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Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

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Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#301

Post by dang »

froh42 wrote: post #38

As I didn't update brew for a long time I did not have the analytics version. So I upgraded to see what happens. In fact it did NOT prompt me when enabling analytics, but it did display a notice (hidden in several hundred lines of output during brew upgrade): ------------------- + 5a9e19f...7f13b37 master -> origin/master (forced update) * [new tag] 0.1 -> 0.1 HEAD is now at 7f13b37 Merge pull request #1562 from wood…

> He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate.

I read your explanation downthread that you didn't mean anyone should do this, but the sentence as written is beyond the pale. This is not good community behavior. Please do a better job of considering other people when you post here.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#302

Post by dang »

blub wrote: post #125

"Your privacy has been trampled by pretty much everyone, why not accept one more? They're cute cuddly and open source, how could you refuse them access to your machine?" This is essentially your pathetic argument. You should be ashamed of yourself, because you know that defaults matter, people don't read a small line of warning text in the console and this is ultimately yet another stab in the back. Chad and Brad mer…

> This is essentially your pathetic argument. You should be ashamed of yourself

This breaches HN's civility rules badly. You can't comment like this here, and we ban users that do it, so please don't do it again.

Arguing this way is an old internet trope, but it's one that we need to be vigilant about not reviving here, if we want to have civil, substantive discourse instead of decadence. If you have a good point to make, it's not only possible to make it civilly, it will be stronger for it. Calling another user a "useful idiot" is also not ok (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035349), euphemism or no.

It's clear that you feel strongly about this issue, but not allowing strong feelings to trump civil interaction is the essence of civil interaction.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035387 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#303

Post by codedokode »

kuschku wrote: post #259
EvilTerran wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, the intent was good... but yeah, the implementation is a grand demonstration of what you get when legislators don't understand the technology they're regulating. It would be far better if they'd required browsers, not websites, to show the notifications - much like they already do when a site wants to access your webcam/mic/location/etc[0]. That would mean much less implementation work (once per browser instead…

The issue is: What about technical cookies? The law allows storing session info, config options, etc without prompting. The browser couldn’t reliably test that. Unless you’d also let login to sites be handled by the browser, akin to Mozilla’s Persona. Damn, that’d actually be a much nicer web.

Single Sign-on can be implemented without third-party cookies and therefore without the cookie warning.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#304

Post by codedokode »

kuschku wrote: post #260
CJefferson wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is going to sound insulting, but have you tried being an open-source developer? I've worked on products with tens of thousands of users, and the vast majority of those users never communicate. Worse (in my opinion), the users who communicate most tend to be experts, leading to programs tending to become better for expert users, and worse for beginners / occasional users -- see for example how many linux programs…

I’ve also worked on products with tens of thousands of users, and while tracking is definitely convenient (I recently added a feature where, on first start, the user is informed that crash reports would be sent, and required them to choose "dismiss" or "opt out" before letting them use the app), but it’s no reason to hide it like this. Nor is it a reason to even try tracking with Google Analytics. In my case, I ensur…

I don't think the problem is using Google or not. The problem is that software collects and sends data to a network without user's authorization. It is a package manager, not a program for reporting what software you are installing and how exactly you do that and what operating system you are using and user might not expect such behaviour.

Free software is supposed to do what the user wants, not what its developer wants.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#305

Post by jakebasile »

jakebasile wrote: post #120

This really doesn't concern me at all. I don't feel I am harmed by Google possibly knowing what software I install, because if anyone wants to look I keep the script that installs it in my public dotfile repo on GitHub. Can anyone explain to me how this could be used against someone? I'm asking completely seriously as I don't see any harm in this no matter how hard I try. Edit: I do agree that the notice should be mo…

I can no longer edit my comment, but thanks for the examples given. I'm not sure if it's changed my views but I think I understand where the anger is coming from and I have something to think about when things like this come up.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#306

Post by kyrra »

wingless wrote: post #98
pbiggar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the number of people who work for Google, and Google's internal culture of openness, I find it extremely unlikely that Google is violating its customers' privacy. That would almost certainly get whistleblown.

Like how the PRISM program got whistleblown by Googlers? Oh wait, that never happened.

