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“I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

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Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#141

Post by phone8675309 »

sly010 wrote: post #76
detaro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a Canonical rep contacting him purely a "Microsoft feature"?

Well, what should we be more angry about? That Canonicals sales rep is using data in their CMS, or that Microsoft is selling data to third parties. The root cause seems to be Microsoft, not Canonical and (at least in my eye) the conclusion is not "don't trust Ubuntu", but "don't trust Azure".

The takeaway is "don’t trust Ubuntu or Azure".

It’s like if you tell a friend that there's a key to your back door under the mat but to keep it a secret and instead of keeping the secret they tell a mutual friend about it and that mutual friend robs you since they know where the key is.

You shouldn’t trust the friend that told the your mutual friend where the key was and you shouldn’t trust the mutual friend who robbed you.

The friend who told your mutual friend may have done so for what they thought were useful reasons, like letting the mutual friend know so they could fix something for you while you’re out, but they still violated your trust non matter what their intent was.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#142

Post by jacurtis »

rkangel wrote: post #48
raesene9 wrote: post #8

The register article on this https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt... has responses from Canonical and MS, which shed a bit more light on the situation. The Canonical quote is the most illuminating :- "As per the Azure T&Cs, Microsoft shares with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, the contact details of developers launching Ubuntu instances on Azure. These contact details are held in Canonical…

Actually, to me the MS statement is the most illuminating and I'm guessing that Canonical is getting some grumpy calls from Microsoft. This is the last part of the Microsoft statement: "Our terms with our publishers allow them to provide customers with implementation and technical support for their products but restricts them from using contact details for marketing purposes" Canonical then tells us that this person…

> "On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."

The part I find the most enlightening (ie: disturbing) is that Canonical's only regret is that the sales rep used "a poor choice of word" and they will train their salespeople better.

I assume the "poor choice of word" was when the salesman said, "I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu instance". Was Canonical's biggest regret that the salesmen INFORMED the user that they are monitoring installs and linking them to contact information?

Canonical never said "oh the salesperson wasn't supposed to market to you with this information", instead they basically said, the salesman wasn't supposed to TELL YOU that we are monitoring what you install and linking it to personal contact details.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#143

Post by mint2 »

jnwatson wrote: post #69

I'm super confused as to why anybody thinks this is a problem. Generally, when one "buys" something from a "marketplace" the vendor gets to know who the buyer is. That the vendor asks the buyer if there's anything else they'd want to buy is par for the course.

I take issue with it, but I haven’t seen any other comment clearly state what I see the issue to be.

The issue is the poster spun up the instance in the course of his job. Microsoft and canonical would be reasonable to share that job related info.

But instead it appears that either they shared his personal info which would be unethical, or canonical takes the de-identified job info and then matches it with personal info.

In most transactions between people acting as representatives of their business, it would be very creepy for one of the businesses to then get personal info on the representative of the other business like their social media accounts or home address, especially if they do it using secret/obfuscated manners rather than explicit asking.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#144

Post by Topgamer7 »

fireball_blaze wrote: post #72
BlueTie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, in this case, people are mad at Azure/MS and Canonical for betraying developer trust, not the individual salesperson. He's just a pawn in the game. It's not like this guy went rogue; this is his job. It's still his linkedin profile plastered all over twitter right now though more than Azure's EULA/T&C's.

But no one is calling this guy a villain. For example, his name is not mentioned once in all these HN comments. It's not his fault. And indeed the Azure T&C's are definitely referenced a in the Twitter discussion with the OP. Such as: https://twitter.com/dezren39/status/1359726235929223168

It really depends on company culture. But there's probably a good chance this affects him at the company internally.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#145

Post by detaro »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #135
raesene9 wrote: post #8

The register article on this https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/11/microsoft_azure_ubunt... has responses from Canonical and MS, which shed a bit more light on the situation. The Canonical quote is the most illuminating :- "As per the Azure T&Cs, Microsoft shares with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, the contact details of developers launching Ubuntu instances on Azure. These contact details are held in Canonical…

I wonder whether the LinkedIn profile of the customer was directly handed out to the Canonical by MS, because invite by email on LinkedIn cannot send 'custom invite message', Canonical Agent seems to have manually sent an invite with custom message which leaves us with two possibilities - 1. Agent had enough details at hand to confirm that the LinkedIn profile was indeed that of the customer. 2. Access to LinkedIn pr…

He stated the LinkedIn profile was under a different email (makes sense, not corporate one). I'd guess 1: name+company matching was enough.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#146

Post by Waterluvian »

cowflik wrote: post #133
Waterluvian wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me. It's Friday. What was the poor choice of word? I get that the whole concept is poor. But what word or words?

"I saw that you" (did something that you didn't expect me to see)

So the poor word choice was revealing how he knew to reach out? So it's that he got caught?

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#148

Post by agilob »

autoditype wrote: post #2

I thought this was going to be a Clippy joke, but the truth was much more disturbing. Why is Microsoft sharing this level of information (from a corporate account) with third parties?

> Why is Microsoft sharing this level of information (from a corporate account) with third parties?

Because why not, it's allowed by T&C

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#149

Post by cptskippy »

johnsoft wrote: post #102
whimsicalism wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On February 10th, a new Canonical Sales Representative contacted one of these developers via LinkedIn, with a poor choice of word. In light of this incident, Canonical will be reviewing its sales training and policies."" My reading of this statement is that they are scapegoating the guy.

They are trying to scapegoat the guy. Thankfully, people are not falling for it.

This. Typical Marketing and Sales tactics involve using the lowest level employee both because they're naive and because they have nothing to lose because they're already lowest on the pecking order.

Re: “I saw that you spun up an Ubuntu image in Azure”

#150

Post by taftster »

falcolas wrote: post #138
ojnabieoot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ubuntu is a free product. Canonical should not be able to find out if I (specifically me or my organization) allocates or runs 1 or 10000 instances of Ubuntu I agree with the message behind this and obviously Canonical and Microsoft are both being extremely gross. But Ubuntu as a binary image (or source code) is a very different product than a VM with Ubuntu pre-installed and pre-configured, which is what you paid…

If you go to Ubuntu's web site, they will offer several distinct ISOs, each optimized for different usecases; and yet I'm not charged all of my personal information there either. Ditto the Ubuntu images on Docker Hub.

Right. If I can run Ubuntu on Docker without Canonical knowing, I should be able to run Ubuntu on Azure without Canonical knowing.

This is a big misstep for Microsoft, from my point of view. I think it's less a reflection on Canonical, because once they have the information, it's ultimately going to be used. Microsoft just should not have agreed to the arrangement at all.

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