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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

#71

Post by jacquesm »

kapp_in_life wrote: post #69
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any valid reason for Wacom to look at what application people use. And in a proper operating system that information should not be easily available (not without the users' consent).

The need to know what art applications to test their product against and what hardware configurations they might need to write drivers for. For example, is 99% of their customer base using GiMP or are they using Photoshop? Its important to know how to allocate their testing resources. They could ask permission first but this sort of telemetry is a nothingburger in my opinion, as unpopular as that might be on this for…

> They could ask permission first

No, they must.

> this sort of telemetry is a nothingburger

I strongly disagree, what runs on my computer is my business and if Wacom wants to know, they can ask, and I'll tell them 'no, sorry that is not something you need to know'.

It's called consent and it's not up to Wacom to decide that I will think it is a nothing burger.

> in my opinion, as unpopular as that might be on this forum.

That's the whole point of consent: some people give it, others withhold it. You are just as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine and that is why they should ask, it's not that you get to decide for me that it's a nothing burger, just like I won't decide for you that it isn't.

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

#72

Post by haxiomic »

mikeodds wrote: post #4
haxiomic wrote: post #2

This was a wonderful read I think when I was younger I’d assumed the sheer number of technical users out there would mean it would be hard for companies to get away with things like this but these days I realize this sort of analysis and public exposition is actually rare and the number of skilled developers investing time in this is slim Perhaps collectively as a community we can create public bug and privacy bounti…

That’s an interesting idea, specifically the privacy bounty part, I imagine one of the difficulties here would be who handles the adjudication of it’s a privacy issue or not /you get paid or not.

As much as I struggle to personally get behind crypto, this is exactly the sort of motivating use case that DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) are intending to solve. User would pool their crypto currency, gaining voting rights in the process, researchers can submit to the pool to collect a bounty and members of the DAO get the opportunity to vote on bounty release. All this is would be built to happen autonomously

It's a funky idea, at the moment I'm suggesting more as a curiosity rather than thinking it's the right approach for something like this

My immediate criticism is you could end up with an organisation that _is_ ultimately centralized but now the major players would be hidden. Currently crypto seems to generally tend towards oligarchic growth, so I imagine you'd have a few players that control most of the shares and many people controlling negligible portions. Perhaps these issues (not to mention the energy costs) can be solved, but right now I'm curious but skeptical about these ideas

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

#73

Post by tsumnia »

jodrellblank wrote: post #54
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…

> " Why not openly ask the users those questions and show them what information would be sent to the vendor? " Why not pay money to people who spend time helping Wacom improve their products? Then lots of people would willingly help, fill in surveys, test configurations, write feedback, etc.

This is why I reject the counter arguments "Your data is why X service is free" or "If you're not paying for it, you are the product". Even when we are paying for something, we're still getting spied on.

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

#75

Post by codedokode »

There is a myth that if you are a paying customer then you are not a product. As we see, for more and more companies like Wacom, Microsoft or Apple you are a product no matter if you pay or not.

Have some self respect and vote with your wallet against such companies.

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

#76

Post by jodrellblank »

dahart wrote: post #21

> we can also come up with scenarios that involve real harms. […] I personally use Google Analytics to track visitors to my website. This was a well-written fun read, and I also both care about privacy a lot and have also used Google Analytics on a site too, but at the same time I’m a little bit floored how quickly his own use of GA was assumed benign while Wacom’s was assumed malicious. (Using GA is handing tracking…

> "it’s very, very valuable data if you care about the customer experience. [...] What can we do as developers to prevent customer experience from becoming adversarial?"

Pay money for the very very valuable data, instead of taking it and trying to hide behind legalese and finger-pointing and distraction and affront. If studying how people use your thing adds value to your company, run a usability lab where you pay people to study how they use your thing. Contact a company with a lot of users and arrange to give them discounts in exchange for data, agree up front what data will be shared and how it will be used. Offer discounts like Amazon's Kindle-with-ads is cheaper than Kindle. Make it opt-in with limited things you collect and what you do with it, and be trustworthy enough that people believe you only do that.

Microsoft PowerShell collects telemetry and it's opt-out, which is annoying for a shell/programming language. But there is a public help document about what is collected and how to opt-out[1] and the source code is on GitHub[2]. Even then I wouldn't be surprised if that was the proverbial straw which broke the camel's back. As developers keep abusing people's trust and taking liberties, something will be. It's a tragedy of the commons situation, why would you stop abusing the ~~environment~~ customer a little bit for a good reason when others are doing worse and they won't stop?

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft...

[2] https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/blob/master/src/Sys...

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

#77

Post by nottorp »

jodrellblank wrote: post #54
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…

> " Why not openly ask the users those questions and show them what information would be sent to the vendor? " Why not pay money to people who spend time helping Wacom improve their products? Then lots of people would willingly help, fill in surveys, test configurations, write feedback, etc.

No need to pay money even. Just ask the customers: "what applications are you using our product for?"

No one who buys such a peripheral would mind; they'd all like it to work better with their drawing software.

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

#78

Post by ant6n »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

I never thought I would want a "walled garden" on my desktop, but these shit software stacks that companies are integrating into their products are forcing me to want to fight back to lock down my machine. I would love a simple utility that could not only neatly encapsulate and display the data being sent from my machine out on the network but also allow me to merely check a box to block that traffic. A smart initial…

Does anybody remember ZoneAlarm? At some point later these firewalls became a standard of windows, and then when later they went away again.

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

#80

Post by na85 »

codedokode wrote: post #75

There is a myth that if you are a paying customer then you are not a product. As we see, for more and more companies like Wacom, Microsoft or Apple you are a product no matter if you pay or not. Have some self respect and vote with your wallet against such companies.

Do Wacom tablets have any relevant competition?

I have one that I use for hobbyist purposes and when it comes time to upgrade I'd be interested in not buying another Wacom.

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