Your Software Is Spying On You DistroTube
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Date: 2022-03-30
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Comments and reviews: 10
bobpeters61
And you just elaborated on the reason why after years of dual-booting mostly Ubuntu as a weird toy with Windows, I got fed up and completed my migration to Linux. Ironically, Ubuntu is now low on my list of distro preferences.
That said, the last straw was when, using a 4 year old home build, Windows 10 started persistently forcing updates to an incompatible driver for my Intel integrated graphics. I would download and re-install the proper driver from Intel and Windows would almost immediately, and quicker every time, force another update to the incompatible driver that broke my graphics.
But then, at the same time, a competing -last straw- also came up when out of curiosity I used gParted Live to look at my internal storage drives and noticed an added unidentifiable partition with Microsoft's name on it and little else added to each one, even at the cost of corrupting a couple of my files.
Using Windows 10 upgraded from a Windows 8.1 retail, I figured I still had Microsoft Tech Support and called in just to see what their employee had to say in their defense of those issues: just a round of trying to shame me for using old hardware. So I made a point to tell the jerk that my takeaway was that I needed to complete my migration to Linux and never buy another Microsoft license again and to please pass that information on to his superiors.
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And you just elaborated on the reason why after years of dual-booting mostly Ubuntu as a weird toy with Windows, I got fed up and completed my migration to Linux. Ironically, Ubuntu is now low on my list of distro preferences.
That said, the last straw was when, using a 4 year old home build, Windows 10 started persistently forcing updates to an incompatible driver for my Intel integrated graphics. I would download and re-install the proper driver from Intel and Windows would almost immediately, and quicker every time, force another update to the incompatible driver that broke my graphics.
But then, at the same time, a competing -last straw- also came up when out of curiosity I used gParted Live to look at my internal storage drives and noticed an added unidentifiable partition with Microsoft's name on it and little else added to each one, even at the cost of corrupting a couple of my files.
Using Windows 10 upgraded from a Windows 8.1 retail, I figured I still had Microsoft Tech Support and called in just to see what their employee had to say in their defense of those issues: just a round of trying to shame me for using old hardware. So I made a point to tell the jerk that my takeaway was that I needed to complete my migration to Linux and never buy another Microsoft license again and to please pass that information on to his superiors.
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igor
honestly, is pointless to ask people to not use an software.
proprietary software is more profitable, free software is more ethical and often (not aways) produce better software.
so what we are trying to do? asking everyone to use free and only free software, regardless of the needs of those people and regardless of if the free softwares in this niche are any good.
-here, use this crap animation software, its not nearly as good as the proprietary softwares, but at least its respect your freedom-
no one is following our advice and we are surprised.
we are leting someone else dominate the market, then demanding they open source their software or creating alternatives to it that often sucks.
what we really should be doing is dominating the market first, then open sourcing it.
at least if we do that, we can guarantee that the market leader will opensource its code, and guarantee that in the mean time, there will be no spyware code in the software.
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honestly, is pointless to ask people to not use an software.
proprietary software is more profitable, free software is more ethical and often (not aways) produce better software.
so what we are trying to do? asking everyone to use free and only free software, regardless of the needs of those people and regardless of if the free softwares in this niche are any good.
-here, use this crap animation software, its not nearly as good as the proprietary softwares, but at least its respect your freedom-
no one is following our advice and we are surprised.
we are leting someone else dominate the market, then demanding they open source their software or creating alternatives to it that often sucks.
what we really should be doing is dominating the market first, then open sourcing it.
at least if we do that, we can guarantee that the market leader will opensource its code, and guarantee that in the mean time, there will be no spyware code in the software.
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Ahmed
I love the false sense of security that most Linux users have, even though there has been researches including one from The Linux Foundation that FOSS isn't more secure than proprietary, even more, people who don't know how software works think that a closed source piece of software means that it can hide malicious activity somehow better than an open source one, Well guess what, that's not the case, you can interrogate and analyze both FOSS/Prop software in pretty much the same ways, few people read code to detect security issues, more so serious bugs and security vulnerabilities are hidden in plain sight in source code of most of the ancient unmaintained (and some up to date) software you use everyday. In case of FOSS, The poor dev/maintainer doesn't have enough man power to fix and carefully curate PRs. Bu most importantly, How many of us actually go through the thousands, sometimes millions of lines of code in your day to day FOSS? i bet
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I love the false sense of security that most Linux users have, even though there has been researches including one from The Linux Foundation that FOSS isn't more secure than proprietary, even more, people who don't know how software works think that a closed source piece of software means that it can hide malicious activity somehow better than an open source one, Well guess what, that's not the case, you can interrogate and analyze both FOSS/Prop software in pretty much the same ways, few people read code to detect security issues, more so serious bugs and security vulnerabilities are hidden in plain sight in source code of most of the ancient unmaintained (and some up to date) software you use everyday. In case of FOSS, The poor dev/maintainer doesn't have enough man power to fix and carefully curate PRs. Bu most importantly, How many of us actually go through the thousands, sometimes millions of lines of code in your day to day FOSS? i bet
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Rotem
Cmon, all governments and glow-creatures -believe- (claim to believe) they are collecting information for ulterior purposes. You'll never find any agency saying -we are looking to cause harm, and need your data to do so-.
The greatest lie of all (regarding privary) is how these corpo-governments managed to get the people so sleepy to not merely believe in, but hail this activity as a -necessary evil- or even -justified-.
