I'm sure you've already seen it, but using https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/ helps alleviate some of these issues. I completely agree with you though, the whole thing feels dirty.
Just finished installing this OS. I generally enjoy MS products but this has changed my opinion. The OS isn't really any faster than 7 and the amount of road blocks I have encountered to change things to how I want them is remarkable.
I have found two great resources if anyone is in the same position as me. For Uninstalling the store bloat and disabling geo-location services and other anti-privacy I used:
Disabled too many things to list and I'll set this up to run on restart and restrict the file write perms for security. I've used pretty much the defaults but most importantly
