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Wacom tablets track every app you open

robertheaton.com

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Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#101

Post by [deleted] »

Joe-Z wrote: post #57
penagwin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking the currently open application software side is perfectly within scope for a drawing tablet - they often have buttons that can be bound to keyboard shortcuts, etc. It makes sense that it should know when you're focused on Photoshop vs Google Chrome. But why are they sending this data to a server? My best guess is that this helps them focus on what software people are using. This allows them access to the pop…

IMO the more simple explanation is they want this data to sell to data aggregators, who can in turn enrich the profile they have on you. There's a similar thing going on with smart TVs, right?

[deleted]

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#102

Post by rhacker »

That's actually really good to know. I used to own a wacom (pronunciation war: It's Whack-om haha) about 10 years ago for drawing - I don't think I would buy one now until they walk this one back (and push it off the cliff to die).

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#103

Post by harikb »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #86
_jal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would that still be problematic? Yes. When thinking about data, you need to think about orthogonal uses. Can you imagine reasons why someone might subpoena data to determine whether Photoshop was being used on my home desktop machines at a particular time? They might not care that it was Photoshop at all.

Any data collection of course has a privacy cost and should of course be opt in. What about aggregate data limited to art apps? For example if it only sends a monthly summary: used photoshop with a wacom tablet for 15 hours this month, illustrator for 3 hours this month?

In that fictitious scenario, would they have checked with Adobe if they wouldn't mind their users spied up on. What if this information is indirectly used for trading on ADBE stock? Would that be considered OK ?

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#104

Post by egypturnash »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #46
egypturnash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell the only consequence of declining it is that it pops up the “hey please let us have all this info” dialogue whenever you reboot. I’ve been doing this on my own machine for most of a year. Might be different with the latest update, I haven’t bothered with that.

Is there an accessible way to prevent an application drawing a specific window to the screen? I can see an app like autohotkey could click the "no" button and automatically remove it, but could you (assuming it's not modal; which it probably is) tell Windows not to show it?

The "Wacom Desktop Center" app mostly just sits there looking for updates and bugging you to enable tracking anyway; the Mac version has a menu setting that theoretically stops it from ever running, and thus bugging you to sign up to share your analytics. I just turned it off (since I just noticed it for the first time) but don't feel like rebooting to check if it actually works. (Though I did just run the little script I keep around to restart the driver, which normally brings up the WDC, and it did not show up this time. Huzzah!)

No idea about Windows, I never use that.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#105

Post by _jal »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #86
_jal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would that still be problematic? Yes. When thinking about data, you need to think about orthogonal uses. Can you imagine reasons why someone might subpoena data to determine whether Photoshop was being used on my home desktop machines at a particular time? They might not care that it was Photoshop at all.

Any data collection of course has a privacy cost and should of course be opt in. What about aggregate data limited to art apps? For example if it only sends a monthly summary: used photoshop with a wacom tablet for 15 hours this month, illustrator for 3 hours this month?

I don't have an answer for you.

I think any attempt to exfil data not required by the function of the tool should be clearly and transparently disclosed, the use of those disclosures backed by the force of law, and opt-in. This is obviously far from where we are.

Because of that, I would block it no matter what. In a better world, I would selectively allow some instrumentation and such, but as-is, there is no way to trust any of it.

So I'm the wrong person to ask.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#106

Post by jchw »

leppr wrote: post #91
jchw wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux drivers for Wacom tablets have never been buggy in the past decade in a half I’ve used them. Other parts of the stack (Xinput, libinput, GUI libraries) have been, but the actual driver provides good data to userspace. Even then, to me the drivers on Linux have been perpetually less buggy. On Windows I found myself needing to restart the usermode service and restart applications frequently, especially if the…

Ok the bugs might have been isolated to the configuration GUI and not the driver strictly speaking, but the point still stands.

LinuxWacom doesn’t provide a configuration GUI that I am aware of, though. The xf86 input driver has knobs you can tweak but as far as I am aware the only official way to do it is CLI.

If you are talking about GNOME’s Wacom settings, then I can understand the confusion: under Windows this would be part of the driver package, but under Linux this bit just happens to be completely unrelated and maintained by GNOME. I realize this does not matter much to the end user but it kind of matters in the context of this discussion; the bugs aren’t inherent, they are probably mostly a result of how the software ecosystem works on Linux...

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#109

Post by pdkl95 »

13hunteo wrote: post #44
ipython wrote: post #21

The best part is where the author admits to using google analytics himself to track who visits his blog. At some point we all have to say enough is enough.

I've read a lot of comments recently about how Google Analytics is bad, but no one explain why. Can I ask why this is not something people want? Is it not anonymised?

GA gives Google surveillance over a large portion of the web. Even if the author of a webpage trusts google with their data, they shouldn't be forcing their opinion of Google on others. Trust isn't transitive!

Google receiving browsing histories for a single website is rude, but it probably isn't a serious problem for many websites (although the risk will depend on the nature of the website). In isolation, the fact that Alice read Bob's webpage isn't isn't very interesting, but Google can aggregate that data into s very accurate pattern of life[1].

> Is it not anonymised?

Not for any meaningful definition of "anonyms". At best GA will zero the low 8 bits of the IP address by request of the website. (The opinion of the person visiting the website apparently isn't worth considering) See this[2] post for a more detailed explanation of GA's perfunctory "Anonymize IP" feature.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15167059

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#110

Post by rhacker »

lostgame wrote: post #69
ipython wrote: post #21

The best part is where the author admits to using google analytics himself to track who visits his blog. At some point we all have to say enough is enough.

We've had visit counters since the 90's, so what?

Lol, comparing visit counters from the 90s to Google Analytics.

GA is used by countless websites. It's likely hooked into the adwords codebase so that they can track websites you visit even if that website does not have Adwords ads on it.

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