Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
1–10 of 87 posts
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#2So much blabbering about how to count users, but why do they want to?
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#3So much blabbering about how to count users, but why do they want to?
What project isn't interested in knowing how large their installed userbase is?
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#4This post describes a bad way to track users, but the real utility of this post is in the email that describes a way to count Fedora users without tracking them:
https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20190108152239.GA24118@garde...
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#5This post describes a bad way to track users, but the real utility of this post is in the email that describes a way to count Fedora users without tracking them: https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20190108152239.GA24118@garde...
That actually sounds more reasonable, although it does run tiny risk of being trivial to mess with if a malicious client wanted to skew numbers. But I don't think it's possible to defend against that without being horribly invasive, privacy perspective.
I must say, it feels odd to support a Poettering proposal, but this actually does look like a good solution.
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#6Please don't use "UUID" for that, it's taken (and useful).
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#7Any distro that phones home with a unique identifier is a distro I won't touch with a ten foot pole. I don't care what they claim they will or won't use that identifier for.
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#8It's interesting to see how this discussion steers towards privacy. Some distributions, like Ubuntu for example, are far less conservative. Besides the NTP tracking mentioned in the article, there's the Amazon fiasco of past, and Ubuntu 18.04 installs quite bit of telemetry [1], including tracking packages. It ships with a "dynamic" MOTD that runs a script periodically which downloads updates from Canonical. While this may be useful for server administrators who wish to be notified of products and updates, it has at one point shown ads for an HBO show [2].
Annoyingly, while installing the Xubuntu flavor, there appeared to be no option to opt out nor was there even mention of any such telemetry in the live installer interface. I had to track down and disable manually post installation - something the average user is not going to bother with and what Canonical is surely betting on. I appreciate how Poettering brings up trust and "red flags", knowing full well the lower the transparency, the larger the reactionary incentive for users to opt out or disable such telemetry. Canonical could perhaps take note.
[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1027532/how-to-opt-out-of-sy... [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/17...
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#9Please don't use "UUID" for that, it's taken (and useful).
Well, they could just as easily use a "real" UUID [1] variant, and all the concerns of this topic would still remain the same.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier
Re: Fedora, UUIDs, and user tracking
#10Just count the number of bug reports. That seems like a more useful metric anyway. If the users aren't complaining who cares.
(about 75% serious)