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What does it send? What does it use it for?
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.... (This link is provided in the initial notification)
There is no way that I would want to have this data and this amount of data, recorded and transferred to google. Especially not about software installation on my computers or computers of friends or clients.
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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.
Genuine curiosity question: Are all analytics a violation of privacy? If brew simply sent a message that said "brew was used" with no PII, would that matter? At what point is it an issue?
That said, even a ping to the mothership is an identifying information - at minimum, it already contains your IP address. Whatever additional data may be added to that ping will likely also reveal details about the machine you're using.
Personally, I'm not a privacy nut; I mostly don't care - I leave plenty of information about myself around. But the thing is, I'm doing it voluntarily and as a primary function of some service. I don't like when applications exfiltrate data for reasons not related to their purpose.
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No, it's like stealing personally identifying information and sending it to the world's largest ad company.
The information brew collects I would hardly call personally identifiable. Take a look at what they collect: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
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Organ donation?
Yes, there are arguments for organ donation to be opt-out. But that's extreme case, when one loses literally nothing - by virtue of being already dead - and another person stands to gain additional years of life[0]. Some other socially beneficial things also have strong arguments for being opt-out (like retirement plans, because opt-out protects people from their own stupidity/short-sightedness). But that doesn't cha…
Actually, I've opted out because my next of kin stand to lose quite a lot (the harvesting of organs needs to be done quickly, well within the mourning period of the people I care about the most). The decision to leave sight of my body needs to be theirs, and theirs alone.
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https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.... (This link is provided in the initial notification)
Notification or prompt? There is no way that I would want to have this data and this amount of data, recorded and transferred to google. Especially not about software installation on my computers or computers of friends or clients.
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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.
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…
The EU approach to privacy (eroded by lobbying and lack of control over US companies) is that citizens have a right over their information. They can ask what personal information a company has on them, ask that it be corrected or deleted. This has resulted in companies that are more careful with data.
Whenever I read a post like yours I immediately think of so-called "useful innocents", to put it euphemistically [1]. Fighting for a non-goal of better open source through analytics (get real), corporate dominance and fewer rights for individuals.
Companies don't need analytics to improve software. They certainly don't need analytics from Google, the leading spyware-as-a-service company in the world.
I expect open source to become better through writing quality software, engaging with users and if need be doing some surveys or organsising other reach-out initiatives in the open. Not analytics turned on by default but it's-ok-cause-we-tell-you-we're-fucking-you.
Quite honestly, I don't remember brew asking me this on any of my 3 macOS machines, I'm not saying it didn't, but the fact that I'm a 'techie' person and didn't notice or forgot about it worries me greatly.