Google never cooperated with PRISM. As soon as news came out that the NSA was tapping Google's intra-datacenter dedicated lines, Google announced they would accelerate encrypting all that traffic.

https://www.google.com/amp/arstechnica.com/information-techn...

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#307

Post by jakobegger »

andybak wrote: post #263
jakobegger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can call it "anonymous data" as much as they want, but in the end it's still data transmitted to Google's servers. If you are simultaneously logged into your Google account on that computer, the information is not anonymous anymore. Google could with high probability correlate connections.

> They can call it "anonymous data" as much as they want, but in the end it's still data transmitted to Google's servers. You appear to be saying that it's wrong to send any data to Google - which strikes me as an indefensibly extreme position. For example if they were tracking a simple count "number of times anyone anywhere has run brew" and it was stored as a single global integer then it's hard to imagine what iss…

I'm saying that if you make your software talk to Google, don't say that it collects "anonymous aggregate data". The data it sends could easily be traced back to you (by Google).

And after all the Snowden revelations it's very naive to assume that Google (or any other company) will protect your data.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#308

Post by skylark »

true_religion wrote: post #34
djsumdog wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know...you can already get analytics if your mirrors just agree to share logs. It may not be as detailed or complete, for sure, but using another analytical tools does feel a little superfluous. > Is the problem that they are using google's service? This is part of it I think. The brew devs get stats, but so does Google which they can aggregate across everything. Standing up your own analytics server/cluster, esp…

Does google simply have access to you analytics data to do whatever they want? I was under the impression that they could only use it in ways that you the account holder defines.

It depends on what you mean by "access to your analytics data." Anonymized, aggregated data is being used to inform product decisions, but engineers don't have direct access to the production database to query whatever they want. There are almost no cases where you'll be granted approval to look at real user data, and if you are granted access, 100% of your activity is monitored.

As a side note, this has been the case at every big company I've worked at, not just Google.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#309

Post by Isinlor »

kuschku wrote: post #257
Isinlor wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookie law is one of the stupidest laws that EU forced. I had to install additional rules to adblocker to get rid of this nonsense and it still doesn't catch everything and keeps irritating me... I don't care, damn it! http://nocookielaw.com/

Is it truly? The law is pretty simple: If you track users, or transmit information to third parties which could track the user, you have to get the user to opt-in. The original intention was to get rid of Facebook’s shadow profiles, which it did – in the EU, websites don’t embed Facebook’s like button anymore, but have a two-click solution, where you have to click it, then it’s actually loaded, then you can like. Tha…

It is not worth it. I would really want a good way to protect myself as an Internet user from this law that the EU is enforcing on me. To protect myself not from Facebook, not from Google, but from the EU. It also gets in my way as a web developer. The law is not simple. 100 words sentences of law jargon are not simple. Many, many pages of such sentences is the opposite of simple. To be honest I have never really understood the law and I don't think I ever will. Even keeping track of it is far from simple.

But according to this website: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm Cookies clearly exempt from consent according to the EU advisory body on data protection- WP29pdf include: (...) third‑party social plug‑in content‑sharing cookies, for logged‑in members of a social network.

So, I think what you say about Facebook is not true.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#310

Post by kuschku »

Isinlor wrote: post #309
kuschku wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it truly? The law is pretty simple: If you track users, or transmit information to third parties which could track the user, you have to get the user to opt-in. The original intention was to get rid of Facebook’s shadow profiles, which it did – in the EU, websites don’t embed Facebook’s like button anymore, but have a two-click solution, where you have to click it, then it’s actually loaded, then you can like. Tha…

It is not worth it. I would really want a good way to protect myself as an Internet user from this law that the EU is enforcing on me. To protect myself not from Facebook, not from Google, but from the EU. It also gets in my way as a web developer. The law is not simple. 100 words sentences of law jargon are not simple. Many, many pages of such sentences is the opposite of simple. To be honest I have never really und…

> for logged‑in members of a social network.

I was talking about non-logged in users. The shadow profiles.

> The law is not simple. 100 words sentences of law jargon are not simple. Many, many pages of such sentences is the opposite of simple.

The German version of the law is just as simple to read as any newspaper or book you read in German high school, so at least I haven't had an issue before.

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