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posted by mrpg on Tuesday February 20 2018, @12:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the fool-me-once... dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:03PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday February 20 2018, @09:03PM (#640848)

    You both have great points.

    It's too much to ask to do some basic research before installing optional packages?

    Two points / problems for me:

    1) If it's 3rd-party stuff, no, we should be wary. But if it's from the distro, yes, it is too much to ask. I've heard good things, and had good experience with X distribution in the past and I want to be able to continue to trust them and not have to dig into each module, library, default config file, etc. Now I don't trust _anything_ from them.

    2) Interconnected with my #1 point, I wasn't aware there could be a problem; I didn't know I had to worry.

    With Windows, I often (usually) run a packet sniffer (smsniff) when installing something new, or upgrading. It's troubling how much today's software "phones home to mommy" both during installs, and just starting up. I often disconnect from the network during installs. I try to turn off automatic updaters, etc.

    But I _expect_ this with all things Windows (and Android). It's sad to see these power, control, and greedy attitudes creeping into Linux distros.

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