Of course, developers could say "Actually it's crash reporting, not tracking" or "Actually it's version checking, not tracking", so idk.
Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
31–40 of 352 posts
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#32Bad-actors would ignore it wholesale anyway, so this at best gives one a false sense of privacy. It would probably be better _not_ to have it, since people won't be misguided into thinking they're not being tracked.
An actual effective approach to privacy is to use a firewall to block all unwanted connections (allowlist only), and a DNS sinkhole like pi-hole.
IMO we should get more on the more aggressive side when it comes to mitigating tracking, and use tools that actually are a threat to the status quo. Tools like adnauseam[0] was blocked by Google[1] on their store because it actually worked—that says a lot more than a env var string they'll happily ignore.
1. https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/05/adnauseam_expelled_fr...
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#33Bad-actors would ignore it wholesale anyway, so this at best gives one a false sense of privacy. It would probably be better _not_ to have it, since people won't be misguided into thinking they're not being tracked. An actual effective approach to privacy is to use a firewall to block all unwanted connections (allowlist only), and a DNS sinkhole like pi-hole. IMO we should get more on the more aggressive side when it…
The approach I use is Little Snitch. It's how I discovered most of these telemetry misfeatures in the first place.
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#34It's a good idea but it seems to me the name will hurt adoption.
Phoning home with telemetry data does not by definition imply tracking.
Yet a project implementing DO_NOT_TRACK is essentially saying that without it, it is tracking users. This isn't particularly attractive for a project that already has some OPT_OUT_TELEMETRY option.
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#35Bad-actors would ignore it wholesale anyway, so this at best gives one a false sense of privacy. It would probably be better _not_ to have it, since people won't be misguided into thinking they're not being tracked. An actual effective approach to privacy is to use a firewall to block all unwanted connections (allowlist only), and a DNS sinkhole like pi-hole. IMO we should get more on the more aggressive side when it…
The approach I use is Little Snitch. It's how I discovered most of these telemetry misfeatures in the first place.
I use LuLu https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html a free, open source alternative. Was interested in little snitch but this has been working okay
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#36Is there oh my zsh plugin or something that just exports all those envs?
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#37I doubt this will catch on. What's the incentive for the software companies to add it?
I like the `source do-not-track.sh` idea better which defines a bunch of `WHATEVER_NO_TRACK := 1` variables. It could even modify config files for software that doesn't use environment variables.
Or even better yet, just use a /etc/hosts file or a custom firewall.
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great point actually - but it probably depends on if the data is regarded as "personal data" or not. IP-addresses is considered sensitive which would mean that if they're saving that it is probably not ok. I'm not a lawyer though :)
Storing IPs by themselves are not against the GDPR, and you do not really require consent for storing them for legitimate reasons, (Think nginx access logs, or rate limits on API endpoints/ banning IPs abusing your service). [1] Pairing IP addresses with other potentially identifying information can also be a little bit of a legal gray area (Look at Fingerprint.js) if done for legitimate reasons (Like fraud detection…
> GDPR had a great potential, it's sad it was unable to do it's best.
Given the massive backlash against the GDPR and "cookie walls" by newspaper publishers, it's doing a pretty good job. Can you imagine a company like Apple whipping app vendors into shape regarding data collection without GDPR pressure?
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#39An alternative for this would be creating a small tool which enables all these variables while the DO_NOT_TRACK=1 is not adopted widely.
Re: Console Do Not Track – Proposal for a standard environment variable
#40From a use standpojnt; sure, this would be nice.
But the developers of these tools probably don't want to do that, because now if it's opt-out it would be opt in by default. Also there it would be harder to allow tracking for individual tools only.
This proposal is an example of narrow thinking. However come up with this, would like to opt-out easily as a user, which is understandable, but the world is more complicated like that.