Of course it is unethical. The fundamental right to data privacy means that corporations are not allowed to track and profile their users activities without consent and contract. And such consent is purpose-bound, consenting to an autocompletion feature does not imply being ok with that data being used for whatever.
Imagine you buy some shoes and learn that they share location information with their manufacturer. Now you think "well they do have this feature warning me if you walk in a dangerous area, so i kind of knew they do", but then your health insurance changes your policy because "you haven't been walking enough".
Does it become more ethical when the shoe producer and the insurance company happen to belong to the some corporate group, because they are not sharing with a third party?
The primary ethical problem is about using the data for purposes the users did not know about and did not agree to.
People use Edge to browse the web. Microsoft adds a new feature called "Follow Creator" and enables it by default, without asking for consent, and then fails to disclose why exactly that feature needs to collect all urls their users browse to and what that data is used for. These are highly unethical business practices.
Imagine you buy some shoes and learn that they share location information with their manufacturer. Now you think "well they do have this feature warning me if you walk in a dangerous area, so i kind of knew they do", but then your health insurance changes your policy because "you haven't been walking enough".
Does it become more ethical when the shoe producer and the insurance company happen to belong to the some corporate group, because they are not sharing with a third party?
The primary ethical problem is about using the data for purposes the users did not know about and did not agree to.
People use Edge to browse the web. Microsoft adds a new feature called "Follow Creator" and enables it by default, without asking for consent, and then fails to disclose why exactly that feature needs to collect all urls their users browse to and what that data is used for. These are highly unethical business practices.