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Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

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Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#91

Post by rlpb »

jfreak53 wrote: post #83

I agree, the Linux community as a whole has never stood for these malfeasons ever!! I say we stand up, I use Ubuntu on ALL my PC's home and work, so we're talking 15 to 20 PC's that I might have to move over to another Distro here soon. This is not the first time Ubuntu has tried these "Windowz" practices on it's users, but this needs to be the last! The first was taking away our choice in the first release of Unity,…

> Ubuntu has been trying to take our choices away for a long, long time.

How has it taken any of your choices away? All of Debian is available in Ubuntu, and Debian is all about choice. You can manipulate your systems as you please. You can even roll your own installation CD exactly how you want it.

Canonical even supports Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu etc., all of which have taken a different set of choices and all of which are released at the same time as Ubuntu itself.

How is any of this about taking choices away?

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#92

Post by nathanb »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79
belorn wrote: post #59

A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then. This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being…

This is a great example of how nothing is free. Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. I do enjoy playing with it, so the first cost is meaningless to me, but the second absolutely is not. Frankly, Ubuntu is mismanaged. From the absurd new UI to a built-in privacy trojan? I'd rather just pay for an OS that doesn't hate me or use a different distro. Not sure what the allure of Ubuntu is at thi…

> Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy.

How does that follow?

I'm assuming you're using an economic rather than ideological definition of the world "free", which sort of misunderstands the point of the article, but OK.

The Linux kernel does not, to my knowledge, include anything which explicitly violates your privacy. If a Linux system distributor chooses to install privacy-invading bits on your hard drive, I don't see how you can blame the kernel or the entire free software ecosystem for this invasion.

(The argument about time is possibly valid, though I find it takes more time to configure Windows to a point that I consider it usable than it does to do the same for a Linux system. As it turns out, learning new things does take time. You had to learn how to use Windows or MacOS as well, though chances are you learned it through assimilation. Some of us learned Linux this way, and thus don't quite understand people griping about how it's hard to use or takes too much time to set up).

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#93

Post by belorn »

takluyver wrote: post #74
belorn wrote: post #59

A lot of people are pointing out that if you do not like something, don't use it. It's simple enough, and have a "sounds right" tone to it. As an implied statement with this, anyone complaining should just shut up then. This is a rather crazy line of thought once one actually starts to think about it. If I see a poisonous (say rotten) food being sold, I find it almost my duty to inform people. Somehow it's now being…

I think the important question is what the users expect. Existing Ubuntu users are used to that box searching only local files and applications, so are annoyed that it now does remote searches as well. For new users, it's quite clear from the first time they use it that that box does a local+remote search. It's not tricking them. Of course, they may still wish that local-only search was more convenient. But they migh…

Its like with food-like objects, like plastic decorative fruits, pickled decorative food, and small candy like objects. With clear labeling, everything is fine and those objects do fulfill their role. Without clear labels however, they are a risk to people. Pickled decorative food is a special notable case here, in which if it was eaten, is indeed very poisonous.

And while I hope, really hope that people will figure it out based on what information they get back from first time using the search box, I somehow doubt the majority of people will realize that the information is actually based on what they themselves wrote in the box and thus someone now has a record of it. A large portion of people dont even figure this out when using search on the Internet. Maybe that's a bit pessimistic, and its only a small fraction of people that do not know that every word they type in Google and Facebook is saved for all eternity. The data I can gather from observing people I see around me however, sadly support the more pessimistic view.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#94

Post by reidrac »

rlpb wrote: post #86
JasonFruit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Canonical has been appropriately forward with discussion of what the situation is, and who gets information. I think it's an awful idea — who really wants commercial results built into their desktop? — but calling it spyware is disingenuous. I also think it'll kill adoption of Ubuntu. It made me adopt a different distribution, and I think it will cause others to do the same.

> who really wants commercial results built into their desktop? The distinction between the desktop and the Internet is going away. Some argue that "the desktop is dead"; I just think that it'll get more integrated. I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, providing that you have adequate control over your own privacy settings and have a choice of providers (both large and small). An open source project th…

In fact it turns out that 12.04 has some lens making queries to different services when I was searching stuff using the dash, and I didn't know about it.

