SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1) by tftp on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:35PM (2 children)
It's not a useful information. There are many reasons why people run Linux on an old PC. It absolutely does not mean that Ubuntu should pay special attention to old PCs. Ubuntu should pay attention to features that people directly ask for - like removal of spying features or, perhaps, replacing Unity with something familiar. But I fear that financing of Ubuntu is based on commercialization of the distribution.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday February 20 2018, @05:47PM (1 child)
Don't be retarded. You don't run things based on the few who yell loudest. That is like thinking the callers to a radio talk show are reflective of the listeners. We don't make public policy based on the few morons with the free time to stand out on the street waving signs. It would be really good to know whether the irritating asshole who is yelling on the bug tracker and mailing list is the only known user of a piece of hardware or if 5% of the current user base is impacted. Bug fixing is a matter allocating finite resources. Likewise, as a user I'd like to know that 5% have that specific item since odds are any problems would be quickly addressed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Tuesday February 20 2018, @10:29PM
This whole effort is based on that idea.