Sigh...
Tracking takes place on all operating systems, old or new. They know where you are by your IP address.
Windows 10 is not big and scary. It's essentially Windows 8.5 and it is what Windows 8 should have been had they listened to us in the industry.
I Alpha Test products. I have been on many Windows test cycles including 8. I skipped 10 because it wasn't that big of a deal. We HAMMERED Microsoft during the Windows 8 testing because it was such a departure in concept from standard windows operations. They ignored us and they paid the price. The lack of adoption cost all the software producers a lot of time and money.
Windows 10 being free addresses that, they are even giving it to people who have ILLEGAL Windows installations to appease the Software vendors that need a stable and consistent development platform. It also addresses everyone to move forward and not stay back on Vista era stuff.
There is nothing wrong with Windows 10. The vast majority of Windows 8 compliant software will run just fine on it. As I said, it's really just and improvement of 8 that finally incorporates the changes we asked for during the Beta of Win 8.
Asking for and using a Windows XP box on the internet is like playing Russian roulette with a sawed off shotgun. There is no winner, you lose on the first pull of the trigger, and it makes a gawd-awful mess.
If you are worried about 10, wait until the first major patch release, usually in 3-6 months, then all the larger stuff they missed will be fixed.
There are over 10 million early adopters of Windows 10 out there and the overall impression has been positive with few problems. The learning curve has been dramatically reduced with the Start Menu being moved to a pop up menu instead of a full screen which freaked everyone out in 8. The operating system is being standardized across all platforms, from PC's, to tablets, to smartphones. Unlike other OS's, Windows will be windows no matter what format it is running on, at least this is what Microsoft has been driving for since the release of 8.
BTW, bonus points for knowing why it's Windows 10 and not Windows 9...
(They didn't want the shortened version of the name to be like Win9X which actually refers to Windows 95 & Windows 98, so they skipped forward to 10)