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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

#201

Post by tailspin2019 »

foerbert wrote: post #200
tailspin2019 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software vendors do this on purpose; they don't need notification. I must admit I didn't put much thought into my comment on ethics but I guess what I had in mind is perhaps a scenario where the behaviour is not actually intentional, and the vendor should at least be properly informed that there may be leakage (to them) of private data as opposed to just jumping straight to blogging about it. So rather than "respon…

I don't understand why that would be important. The only value in responsible disclosure is protection of users. If you figure out there's a way to harm a boatload of people, it's nice to do what you can to ensure it can't happen before telling everybody how. It makes sense. But there's a very good reason it comes with a not-too-distant deadline before you give up on it. But this? We're talking about finding ways tha…

I’m not suggesting a delay. Responsible disclosure was the wrong term to use.

The distinction I was trying to draw is rather than just blogging about it or unleashing a Twitter storm and jumping straight to an adversarial public crucifixion of the vendor (and by all means do that as well), there should be a standardised process of also contacting that vendor directly and engaging with them to give them an opportunity to fully understand what is being reported, reproduce the issue (in the case of it being unexpected) and fixing the problem. Some vendors won’t engage or will stick their head in the sand, but others may actually choose to address the problem. This is also in the users’ best interests.

Some issues will hit Hacker News or gain visibility in other ways, but other issues that are published may not naturally reach the eyes of someone at a vendor unless the person publishing actually takes steps to contact them. That’s the point I was trying to get across.

Not suggesting any of that is a prerequisite to publishing anything publicly in parallel.

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

#202

Post by imiric »

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…

You have several options for that in the F/LOSS world: Linux containers, BSD jails, Qubes OS, or plain old VMs, etc. As with anything on these platforms you're free to pick your tool of choice.

On Windows there are also a few options, Sandboxie being the best one IME. It's open source now as well, though the quality and stability have taken a hit. And there's Windows Sandbox, which has been shipping since Windows 10.

I'm glad users can still make a choice on desktop OSs. As great as app isolation is on mobile devices, there's little from that ecosystem I would want on desktop. Even though OS manufacturers are desperately trying to merge the two...

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

#203

Post by lmm »

zem wrote: post #199
lmm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it makes your boycott seem entirely arbitrary, and that's likely to make it ineffective.

the effect is that they, and hopefully their friends and family who come to them for advice, don't buy lenovo's products. that's independent of what else they happen to be boycotting.

Presumably the goal is that Lenovo change their practices, institute better oversight, etc..

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

#204

Post by hanspeter »

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.

> include revenue-generating spyware

Is this what you believe happened with Wacom in this case? How could these tracking points be converted into revenue?

Personally I think this was a good case of "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice", but maybe my imagination is just insufficient.

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

#205

Post by raxxorrax »

That is a bummer since I like their tablets for drawing. But I cannot in good conscience support such practices. If they ask the user, fine. But this is certainly the worst form of spyware, even if it is only used for "legitimate" purposes.

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

#206

Post by 4903000 »

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.

If you're a product, then there is simply a bigger paying customer.

Companies are ever tending towards surveillance capitalism because the profit the marketplace for personal information provides them potentially far outweighs the profits of mere direct sales. Withdrawing your business from such a company will achieve very little so long as they still have some user data in the bank. Participating in surveillance capitalism provides a great competitive edge at first, but the race to the bottom makes it a necessary component of conducting business. If Wacom simply needs to sell customers' session data to stay afloat, a not-wacom that expressly refuses to do the same probably won't stay in business for long on just sales. They would need some other revenue source, in crowdfunding, venture capital, SaaS, advertisements, a corporate buyout, government or military contract, renting and franchising, anything. Save for crowdfunding, these kinds of alternate revenue sources serve to tap into the lion's share of currency consumers don't hold.

Incredibly inequal wealth distribution prevents money from functioning like a distributed democratic force.

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

#207

Post by playpause »

lmm wrote: post #203
zem wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the effect is that they, and hopefully their friends and family who come to them for advice, don't buy lenovo's products. that's independent of what else they happen to be boycotting.

Presumably the goal is that Lenovo change their practices, institute better oversight, etc..

Right. Where does boycotting Sony come into that?

Do you think there’s no value in a positive action unless the person doing it also did some other, unrelated positive action? Why? I think you’re just playing gotcha.

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

#208

Post by colinwilyb »

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.

If you offer cash to customers then you are setting yourself up to receive reviews primarily from those who are in need of cash or have "spare" time. A person employed full-time who uses their tablet daily may be missed entirely.

[edit: Not that this is entirely wrong, but it must be one-of-many approaches for customer feedback.]

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

#209

Post by Hnrobert42 »

lmm wrote: post #198
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it makes your boycott seem entirely arbitrary, and that's likely to make it ineffective.

Ok. That’s a good argument. I’ve never been on the seller side of a boycott. I wonder if they consider things like this when they respond to a boycott.

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

#210

Post by t_akosuke »

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…

This, and not only that - i use my tablet instead of a mouse for everything, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, and there's a few annoying things about that which could potentially be fixed if Wacom realizes we do this. The pressure sensitivity gets in the way of a lot of things like selecting files in explorer for example. But yeah please ask for permission Wacom, even fucking Google does that when you are first setting up Android
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