I miss the days of VHS and DVD shelfs in homes, for example. If you bought the tapes and had them in your home, no corporate entity could alter those tapes without your consent, monitor how many times you watch them, sell your data to whomever they please without your knowledge, roll out new mandatory conditions to a 'user agreement,' or remove them from your library if/when they like.
I noticed some dumb change in how Dictionary definitions are shown in the Spotlight (ie, overall search my computer function) in MacOS this week. I've turned off all auto-updates, and I didn't make that change or consent to it. But despite paying the full price all by myself for this machine, I clearly don't have 100% control over it. It seems very clearly to me that consumers having control and privacy over their Internet-connected devices is a bygone era.
After Blizzard, the video game company, replaced copies of Warcraft 3 that I and others had paid for in full and installed on our computers that we could play without connecting to the Internet with a lower-quality copy that prohibited offline play - I swore I'd never pay for a video game again*, and 3 years later I haven't backslid on that. I felt so angry, cheated, and robbed by that. (*Edit: my criticism and frustration is really more with larger developers/companies/creators - I appreciate and am happy to support smaller, more independent and libre ones.)
Many people probably won't be bothered by these things, but I am. I don't want to pay full price for something that I don't truly own. I miss the familiarity. I miss the reliability. I miss feeling like it's mine. Dependable. Trustworthy.
Picking my old guitar up again has never looked so appealing. I think I want to go back to investing more time, money, and energy into things that aren't connected to the internet
Yes it's a pain ... but it's because your are considering a state compared to an ideal state, e.g feeling trapped with devices you don't trust versus running in an empty field. It's simplistic and it's not now versus then. Instead consider where you were, where you are now, and how it is a succession of decisions. Nobody forced you to buy a smartphone. Nobody forced you to install a chat app made by an ad company. Nobody forced you to have a free email.
Instead, for years, you made terrible decisions and now you are "waking up" to it and it sucks.
How do I know? Well, I did the same.
I even felt terrible about it and it felt impossible to change. I also discovered the concept of learned helplessness. How I was convinced that not only it was bad but I could do nothing about it.
Then I changed. I made a ProtonMail account (which I paid for, still am), moved my data from GMail. In fact I downloaded ALL my data from Google, and moved away from it, e.g from YouTube I installed on my own server PeerTube. I warned family, friends and colleagues I wasn't using WhatsApp anymore but they could reach me with email, SMS, phone, Signal, Telegram, Matrix, etc. I then deleted Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.
I could go on but hopefully you get the idea : it sucked, I realized it sucks, I tried to change, it was hard requiring a lot of effort but, step by step, I removed a lot (not all!) of those terrible behaviors from my life.
TL;DR move away from learned helplessness by DOING things, taking a single step in the right direction makes a world of difference.
My university forced me to have a free email through microsoft. They also forced me to other privacy-invasive services and store my coursework on insecure servers. Sure, I could refuse to go to college and get a degree, but the reality is that if someone doesn't participate in higher education, or own a smartphone, or avoids any newer car that spies on you (at least in most of the US), being part of society and life in general is more difficult.
Indeed which is why I was honest saying "it was hard requiring a lot of effort but, step by step, I removed a lot (not all!) of those terrible behaviors from my life." (bold added)
Namely I don't even aim for perfection, just pragmatism. I have to use Windows at work (sometimes) and I hate it. Still, I do my very best to compartmentalize, namely I do not install such work related tools on my personal or even professional computers or phones.
In your specific case I would argue that have the free email from Microsoft but not using it for anything else and deleting it as soon as it's not absolutely needed is an acceptable compromise. I would also do my best to understand what "leaks" via this email or how you use it. Anyway my overall point being to be pragmatic because perfection leads to inaction.