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posted by martyb on Thursday September 30 2021, @09:32PM   Printer-friendly

KDE's Telemetry: The Tip Of The Iceberg?:

Recently, there was a debate on the PCLinuxOS forum about KDE Plasma's implementation of telemetry through KUserFeedback. While in PCLinuxOS, we can remove it without any collateral effects to the system, while other users reported that doing the same in other distros (like Debian 11) results in the complete removal of KDE Plasma! Why force such an implementation, if, as KDE's developers say, it is just an innocuous, privacy-respecting measure?

Coincidence or not, in the past years many popular Linux distributions started rolling out optional telemetry. Then it was the time of computer programs: news broke out in May regarding Audacity, a popular audio editing app, which announced it was starting the use of telemetry. The move was finally pushed back after users revolted against it.

While many point out that the data collection is by opt-in and entirely anonymous, others have found that, even if you don't activate telemetry, data is still collected, using computer resources, registering "apps and boot, number of times used and duration in /home/user/telemetry folder." As such, they argue that, because of the way Linux permissions work, other programs could have access to these log files. KUserFeedback's FAQs page confirms this:

"KUserFeedback is designed to be compliant with KDE Telemetry Policy, which forbids the usage of unique identification. If you are using KUserFeedback outside of the scope of that policy, it's of course possible to add a custom data source generating and transmitting a unique id."

Do any Soylentils have opinions about this, or experiences with it?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:47PM (4 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:47PM (#1183218) Homepage Journal

    I don't know about everybody else, but it doesn't matter to me how transparent they are, or how important they consider the data--I still don't want their software recording my behavior. This culture needs to die.

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    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by EJ on Friday October 01 2021, @02:11AM (3 children)

    by EJ (2452) on Friday October 01 2021, @02:11AM (#1183256)

    Telemetry is not always bad. For example, some games and applications have a crash reporter tool that pops up after a catastrophic failure to give you the option of sending the data to the developer.

    If the thing just collected the data, then let you inspect all of the data before choosing to send it, there wouldn't be a problem for me. It would have to be something that doesn't nag me, and I have to go searching for outside of a crash.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @06:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 01 2021, @06:06AM (#1183293)

      Yep. Taking a look at a dump with all the correct symbols is brilliant. We had a couple Heisenbugs that we couldn't reproduce for years. So many unhelpful emails and reports. Finally, we got an email out of the blue with an attached minidump. It took a total 2 hours to fix it and to determine that all of those bugs were the same underlying bug rearing up its head differently.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:24AM (1 child)

      by acid andy (1683) on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:24AM (#1183543) Homepage Journal

      Yes an option to upload a crash dump is sensible and fair. Tracking behavior like how often I run the application or, worse, (and this is not applicable to KDE to my knowledge) tracking all my mouse movements and how long I hover over each area of a window, is horrendous.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:28AM

        by acid andy (1683) on Saturday October 02 2021, @03:28AM (#1183544) Homepage Journal

        Meh, ignore me. Freeman already said it [soylentnews.org] further up the thread.

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?