I fixed it with: sudo apt-get remove unity-scope-musicstores unity-lens-video unity-lens-music

(I couldn't find how to disable it)

It's not like I agreed to this when I installed the system, because I upgraded from a previous version (and a previous version, etc), and that behaviour wasn't there.

I don't know how Canonical could advertise these changes, but in the Amazon lens case I think RMS did it right.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#95

Post by rlpb »

takluyver wrote: post #81

Relevant: Canonical have just said there will be more retailers integrated in 13.04 (which was always expected). And: "We are also testing a few additional user controls like filters for local and global searching – more to come on this front as we learn from those sessions." http://blog.canonical.com/2012/12/07/searching-in-the-dash-i...

"...we have made it dead easy to switch the online search tools off with a simple toggle in settings."

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#96

Post by Surio »

iamtherockstar wrote: post #68

My sister home schools two kids, cooks three squares a day, and doesn't care if someone knows she googled for "bread pudding recipe." They have an old, aging computer, and when I gave an Ubuntu CD to her husband, they were so incredibly grateful. I see this feature being excellent for her, because she has a bunch of documents on her computer that contain her recipes, and then maybe she'll see a cookbook she might wan…

+1. I liked the framing of this entire thing. Wow.

Thank you for writing this. I wish more people upvote this so it can move somewhere close to the top to provide a much needed perspective on things.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#97

Post by antidoh »

What distro would you recommend take the place of Ubuntu, as a recommended for newbs distro?

I mean a distro that you would feel comfortable recommending to a stranger that you will not be able to help install or support the distro, as well as the more traditional "lemme help you with that."

As a subset of that, what apt based distro would you recommend for that niche?

Is plain Debian really something that people feel comfortable recommending to non-supported strangers? Something that you would not be embarrassed about if they looked you up and told you what happened?

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#98

Post by drzaiusapelord »

nathanb wrote: post #92
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of how nothing is free. Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. I do enjoy playing with it, so the first cost is meaningless to me, but the second absolutely is not. Frankly, Ubuntu is mismanaged. From the absurd new UI to a built-in privacy trojan? I'd rather just pay for an OS that doesn't hate me or use a different distro. Not sure what the allure of Ubuntu is at thi…

> Linux isn't free, not only does it cost time, it costs privacy. How does that follow? I'm assuming you're using an economic rather than ideological definition of the world "free", which sort of misunderstands the point of the article, but OK. The Linux kernel does not, to my knowledge, include anything which explicitly violates your privacy. If a Linux system distributor chooses to install privacy-invading bits on…

>The Linux kernel

Its 100% obvious from the context of my post that I was using linux as a shorthand for this distro.

I really hate this disingenuous rhetorical trick. When people start talking about stupid things distros do suddenly its "OH WAIT, LINUX IS JUST A KERNEL!" Err, no one is just running the kernel. We're all running some distro.

Its like a 'god of the gaps' argument for geeks. You get backed into a corner and suddenly its "wait wait, its just a kernel, how dare you criticize it?! Its pure." Yeah but we're still all running some distro. Why do distros like ubuntu and mint have these privacy issues and have ads in them? Lets not sweep these important issues under the rug of technical minutia.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#99

Post by TallGuyShort »

btilly wrote: post #84

Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded. In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.) I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrom…

I recall complaining vocally about that and seeing others do so. It's still the only reason I don't use Chrome.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#100

Post by yungchin »

btilly wrote: post #84

Canonical is not the first to do this. And nobody minded. In Chrome, every time you start to type a URL, it tries to autocomplete. One source of autocompletions is that it contacts Google, which sends back suggestions. Therefore by default Google knows every search you do in Chrome, even if you didn't want to go to Google. (They turn this off for incognito mode.) I don't know how long this has been the case for Chrom…

Yes, but it's somewhat less of a privacy violation, because you usually expect to send out the URL you type over the internet. That's different from trying a local search on your machine and finding it ended up on the internet.
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