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VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

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Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#11

Post by pseudalopex »

smoldesu wrote: post #5
ttctciyf wrote: post #2

Found this while looking for a way to fully disable telemetry on vscode. After reading, this seems impossible, short of going down to DNS or network blocks of some kind: the "disable telemetry" setting doesn't; extensions have their own telemetry; MS consider the data sufficiently anonymous to be exempt from GDPR, even the vscodium maintainers say they found it impossible to block vs code's eager telemetrizing. I won…

https://vscodium.com/

They said even the vscodium maintainers say they found it impossible to block vs code's eager telemetrizing.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#12

Post by katbyte »

bitwize wrote: post #9
mayoi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always simply install a better text editor that doesn't spy on you.

What better text editor?

On windows notepad++ was my goto for basic text editing. These days I use the jetbrains editor of choice for the language in question or IntelliJ for basic text.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#13

Post by nominusllc »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #10

I honestly wouldn't mind the telemetry but seen as VSCode on Windows will always inevitably completely freeze the entire OS to the point of requiring a restart if you leave it open for long enough, it doesn't give me much faith anyone is looking at it that closely in terms of using it to fix fundamental issues.

I have never experienced this, on any OS.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#14

Post by gentleman11 »

Why even make vscode if not for telemetry? It’s the whole point of the app, isn’t it? It’s like chrome or edge or that open source png viewer that started selling your info a few months ago

Telemetry is a major focus of windows since the current ceo too over. It’s kind of his thing

Note there is an open source version called vscodium that iirc has telemetry disabled but I found my extensions didn’t work with it last year when I tried it

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#16

Post by api »

bitwize wrote: post #9
mayoi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always simply install a better text editor that doesn't spy on you.

What better text editor?

There are much better IDEs. Check out the Jetbrains products. If you want an editor on Mac there is also Nova:

https://nova.app

The Rust and web related extensions work pretty well. I've been using that for a while.

There are a few more around.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#18

Post by gabrielgio »

NGRhodes wrote: post #6

Worth noting that extensions may separately send telemetry, that do not have to adhere to the main VSCode telemetry configuration settings.

What a gross oversight from their part. Not only they build a product that, as pointed by the post, sends a excessive amount of data, but also allows anyone to do the same.

> Why have licenses like these if they are just concerned with product improvement?

That nails it for me. I have no reason whatsoever to use vscode.

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#19

Post by api »

Bootvis wrote: post #17

I think I'm out of the loop: what exactly is so valuable about this telemetry? I don't believe my coding habits can be used for advertising.

* Profiling what languages you code in

* Profiling your work hours

* Tracking the physical locations of software professionals

* Profiling the nature of the projects you are working on

* Perhaps: training GitHub Copilot?

Re: VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?

#20

Post by falcolas »

Telemetry is godsend for developers, since it lets them track down actual product usage and issues.

Telemetry is a privacy nightmare for users, since it sends data to the developers outside of an average user's control - data which is probably easily associated with an individual and kept for eons (disk space is cheap after all).

I think telemetry collection is starting to become a professional ethics issue for developers, and should be talked about more.

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