Homebrew now sends usage information to Google Analytics

Post by azag0 » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #87

LeoPanthera wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could really screw with their statistics by regularly changing the contents of that file.

Homebrew maintainer here. Remember that we didn’t put these analytics in place to get rich or get free beer at the local pub. Screwing up the stats won’t help anyone. We currently don’t have any overview of our userbase; we don’t even know how many people use Homebrew. More importantly, Homebrew currently only bottles the default options but we know some people use some options that cause the formulae to build from s…

Post by TheLogothete » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #68

bitmapbrother wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always amused by the way some people try to extend the definition of malware beyond its scope. This isn't malware. It's just anonymous usage tracking. If you don't like it you can turn it off. I hope you don't use a smartphone because the amount of intrinsic "malware" you must be subjected to must be unbearable. "Malware" is an umbrella term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile or intrusive software, in…

But surely you can see the similarity here. The tracking software wasn't in Homebrew before, is added without asking you when you update, and is completely useless to you as a user but builds information about you and sends it to a third party. If it's not malware, it's certainly really similar to it.

Post by azag0 » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

binaryanomaly wrote: post #86

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the link? Your actions cannot be tied specifically to you.

Says the company that offers the service? There's traces , ips, etc. everywhere, not impossible to correlate...

Post by andrei_says_ » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #58

LeoPanthera wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is an alert displayed to the user the first time it tries to send info to Google? If not, that is far from "transparent". It's good that they tell you how to opt out on the website, but I can't remember the last time I went to the website. Probably when I first installed Homebrew on this Mac.

Get littlesnitch on Mac and you won't need to rely on third parties alerting about outgoing connections, although I recon the when we're talking about something like homebrew it's not easy to vet every single outgoing connection. Still littlesnitch is really awesome for the privacy conscious users.

Post by engiqueer » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #9

Touche wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Google Analytics is a network of companies that has agreed to privately collection information about users without their permission or even knowledge. It is malware that should not be included in Homebrew. The only ethical decision we can make as developers is not to use it.

Yeah, I'll confess that this is a real deal breaker for me personally .. I'll be having a closer look at ports and maybe fink soon. Maybe after all its time to get off OSX and back to Linux, where these sorts of things happen less frequently ..