As technology marches on - I wonder how our ancestors coped with that huge step change of buying bread that was already sliced.............
You can choose what data to send back to MS
Cortana - simple - Don't use it
Tiles - Pretty sure you can
Forced updates - if many more users in the past had kept their PC's up to date there wouldn't have been as many rampant viruses.
Updates are there to fix flaws - don't fix it - the vulnerability gets exploited by the hackers - keep your PC "up to date".
Either that or use another operating system - You don't have to use any variant of Windows - there are plenty of others out there.