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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

#171

Post by duskwuff »

dylan604 wrote: post #42
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.

Some parts of the report are deliberately anonymized, too -- for example, if an executable is running from the user's home directory, that path is literally displayed as "/Users/USER/" rather than including the actual username.

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

#172

Post by mleonhard »

The real problem here is that our OSes do not let us control the outgoing connections from software that we use. Device drivers should not have network access, unless they are drivers for network devices. The OS should enforce an allowlist for each application with the network names/protocols/ports it is allowed to use. Users should have control over this allow-list. The OS should require the user to review the allow-list before they can use a newly installed program.

Software must install and work properly even when the user restricts its network access. When software fails to do so, the OS maker should not sign the software or allow it to market itself as "OS-compatible".

We cannot depend on good intentions. Good quality of life requires accountability for all.

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

#173

Post by citboin »

contingencies wrote: post #164
jaclaz wrote: post #58

Besides the specific Wacom related issue, I find this snippet fantastic: >The first is a principled fuck you. I don’t care whether anything materially bad will or won’t happen as a consequence of Wacom taking this data from me. I simply resent the fact that they’re doing it. I have rarely seen the concept expressed in such a clear, direct manner.

I am a long time Wacom customer and this pisses me off too. I will certainly be trying out alternative brands in future. How about organizing an open source hackfest for alternative tablet brands? Some alternative tablet manufacturers: https://www.veikk.cn/products/ (绘客) https://www.huion.cn/ (绘王) https://www.gaomon.net/Pen_Tablet/ (高漫) https://www.ugee.com.cn/ (友基) https://www.parblo.cn/ (Parblo) http://www.penpower…

I’ve been avoiding those products because they’re Chinese. Can a pihole be used to stop tracking?

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

#174

Post by emmelaich »

Wacom drivers have often been a clusterfuck. And they were absurdly secretive in the earlier days of Linux about their hardware.

Generous view -- they're attempting to find combinations of software in an attempt to correlate software and their own issues.

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

#175

Post by contingencies »

citboin wrote: post #173
contingencies wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a long time Wacom customer and this pisses me off too. I will certainly be trying out alternative brands in future. How about organizing an open source hackfest for alternative tablet brands? Some alternative tablet manufacturers: https://www.veikk.cn/products/ (绘客) https://www.huion.cn/ (绘王) https://www.gaomon.net/Pen_Tablet/ (高漫) https://www.ugee.com.cn/ (友基) https://www.parblo.cn/ (Parblo) http://www.penpower…

I’ve been avoiding those products because they’re Chinese. Can a pihole be used to stop tracking?

Some are Chinese, some are Taiwanese or Japanese. There's nothing wrong with hardware from China per-se. The local market is Windows-centric though which means drivers for other platforms often suck or don't exist. Also, mainland Chinese market tolerance for spyware/malware/general iffyness is high, which means pushback on vendor driver software bullshit is low. To sidestep this, open source can solve the bad-actor-driver issues and we can all get cheaper hardware.

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

#176

Post by jiveturkey »

dpacmittal wrote: post #170

I don't understand why desktop operating systems still don't ship with mobile style sandboxing. It would be so darn useful to restrict applications from using filesystem, or have access to only certain folders, or restrict them from internet access. I recently wanted to install a crypto currency wallet on my linux machine but I was terrified of the fact that every single software on my machine can access the whole of…

macos does and has for a few releases now.

in this case it’s a kernel driver that interacts as an HID with every application. it also loads app specific macros so it needs to know WHAT app is running.

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

#177

Post by jp0d »

I one tried using my wife's Wacom tablet on my office Mac. It kept prompting me to allow it record keystrokes from all applications. Naturally I didn't allow it. It didn't work but then the spyware was quite difficult and and hard to remove. I was shocked.

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

#178

Post by jdavis703 »

Iefthandrule wrote: post #169
dreamcompiler wrote: post #165

At this point I don't think there's a solution for this crap except regulation. Any PM of practically any product that has a software component is now expected to include revenue-generating spyware in the package; if she doesn't she gets fired. Regulation is the only solution. And the fines need to be stiff, like $10,000 per incident per user. It's gotta hurt or companies won't stop doing it.

Don't companies lobby legislators to prevent this?

Well the thing is, it’s really hard to define what “spyware” is from a legal sense. For example anti-malware software is highly invasive by definition.

It seems the real problem is consent… There should be a “nutrition facts” for software that is enforced at the OS level through an aggressive permissions model and backed by a privately run app stores subject to audit by government regulators.

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

#180

Post by genewitch »

m4rtink wrote: post #109
rocqua wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't there telemetry in audacity, now?
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