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Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

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Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#141

Post by DanBC »

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…

> Imagine a worker at a company, using this function to search for internal document including a string with company secrets. Whooops, now that data is at Amazon.

Some people used to say that you should not search for domain names at Google, because then Google would have the name and someone in Google could snatch it and squat it and you'd lose out.

That's a paranoid extreme, but you get the idea. Some things are realistic, some other things not so much.

> Imagine a police worker, seaching for email with witness details. whooops, now that data is also sent to Amazon.

I really freakin' hope that police have better policies for keeping details protected. I recognise (from many of the leaks recently) that this might not be the case.

> Imagine a normal person searching for emails that includes their credit card. Whoops, gone gone.

Wait, what? 5275655718086695 is a credit card number, but what use is that to anyone without a name, address, and CVC/ CVV2 number?

Considering that many many people have emails stored on someone else's machine not on their local network, and that email is sent in plain text, this has been a problem for very much longer than Ubuntu's search box has existed.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#142

Post by shardling »

Roybatty wrote: post #77
splawn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with your stated belief, but I believe most people in the linux community do associate proprietary software with maliciousness.

I believe you're wrong. The vast majority of "linux users" don't buy into RMS's particular ideology. RMS proactively describes the differences between the OpenSource and "Free Software" philosophies.

You're conflating two things, I think.

Most Linux users might not buy into a boycott of Ubuntu -- in that sense they reject RMS's ideology.

But I think few would argue that proprietary software does tend towards bullshit -- the very DRM and the like that RMS is calling malicious. They might not go around calling it malicious, but they wouldn't consider RMS's attitude there extreme, just the actions he advocates.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#143

Post by k3n »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #99
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.

Well, you _can_ disable it, so no need to cut off your nose to spite your face.

Unless you're boycotting Chrome on the principle of this feature.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#144

Post by keithpeter »

chipaca wrote: post #78
keithpeter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..." I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us. What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop? The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic…

Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that.

Which version, QQ or 13.04? I'm on QQ with Unity. Everything Everywhere is having some fun with their 'profile generator' at present, and we have exactly 0.24Mbit/s of bandwidth, so that might be an issue.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#145

Post by Zr40 »

bad_user wrote: post #138
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 also enabled instant search in Chrome. Whenever I want privacy, I just Ctrl-N.

You mean Ctrl-Shift-N (for a new Incognito window). Ctrl-N just opens a regular window.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#146

Post by Surio »

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…

rms is being....well, rms in that article.

But if more among us adopted this nuance, it will kill most arguments before they are raised. :-)

Well put.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#147

Post by fixermark »

acabal wrote: post #121

I'm pretty surprised that Shuttleworth didn't see this kind of reaction coming, considering his long-time involvement in free software. Or maybe he did see it coming, and just doesn't care? In either case, you're in a bad position when you're distributing a Linux distro that RMS starts to call out. Shuttleworth would do well to observe what happened to GNOME: they ignored their core user base, and they've been in suc…

Seeing this reaction coming and not caring is a reasonable strategy. In free software, RMS holds a lot of philosophical sway, but Ubuntu operates in the larger open-source ecosystem.

Let's say that free software adherents decide that Ubuntu is bad for their interests. How will they react? The GPL prevents them from forbidding Ubuntu from bundling their work as long as Ubuntu's use of the work is GPL-compliant. This leaves them with few options. They can refuse to support Ubuntu, which is fine; other software developers can patch the bugs and fork projects that the original maintainers refuse to update. They can call out why Ubuntu is bad for a free software ecosystem; this is a good thing to do, but has little impact on those who are familiar with the four freedoms but don't buy into their absolute necessity.

As a tool to exercise free use of software, GPL is very strong. But as a coercive tool, GPL is pretty weak (by design). Shuttleworth recognizing these strengths and weaknesses and adapting the company's motion to account for it is shrewd business.

Accepting the notion "I don't approve of your use of my software, but I respect your right to use, study, redistribute, and modify free software" is an implicit aspect of the free software philosophy.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#148

Post by chipaca »

keithpeter wrote: post #144
chipaca wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you re-enable it for a little bit and test that slow-typing thing? We did a bit of work to make it a little bit better at that.

Which version, QQ or 13.04? I'm on QQ with Unity. Everything Everywhere is having some fun with their 'profile generator' at present, and we have exactly 0.24Mbit/s of bandwidth, so that might be an issue.

12.10. It was one of the last changes before the freeze on QQ (re: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1060979 ), and a server-side change.

BTW, you seem to have the name/numbers convention backwards :) it's codename during dev, numbers once released. So it's 12.10 or RR now.

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#149

Post by bad_user »

Zr40 wrote: post #145
bad_user wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also enabled instant search in Chrome. Whenever I want privacy, I just Ctrl-N.

You mean Ctrl-Shift-N (for a new Incognito window). Ctrl-N just opens a regular window.

Right :-) Shortcut is wired to my fingers and I look for the guy with the glasses and the hat anyway :-)

Re: Ubuntu Spyware: What to Do?

#150

Post by cs702 »

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…

One of the solutions suggested by rms strikes me as reasonable: Ubuntu should make make search only local by default, but show a "search online too" toggle button right next to all search results.

If Ubuntu does that, the problem goes away, because users who want only local search don't have to do anything, and users who want global search can turn online search on/off at will by clicking a toggle button right there on the Unity panel.

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