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The Register spotted Ubuntu behaving badly again with respect to users' privacy. In their article "Ubuntu wants to slurp PCs' vital statistics – even location – with new desktop installs: Data harvest notice will be checked by default", they note that in addition to installing popcon and apport by default, Canonical seeks much deeper data mining (without using the word "telemetry"):
[...] "We want to be able to focus our engineering efforts on the things that matter most to our users, and in order to do that we need to get some more data about sort of setups our users have and which software they are running on it," explained Will Cooke, the director of Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical.
[...] Data Canonical seeks "would include" the following: Ubuntu Flavour, Ubuntu Version, Network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, Disk(s) size, Screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM Manufacturer, Location (based on the location selection made by the user at install). No IP information would be gathered, Installation duration (time taken), Auto login enabled or not, Disk layout selected, Third party software selected or not, Download updates during install or not, [and] LivePatch enabled or not.
The system plans to leverage the power of the default setting by making the choice opt-out, not opt-in as popcon has been in the past: Cooke explained to the ubuntu-devel audience that "Any user can simply opt out by unchecking the box, which triggers one simple POST stating, 'diagnostics=false'. There will be a corresponding checkbox in the Privacy panel of GNOME Settings to toggle the state of this."
El Reg also noted Ubuntu's plan to address user privacy concerns:
"The Ubuntu privacy policy would be updated to reflect this change."
This seems less egregious than Ubuntu's past invasions of privacy, but much more invasive and Windows 10-like.
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @04:40PM (3 children)
I submitted this story, and wrote this headline, which was posted (after eds corrected the grammar--thanks) pretty much as-is, but it's misleading--making users opt-out is only in the proposal on ubuntu-devel, and not in any shipping version of Ubuntu. This is their plan for the future, not something they are doing.
I regret the miscommunication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 20 2018, @06:51PM (1 child)
So what is the actual situation right now? Is it on by default with no easy way to opt-out or off by default?
(Score: 4, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:42PM
No, It doesn't exist yet; it is being loosely planned by the Ubuntu Desktop Team for future releases of Ubuntu.
Earlier this month, Will Cooke, who works on that team, posted to the developers the following:
Here's a link to his post: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-February/040139.html [ubuntu.com]
The TLDR is in bold, above.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 21 2018, @10:15AM
It's not really misleading if that post wasn't followed up with a post a couple of minutes later from a manager asking who came up with this stupid idea, and would said persons please get their asses to his office asap, as should have happened in any business that cares about privacy.
Yes, normally such a post would be kept in private, but in this case the idea is already public and damaging Ubuntus image, so keeping the rejection private would allow the damage to continue.