I can't believe I say it, but once upon a time - when you spoke, no one other than who you were speaking to could hear you - and somehow, we didn't go extinct for that, as matter of fact, humanity prospered.
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Cmon, all governments and glow-creatures -believe- (claim to believe) they are collecting information for ulterior purposes. You'll never find any agency saying -we are looking to cause harm, and need your data to do so-.
The greatest lie of all (regarding privary) is how these corpo-governments managed to get the people so sleepy to not merely believe in, but hail this activity as a -necessary evil- or even -justified-.
I can't believe I say it, but once upon a time - when you spoke, no one other than who you were speaking to could hear you - and somehow, we didn't go extinct for that, as matter of fact, humanity prospered.
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Tamas
Is hacker a negative word?
Non-technical news certainly turned it into one.
It feels like you're also attaching a negative connotation to the word telemetry.
Most software on spaceships and aircrafts in general or cargo vessels is telemetry software...
Your message could be a lot simpler:
People, please ask yourselves, what is being metered and who is that data being reported to?
When it comes to -desktop software-, be suspicious about telemetry, because it often oversteps ethical/moral boundaries.
That's it.
No need to smear the meaning of telemetry and spread FUD, by equating it to spyware...
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Is hacker a negative word?
Non-technical news certainly turned it into one.
It feels like you're also attaching a negative connotation to the word telemetry.
Most software on spaceships and aircrafts in general or cargo vessels is telemetry software...
Your message could be a lot simpler:
People, please ask yourselves, what is being metered and who is that data being reported to?
When it comes to -desktop software-, be suspicious about telemetry, because it often oversteps ethical/moral boundaries.
That's it.
No need to smear the meaning of telemetry and spread FUD, by equating it to spyware...
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Guywith
Honestly , I dont care. They'll either sell my data to third party and gain cash and use it to make better products to spike up the share price, or use the data to make better services. This cycle might end up in a superintelligence or something in future but that'll either push humanity to stars or destroy it and i am good either way.
Google can spy as much as they can as long as I get cool stuff. The novelty of acting like a ninja wears off quickly.
That's just my opinion tho , and I respect other people that aren't okay with it. Wish there was a more opt in procedure for this.
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Honestly , I dont care. They'll either sell my data to third party and gain cash and use it to make better products to spike up the share price, or use the data to make better services. This cycle might end up in a superintelligence or something in future but that'll either push humanity to stars or destroy it and i am good either way.
Google can spy as much as they can as long as I get cool stuff. The novelty of acting like a ninja wears off quickly.
That's just my opinion tho , and I respect other people that aren't okay with it. Wish there was a more opt in procedure for this.
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Michael
I get the whole privacy big brother thing but I mean even if some information goes to google does it really matter?
Edit: to be fair I actually am a data researcher for city planning and mobile location data is a huge help I'm reducing climate change by making cities more efficient... I wouldnt be able to pin point a particular person tho. So I guess it just matters in what you define as your data. Is it still your data if it goes into an algorithm that then creates simulated data without any ids
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I get the whole privacy big brother thing but I mean even if some information goes to google does it really matter?
Edit: to be fair I actually am a data researcher for city planning and mobile location data is a huge help I'm reducing climate change by making cities more efficient... I wouldnt be able to pin point a particular person tho. So I guess it just matters in what you define as your data. Is it still your data if it goes into an algorithm that then creates simulated data without any ids
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Joscha
If telemetry were limited to stuff such as sending the KDEnlive coordinating team the info that the current version tends to crash on Manjaro with this-and-that kernel and on this-and-that hardware when combining mp4, mkv and jpg video tracks while rendering as webm ...(a year ago I had a problem like that), really anonymously and opt-in, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Automated beta testing beyond release and no ID data, great.
Trouble is, does that kind of thing even exist anymore?
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If telemetry were limited to stuff such as sending the KDEnlive coordinating team the info that the current version tends to crash on Manjaro with this-and-that kernel and on this-and-that hardware when combining mp4, mkv and jpg video tracks while rendering as webm ...(a year ago I had a problem like that), really anonymously and opt-in, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Automated beta testing beyond release and no ID data, great.
Trouble is, does that kind of thing even exist anymore?
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CodeOnBlocks
I'm a developer, & I usually always allow certain apps I really love to collect some of my data to improve the software. If it's anything proprietary, I always try to disable it. But if it's something like KDE Plasma, I allow it to collect data used to improve the software. I think we should allow certain open-sourced apps to be able to collect data to improve.. but def not all. If it's anything having to do w/ Linux, I want to help in any way I can to make it better.
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I'm a developer, & I usually always allow certain apps I really love to collect some of my data to improve the software. If it's anything proprietary, I always try to disable it. But if it's something like KDE Plasma, I allow it to collect data used to improve the software. I think we should allow certain open-sourced apps to be able to collect data to improve.. but def not all. If it's anything having to do w/ Linux, I want to help in any way I can to make it better.
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Artoooooor
Assumption that proprietary software spies on you just because you cannot see its source is like assumption that your neighbour builds an atomic bomb in their bathroom. You cannot see what he is doing...
Telemetry is only a problem when used in a wrong way - for example to serve you -better- ads. Usage statistics on the other hand are really useful - you can decide which of the features should be developed with the highest priority.
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Assumption that proprietary software spies on you just because you cannot see its source is like assumption that your neighbour builds an atomic bomb in their bathroom. You cannot see what he is doing...
Telemetry is only a problem when used in a wrong way - for example to serve you -better- ads. Usage statistics on the other hand are really useful - you can decide which of the features should be developed with the highest priority.
reply
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