDancer said:

So apparently, Defender has been sending samples of software on my computer to MS and I've done figured out it's by now built a fairly good profile as to what I have on my machine(s) thanks to Automatic Sample Submission.

Personally I disable Automatic Sample Submission. You should know that it would only ever collect/ submit information on files that it considers suspicious. Therefore known safe files/ software won't trigger any form of collection/ submission.

cDreamDancer said:

Except that I write software and my machine(s) are full of custom and pretty much "mine" software programs and this thread was triggered because one of my machines had the automatic submission turned off, the other machines did not.

Some of this software is also on other people's machines because they requested a custom solution.

You think Microsoft would waste their time to decompile your executables?

If you write software you should add your repository to WD exclusion list, not because of submissions but because it will improve IDE performance and build times.
You should also add your toolchain to exclusion lists to improve all sorts of stuff with development such as intelisense.

cDreamDancer said:

Except that I write software and my machine(s) are full of custom and pretty much "mine" software programs and this thread was triggered because one of my machines had the automatic submission turned off, the other machines did not.

Some of this software is also on other people's machines because they requested a custom solution.

So with submission off files will be scanned and if found to be suspicious they won't be submitted.