What is This
Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:19 am
Have anyone seen this? What do you Think?http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODQ5MA So they are tracking us now .
The fans at phoronix thanks its OK
The fans at phoronix thanks its OK
That's not the way anonymous information-gathering works, sorry. You need to get permission from users to collect their information. It's not meant to be an opt-out service, it's meant to be opt in. Fedora does the same thing but offers you the choice upon installation. That's how it should be.For those not wanting to participate in this anonymous data gathering process, they could always sudo apt-get remove canonical-census.
If you don't download a package called canonical-census, then it's not on your system. If it moves from OEM to everyone then you can just block that package. Like vincent, I also think that it's not a major issue while the package remains open source. If you can see what it's doing then oyu can choose to keep it or get rid of it. If it goes closed source (and I can't think of a legitimate reason for why it would) then it wouldn't touch my system.OldManHook wrote:Should we believe this OEM trscking only?
Code: Select all
apt search canonical
p canonical-census - send I am alive ping to Canonical
This is the key. If this package is opt-in, there's no problem. Don't complain about a package that you agreed to install. If it is simply included "secretly" with the installation then it becomes a problem.DrHu wrote:if you accept the opt-in request.
Well, this seems to be the case. From the article:randomizer wrote:This is the key. If this package is opt-in, there's no problem. Don't complain about a package that you agreed to install. If it is simply included "secretly" with the installation then it becomes a problem.DrHu wrote:if you accept the opt-in request.
So, the package is/will be included by default in the installation.When the canonical-census package is installed, the program is to be added to the daily Cron jobs to be executed so that each day it will report to Canonical over HTTP the number of times this system previously sent to Canonical (this counter is stored locally and with it running on a daily basis it's thereby indicating how many days the Ubuntu installation has been active), the Ubuntu distributor channel, the product name as acquired by the system's DMI information, and which Ubuntu release is being used. That's all that canonical-census does, at least for now. Previously there haven't been such Ubuntu tracking measures attempted by Canonical.
The good news for those concerned about privacy is that it appears for now Canonical is just interested in tracking the users of OEM installations -- those PCs that ship with Ubuntu by default such as from ZaReason, System76, and Dell. This information will obviously be valuable to both companies to see whether customers are keeping around their Ubuntu installations or just wiping them and just how often Ubuntu is being used on these systems (judging by the number of times that system reported to Canonical's server previously). For those not wanting to participate in this anonymous data gathering process, they could always sudo apt-get remove canonical-census.