Opting out [0]
Homebrew analytics helps us maintainers and leaving it on is appreciated. However, if you want to opt out of Homebrew's analytics, you can set this variable in your environment:
export HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1
Alternatively, this will prevent analytics from ever being sent:
brew analytics off
Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
111–120 of 342 posts
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#112Its looking a bit hyprocitical here to be honest. If you use websites in the web today, you are sending data for sure unless you use a adblocker that blocks analytics as well. Brew collecting data this way is unethical but complaining about these things these days is not going to do any change to be honest. I would be glad if the people who complain about this dont use any websites that collect data without giving an…
> unless you use a adblocker that blocks analytics as well
Who on Hacker News doesn't? At least on the desktop (where you use brew) this is a matter of a few clicks and an essential security measure.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#113This 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".
if google didn't correlate analytics data from multiple sources, it would be about as informative as a local piwik install, which is to say "not much".
Perhaps they don't "use" it directly, but surely they use it to improve their statistical profile of the specific users? Does anyone know if the GA cookie sent by brew is same or correlated with the one in the browser?
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US approach to privacy is "let the market sort it out". It has sorted it out by transforming the internet into a giant spying machine sucking up contacts, photos, documents, videos, metadata, what packages you use, when where and how you exercise, everything 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…
> The EU approach to privacy (eroded by lobyying 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. More like, this has resulted in things like nonsensical "Cookie warnings" that only waste the user's time.
Not entirely. I've learned to read the word "cookie" in many different languages.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#115As 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…
> He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. * That Phone in your pocket? "No problem" * The browser you're using right now? "This is fine" * Your internet-enabled TV? "All good" * Open source project collecting usage metrics? "Woah, hold on there buddy" Get some perspective. They're completely transparent about which very limited usage metrics they use. You can inspect exactly which metrics…
if you want to raise a stink
If you have a judge who is not completly dumb he would laugh you off for such litigation. If you have a judge who still has his staff print out internet pages for him it might get compilicated for you as a contributor. Idiot judge already happened to me, that was an expensive lesson life taught me.
So no, I wouldn't risk sticking my name on something like that.
Because everybody else does it, doesn't mean you don't get away with it. (And over here the big boys google/apple can do a lot of things the small ones can't even begin to try - they have the advantage of getting before a "high enough" court with intelligent judges)
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#116Yes 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 US approach to privacy is "let the market sort it out". It has sorted it out by transforming the internet into a giant spying machine sucking up contacts, photos, documents, videos, metadata, what packages you use, when where and how you exercise, everything 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…
It's the combination of companies gathering ever more personal data and companies proving to be absolutely incapable to prevent leaking personal data that I find worrying even more than the direct spying.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#117As 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…
> He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. * That Phone in your pocket? "No problem" * The browser you're using right now? "This is fine" * Your internet-enabled TV? "All good" * Open source project collecting usage metrics? "Woah, hold on there buddy" Get some perspective. They're completely transparent about which very limited usage metrics they use. You can inspect exactly which metrics…
They're completely transparent after they already took your data. Almost nobody notices that tiny notice.
If they were transparent, they would ask you before transmitting data.
Websites tracking you is expected. Local tools tracking you is not.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#118As 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…
> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate.
Homebrew lead maintainer here. We're chronically understaffed and underfunded. We have analytics so we can make Homebrew better by figuring out how to prioritise security, maintenance and bug fixes on packages based on how much they are used and how often they fail. I've been working on making regular dumps of this data and have been trying to find people who will provide us with non-Google hosting but: we're chronically understaffed and underfunded.
One of our CI machines burnt out last night so I'm now trying to plan vacation time to drive for a 14 hour round trip and pick it up. While I'm doing that someone points out there's someone on Hacker News threatening to sue me. This is for working on software (mostly) in my free time that's used by people (mostly) for their employment and obtained for free. After the last thread on this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11566720) I had people emailing me to tell me I'm a nazi and should kill myself for weeks.
Everyone here who objects to the analytics is well within their rights to do so (and should either opt-out or stop using Homebrew) but we need to start asking ourselves as a community whether we think treating open-source maintainers like this is more or less likely to encourage more people to work on the open-source software you rely on to do your job.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yes, there are arguments for organ donation to be opt-out. But that's extreme case, when one loses literally nothing 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.
Well if you can't bear the thought of your friends and relatives not being able to stare at your dead corpse for a couple of hours and value that over doing something amazing and saving someone's life then more fool you.
If your in the position to donate organs you most likely died in an accident. You likely won't have that rosy picture of your family and friends around your beside. You might not have anyone.
What a waste.
Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
#120This really doesn't concern me at all. I don't feel I am harmed by Google possibly knowing what software I install, because if anyone wants to look I keep the script that installs it in my public dotfile repo on GitHub.
Can anyone explain to me how this could be used against someone? I'm asking completely seriously as I don't see any harm in this no matter how hard I try.
Edit: I do agree that the notice should be more visible for those that are concerned about this. It should require user input even if it is just waiting for a key press to give you a chance to read it along with info on how to opt out.