That is exactly the kind of behaviour that raises plenty of questions. A great software should first respect user settings and never override configurations set by the user. It is okay if the software refuses to work without necessary permissions and it is understandable. But to keep overriding user settings and making itself work is bad behaviour.
And the statement "All data we collect will be used strictly in accordance with our privacy policy" is effectively a useless statement as far as the user is concerned.
While I agree that it isn't the most elegant behavior, I am still confident that it isn't an actual security hole or privacy concern, albeit it is the user's task to verify that it isn't. Read the legal agreement. With the vast majority of commercial software products the software company can not be held liable in any way, shape or form, so if your computer blows up, then basically, all that you can do is tweet about how intensely you enjoyed the fireworks. Or alternatively, the user can choose to look at what experienced IT professionals are doing, albeit the "experienced" part is going to be based on relativity. Most users neither are experienced nor are IT professionals, though, so there is an obvious discrepancy between what's popular or easy to use and what can be a tad trickier mainly as a result from it catering more toward the advanced minority.
I am a trained software developer with a formal degree in IT who has been programming computers in assembly language since 1984, when a single sided single density 3.5 inch 360K floppy disk drive weighed heavier than a 55 inch modern flatscreen TV. I solve IT problems for a living, I have to call myself a "consultant" IRL just because if I tell everyone what kind of software development I do, then my employer will assume that I am looking to find a better job. But you won't hear me say I have all the answers. What I do know is that Ventoy with the bootable ISO of Acronis True Image is both very fast and extremely reliable, and more so than anything related to Macrium Reflect.
I have to disable Secure Boot before I can boot into the bootable ISO with Ventoy, and I have to re-enable Secure Boot after my newly created image [of my system partition] has been written to disk and verfied. But once it's been verified, it is reliable for the fact that this verification works exactly the same as a restore except that, instead of performing an actual restore that writes the data retrieved from the image onto a destination target, the data retrieved from the image is compared to the data already present on the source, by using a bitwise comparison test. This kind of verification is foolproof, as the data already present on the source remains completely untouched at all times, from when Windows has been shut down, all until finally Windows starts again. (Windows starts again only after I have re-enabled Secure Boot, i.e., only after the image has already been verified successfully.)
So, Windows actively running on the Windows partition during creation of the image, that will include this Windows partition, has zero impact on the integrity of the image. That's because Windows remains shut down until this whole image creation task is finished. Windows writes data to the Windows partition when it is actively running on it. On the Macrium website there is an article that explains you shouldn't encounter any problems with that if you don't write too many files or write too much data to the partition during image creation. But experience has taught me that there can tend to be a bit of a difference between "shouldn't" and "won't". That in fact is part of the reason why I only use the bootable ISO. Now, of course Macrium has a bootable ISO too. Unfortunately however, that one can't do much more than an easy script that runs in WinRE and that uses DISM.
