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Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

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Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#61

Post by iagooar »

CJefferson wrote: post #7

I knew, and I was prompted. I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics. I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me…

No, it won't make Homebrew a better product. Homebrew was so good without analytics. Now it's worse, because I cannot trust it anymore.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#62

Post by Tepix »

froh42 wrote: post #38

As I didn't update brew for a long time I did not have the analytics version. So I upgraded to see what happens. In fact it did NOT prompt me when enabling analytics, but it did display a notice (hidden in several hundred lines of output during brew upgrade): ------------------- + 5a9e19f...7f13b37 master -> origin/master (forced update) * [new tag] 0.1 -> 0.1 HEAD is now at 7f13b37 Merge pull request #1562 from wood…

There you have it. Stop claiming there is a "prompt".

It's the same as the "3rd party cookies enabled by default" setting on Firefox. It's the wrong default if you really care about your user's privacy as Firefox claims to do. It's hard to even find the setting unless you know where it is. And it's Google who is paying so it stays the way it is and patches that change it are rejected.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#64

Post by pbiggar »

opk wrote: post #54
rkachowski wrote: post #35

This is google analytics. It's a bit different than google directly taking the data and using it for google purposes (e.g. streetview cars gathering SSID information for location pinpointing). The data (afaik) is used only by the homebrew team instead of Google. A more accurate summary would be "Brew is sending usage data to a google owned analytics service".

The data still goes to google. While the expectation would be that the data is only used by homebrew, there's no actual way of knowing that google isn't gratefully helping itself. And given the entire way Google's business works, they probably are.

Given the number of people who work for Google, and Google's internal culture of openness, I find it extremely unlikely that Google is violating its customers' privacy. That would almost certainly get whistleblown.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

andrewguenther wrote: post #32

People advocate so fervently for privacy, but can't be bothered to read a prompt...

Privacy-respecting defaults should be there so that you don't have to spend your whole day reading prompts and ToS looking for that one sentence that fucks you over.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#68

Post by tomfluff »

wheelerwj wrote: post #30
pvinis wrote: post #19

Yes we know. brew tells you that. And you can disable it. Data is being sent to Google everytime you do almost anything in almost all websites, using the same technology. So what? Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Some other times it's just for spying on the users. Let's stop complaining about stuff that someone does and tell you they do it. There are many more that do the same th…

We have to start somewhere. Opt in should always be the standard.

Organ donation?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#69

Post by iagooar »

hueving wrote: post #17
CJefferson wrote: post #7

I knew, and I was prompted. I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics. I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me…

Please make it opt in. If you truly believe people closely read the prompts for having their data harvested, a default to "No" should not impact you at all. If you don't believe they read the prompts closely, you're an asshole for stealing data by default.

This. A thousand times this. To me this whole thing feels like the maintainer is trying to justify something that most people won't ever accept as the status quo. Bad times when software this solid is going in a wrong direction. Time for a Homebrew fork?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#70

Post by andrewguenther »

iagooar wrote: post #61
CJefferson wrote: post #7

I knew, and I was prompted. I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics. I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me…

No, it won't make Homebrew a better product. Homebrew was so good without analytics. Now it's worse, because I cannot trust it anymore.

What exactly has brew done to breach your trust?

Edit: downvoted for asking a question?

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