> It wasn't possible to exfiltrate data in those days because internet access wasn't ubiquitous.

It was, and we rightfully called software doing it "spyware", or more generally "malware". Today we call this "telemetry" and somehow it became standard practice in software engineering.

The "what" is material to this conversation. BonzaiBuddy, a 90's or early 2000s malware that showed a purple monkey on your desktop, hijacking your computer and collecting your web browsing habits in Internet Explorer, a totally different program, and sending it to advertisers, is different from your computer telling Adobe when Photoshop crashes so they can fix it.