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Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

robertheaton.com

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Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#41

Post by marcodiego »

That doesn't makes sense. This is just a piece of hardware and the only way for it to do that is through the driver. But you can easily check it:

  https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom.h
  https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_sys.c
  https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_wac.c
  https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_wac.h
If you're using a different driver it is your choice. Wacom does not advertise their support but I bought one and I just had to plug it to make it work. AFAIK, they pay developers to maintain the drivers.

At the least, the title should say it is a specific driver that has such problem.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#42

Post by dylan604 »

krylon wrote: post #20

The sad thing about this is that there are perfectly valid reasons for Wacom to want certain information, like what hardware do their customers connect the drawing tablets to, what operating systems and applications do they use. This is useful information to have, in the sense that Wacom can choose where to put their resources, what applications to test for, etc. But the very fact they are so damned sneaky about it m…

macOS does this any time an application "quits unexpectedly". You can Ignore, View Report, Send Report from the dialog.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#43

Post by convolvatron »

vorpalhex wrote: post #34
derekjdanserl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wacom collecting kinda intrusive information (likely justified under knowing what applications to test their product against) is not some sort of oligarchial/royalty based plot. I mean, everything you wrote sounds great, it just doesn't mean anything or have any relation to reality.

are you saying that in reality, as opposed to leftist fantasy world, that the US strikes an appropriate legislative balance between the general benefit of the populace and the desires of the business which operate there?

that...doesn't seem right.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#44

Post by marcodiego »

Reading the article:

  Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom’s privacy policy.
And this is where I stopped. You're doing it wrong. Drivers belong to the kernel. You should not have to manually install it. You should pressure the vendor to correctly support their devices.

I have a Wacom device, tried it in different recent distros, different computers and never needed to manually install a driver.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#45

Post by jasonlotito »

GuB-42 wrote: post #18

> Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? There are mice that require you to create an account nowadays...

… which is perfectly acceptable because there are customer facing features enabled with this account. Which is shared in the marketing for said mice. And then there are mice which don’t require accounts.

And technically, the mice do NOT require you to create an account.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#46

Post by zenexer »

marcodiego wrote: post #41

That doesn't makes sense. This is just a piece of hardware and the only way for it to do that is through the driver. But you can easily check it: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom.h https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_sys.c https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_wac.c https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_…

This article was written more than a year ago and received significant attention at the time. I suspect Wacom may have made some changes since then—at least, I hope they did. I can’t be sure because the official drivers aren’t actually open source.

This article’s analysis took place on macOS. The drivers to which you linked are for Linux. It’s not unreasonable to assume that official closed-source drivers, especially when bundled with other software, might be more intrusive. For example, many Wacom tablets have buttons that can be remapped, but only if you install Wacom’s software.

Dismissing it as the user’s choice really isn’t fair. I’m not going to berate my mother for failing to use Linux, but that doesn’t mean she wants all her activity sent to Wacom.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#47

Post by dylan604 »

amelius wrote: post #33
encryptluks2 wrote: post #8

Start voting with your wallet. I think this is specific to Wacom tablets, but there are many vendors that provide Wacom hardware without their specific OS. I wonder if there is a good open source ROM for drawing tablets?

Voting does not work if the majority of voters doesn't care.

I think it's slightly worse because I seriously doubt the majority of users are simply unware of something needing to be cared about. So they aren't just dubiously doing something, they are doing it knowing that most people won't know it is being done.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#48

Post by marcodiego »

zenexer wrote: post #46
marcodiego wrote: post #41

That doesn't makes sense. This is just a piece of hardware and the only way for it to do that is through the driver. But you can easily check it: https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom.h https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_sys.c https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_wac.c https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/hid/wacom_…

This article was written more than a year ago and received significant attention at the time. I suspect Wacom may have made some changes since then—at least, I hope they did. I can’t be sure because the official drivers aren’t actually open source. This article’s analysis took place on macOS. The drivers to which you linked are for Linux. It’s not unreasonable to assume that official closed-source drivers, especially…

I'm sure macOS supports hid devices out-of-the-box. Users should pressure Wacom to correctly support it. They do it correctly on linux, it is a shame users from other OS's are not treated as first-class citizens.

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#49

Post by tubby12345 »

marcodiego wrote: post #44

Reading the article: Last week I set up my tablet on my new laptop. As part of installing its drivers I was asked to accept Wacom’s privacy policy. And this is where I stopped. You're doing it wrong. Drivers belong to the kernel. You should not have to manually install it. You should pressure the vendor to correctly support their devices. I have a Wacom device, tried it in different recent distros, different computer…

>And this is where I stopped

God I'm so sick of these holier than thou Richard Stallman level unrealistic dismissals. This take isn't brilliant - we all, at all times, know that we have the option to not ____ if we so choose. Not unlike how people say things like "well I would just choose not to work at ____". That we often choose otherwise means we can't but.

>You should pressure the vendor to correctly support their devices.

Cool like by means of a blogpost that makes it to the top of hn that details how annoying the vendor's process is?

Re: Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

#50

Post by jodrellblank »

Discussed before, and brought up in comments:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22247292 (this article, earlier thread)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22803484 (comment by the author of the article)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22512696

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963867

One of those links was me mentioning it, and this got so under my skin it took Wacom's brand from "premium, respectable, best in class" to "untrustworthy, garbage, barrel scraping, avoid even if the alternatives function less well" in my head just instantly. Like Lenovo's "let's ship spyware with Thinkpads" did.

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