SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I found this on one of Devuan's forums
There's a software package called Zeitgeist that's been finding its way into nearly every Linux and BSD package repository. It's also on Devuan. Be sure to read the note at the bottom of this post even if you are not impacted by this.
It reads your emails, it monitors the websites you visit, listens to private conversations, and logs the files on your computer. and then it shares this information freely over D-Bus to any application that wishes to use it. You are given no warning and have no option to say which software can access it, and which can't. Any software can access D-bus, including closed-source software like Discord or Telegram (whether they do or not, who knows).
From the description, it looks as if it is designed to make spyware's job easy. Do you have it on your system? Do you want it on your system?
[Editor's Comment: The package has been around for quite some time (since at least 2012) without any security problems being reported. Ubuntu's repo describes it as:
Zeitgeist is a service which logs the user's activities and events (files opened, websites visited, conversations held with other people, etc.) and makes the relevant information available to other applications.
It does not appear to be installed as default on the small number of distros that I have looked at but it might be installed on others.]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Freeman on Monday January 30 2023, @08:57PM (4 children)
FOSS program designed for tracking users/user data is easily used for spyware. News at 11. Now, if you said MX Linux is using it by default or something, or it reports to Microsoft servers or something. We might have a story.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tizan on Monday January 30 2023, @09:48PM
FOSS: Well its like reading about the security of a bank safe. Does it make a bank easier to break into ? May be...but you have to reach the safe.
So if you can write spyware because you read the code that does some personal data collection..deploying it is a big issue.
Unless you work for some closed software like skype or slack or something like that otherwise all other linux apps deployed are FOSS too.
Skype or Slack do not really need Zeitgeiss data collection to spy on people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday January 31 2023, @07:05AM
It isn't a story - it is under the 'Ask Soylent' banner. What do members of our community know about it and has anybody seen it in use? For what purpose?
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday January 31 2023, @08:40PM (1 child)
Why not MX Linux?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 03 2023, @04:16PM
I meant, if a major distribution was using it by default. It could be a story, but to my knowledge, no one is. It's just a freely available package available in a repository. People happily download a lot more suspect programs than that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"