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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

#101

Post by na85 »

bogwog wrote: post #83
na85 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huions are pretty great. Very affordable and very high quality. I'm guessing the premium you pay for Wacom has more to do with the brand name than the actual product. I'm not a professional artist though, so maybe Huions are bad for pro work. Idk, but I'm happy with my Huion.

Given that Huion is headquartered in Shenzhen, I'm skeptical that the privacy aspect will be much better.

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

#102

Post by ygjb »

kapp_in_life wrote: post #82
jacquesm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You consented when you ran their drivers to use the hardware, just like you consent to being recorded on CCTV when you enter a shop or stop at a gas station. Don't like it? Read the privacy policy for software you run. That, or you can write or rely on libre drivers for the tablet to run on your specific hardware setup. And deal with all the issues unsupported/maintained drivers have.

Well, or as an alternative, we could regulate the collection, retention, and use of data by applications.

Consumers can't meaningfully consent isn't meaningful when businesses don't have an obligation to disclose what data is being collected especially when it is described as

“[including] aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about [my] hardware device.”

Far more consumers would be outraged if each application or license agreement had to: a) provide a detailed list of information collected and transmitted to the vendor b) acknowledge each time that list of data changed c) had to do this for each business they dealt with on a regular basis

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

#103

Post by Pxtl »

I assume it's because the Wacom has some value-adds for specific software, like custom software-specific hot buttons, erase functionality, the zoom circle, etc. and they want to know which applications users are using with the Wacom.

But the fact that there's a legitimate customer-oriented explanation doesn't make this okay.

I mean, if I added an always-on internet connected forward-facing camera and mic to a washer and dryer, I don't think we'd accept "to help you debug issues" as a good answer.

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

#104

Post by m4rtink »

Sindisil wrote: post #65
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Most Linux distributions have a similar mechanism.

AFAIK for example on Fedora this (ABRT) is opt in and only sends "thing crashed" if you opt in. You need to explicitly manually check and confirm a full crash dump before sending it, so really not anything being done without the user knowing, at least on Fedora.

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

#105

Post by Pxtl »

hiccuphippo wrote: post #79

I block google analytics at the DNS level so I guess I'm safe? It's good that they don't send the tracking data to the same domain that sends driver updates.

... this is a strong argument for a pihole. Easy network-wide anti spy functionality.

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

#106

Post by tigerBL00D »

> Some applications, like web browsers, co-operate very well with proxies. They allow users to explicitly specify a proxy for them to to send their traffic through. However, other applications (including the Wacom tablet drivers) provide no such conveniences. Instead, they require some special treatment.

You may be able to tweak your /etc/hosts to direct traffic to a machine you control, just look out for certificate issues.

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

#107

Post by m4rtink »

woolion wrote: post #90
bogwog wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huions are pretty great. Very affordable and very high quality. I'm guessing the premium you pay for Wacom has more to do with the brand name than the actual product. I'm not a professional artist though, so maybe Huions are bad for pro work. Idk, but I'm happy with my Huion.

I spent a few years with a Huion screen tablet (GT-19 series), but pressure sensitivity response was really bad compared to a Cintiq. However we are comparing a 400€ product to one that is about 3K€; second-hand it can trade for under 1K, and then it is a reasonable alternative. With a Huion 1060+ the pressure response felt amazing; however that was on Windows, I never got it to work under Linux. For a hobbyist it is…

AFAIK Wacom drivers on Linux are good & upstream. The various Chinese tablets are much more involved to get running on Linux, if possible at all.

Also, being fully open source I don't think the Linux Wacom drivers do any of the shady stuff the Windows ones apparently do.

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

#108

Post by redwall_hp »

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.

Wacom (ワコム, or wakomu) is also a Japanese company, not American.

It's weird to presuppose that the US even matters when Wacom is a multinational company that operates domestically in Japan and also in Europe. This is probably a GDPR issue for Europeans.

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

#109

Post by m4rtink »

rocqua wrote: post #12
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…

It doesn't take much of a walled garden to prevent mouse drivers from surreptitious network access. It only takes a capability based permission system.

Or open source drivers, ideally maintained as part of a community project. Good luck slipping spyware into that.

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

#110

Post by redwall_hp »

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…

For art, probably neither actually. Those are both photo retouching/raster manipulation programs.

Something like Krita or Clip Studio Paint is more likely for drawing.

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