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Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

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Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#311

Post by Semaphor »

EvilTerran wrote: post #280
kuschku wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that could work. Or, to look at it another way... so what if the browser pops up notifications more often than the law requires? Might encourage people to make less use of cookies for functionality that doesn't really need them, which would be no tragedy. And if your site really can't do without them, you could pop up a message explaining the situation & politely asking to be unblocked. I suppose there'd be a d…

> I suppose there'd be a danger of alert fatigue...

But that's happening with the current solution as well (not to mention all those crappy sites with their modal popups that teach you to close anything opening asap anyway)

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#312

Post by mikemcquaid »

Tepix wrote: post #284
mikemcquaid wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Homebrew lead maintainer here. This is exactly why we do it. To repeat myself from below: we're chronically understaffed and underfunded. > Furthermore, now that you know, for brew specifically, will you opt out? It's worth noting: if everyone who uses a niche piece of software opt-out when it breaks we'll look at our analytics and likely remove…

Does it have to be Google, the company that already sucks up the most information about pretty much everyone on the internet? Why don't you send the data to your own machines?

We don't have our own machines that are capable of handling this. If you're offering to host them for us for at least two years for free: get in touch.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#313

Post by wodenokoto »

Tepix wrote: post #287
wodenokoto wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not Google paying for 3rd party cookies. Firefox tried to change it and it became a publicity disaster for them. Suddenly they were met with headlines like "Mozilla/Firefox hates small business owners" and they are simply not capable of handling a publicity attack (remember the whole CEO thing?) and they caved in.

Proof? Safari has 3rd party cookies disabled by default and I don't hear any complaints. The number of sites that don't work without 3rd party cookies enabled is very small and from my point of view they are plain broken.

It was in nightly 3 years ago. If you followed along on Planet.mozilla you could see the story unfold, but it is hard to find a single source that summaries everything.

But the bottom line is, despite Safari already doing this, Mozilla was met with a lot of hostility when they tried to implement it, and eventually gave up.

Here's an excerpt from Computer world, that'll give you an idea about how things were unrolling back then.

Mozilla has effectively postponed Firefox's controversial third-party cookie-blocking policy for several months.

...

Months ago, when Mozilla's proposal appeared set to debut in Firefox 22, several online advertising groups, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Association of National Advertisers (ANA), vehemently objected, claiming that the on-by-default blocking would "disenfranchise every single Internet user" and result in the shuttering of small businesses and small websites. An official with the ANA promised that Firefox users would see more ads, not fewer, if the feature was switched on.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2498038/data-privacy/mo...

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#314

Post by Chris2048 »

hdra wrote: post #230
Chris2048 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not open an issue The maintainer already stated it's not a bug, plus the nature of the message implies opt-out was a design choice. > of course, why would we do Why start a fork before "attacking" the maintainer? Are you suggesting we need to audit every code base we use? As reasonable as checking every box of morning cereal for glass shards. The software is spyware. Words like "spyware" and "stealing" are corr…

> The software is spyware. Words like "spyware" and "stealing" are correct, I don't care how it paints the maintainer to describe the situation accurately, they created that situation. No, that is not "correct". The aren't even tracking their user, they are tracking the use of their software. Your use of the words are manipulative and dishonest. > by "calling out this kind of behaviour" you attacking critics with poo…

spyware : "software that enables a user to obtain covert information about another's computer activities by transmitting data covertly from their hard drive."

Nothing there mentions user tracking. If I don't know information about my computer is being transmitted, it's spyware.

> Legal threats

I didn't comment on this because I didn't say that.

> That is bullying.

I disagree. It is accurate, not disproportionate. Plus you misrepresent my opinion; it is not because "they collect usage data", but because "they collect usage data without your permission"; hence spyware.

> If the people doing those things think the I'm a fanboy for calling them out, since clearly logic matters little to them anyway.

In order to "call someone out" you need to argue the case, so bit early to bring out the ad-homs.

I'm calling you a fanboy because you suggested defending the author is your 'contribution' to his project, which biases your perspective.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#315

Post by Chris2048 »

pvinis wrote: post #19

Yes we know. brew tells you that. And you can disable it. Data is being sent to Google everytime you do almost anything in almost all websites, using the same technology. So what? Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Some other times it's just for spying on the users. Let's stop complaining about stuff that someone does and tell you they do it. There are many more that do the same th…

> you can disable it

if you know about it

> There are many more that do the same things without telling you

This makes it right?

> Will you choose to make its progress slower because of no real security reason

Some will, you think it's OK not to give them the choice?

> How do we expect open source to become better

Is opt-in that hard?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#316

Post by Chris2048 »

arjie wrote: post #146
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…

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. Incredibly shameful comment. Calling for someone to be sued, and then especially targeting someone who'd be vulnerable. Fucking unbelievable. Flagged this hard. Man, it would be great if analytics couldn't be opted out of and you…

> If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#317

Post by andybak »

jakobegger wrote: post #307
andybak wrote: post #263

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. 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.

Doesn't that depend on what's being sent? Either it's personally identifiable (or at least de-anonalysable) or it's not. Within reason some things are not of any real interest to anyone.

What is the threat model here?

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#318

Post by justinclift »

blub wrote: post #156
mikemcquaid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at the website one of homebrew's developers (or at least the website developers) is based over here in Europe. He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate. Homebrew lead maintainer here. We're chronically understaffed and underfunded. We have analytics so we can make Homebrew better by figuring out how to prioritise security, maintenance and bug fixes on packages based on how much th…

It's surprising to hear that a package manager needs local analytics to figure out which packages are used. On the other hand it was likewise surprising to hear that homebrew was using github as its CDN. I don't rely on homebrew to do anything, but I am concerned about the normalisation of surveilance and will point that out in a reasonably polite manner.

> On the other hand it was likewise surprising to hear that homebrew was using github as its CDN.

That sounds a bit weird to me. Homebrew gets developed on GitHub... so using GitHub as a CDN doesn't seem wrong (to me).

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#319

Post by justinclift »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #312
Tepix wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be Google, the company that already sucks up the most information about pretty much everyone on the internet? Why don't you send the data to your own machines?

We don't have our own machines that are capable of handling this. If you're offering to host them for us for at least two years for free: get in touch.

Email sent. :)

Re: Brew commands send data to Google Analytics

#320

Post by andybak »

andybak wrote: post #264
hueving wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>push a meaning in one direction then I'm allowed to point it out and attempt to bend it back a little. I'm not pushing anything. Your argument is about whether or not copying information is 'stealing'. I'm just pointing out that it's a very commonly agreed upon vernacular all over many industries. Call your credit card company and tell them someone stole your credit card number and see if they understand what you ar…

You don't see anything even slightly problematic about referring to opt-out (rather than opt-in) aggregate and presumably anonymous usage statistics as 'stealing'? You don't think that is possibly somewhere towards the further reaches of consensus on what is a reasonable application of the word? You're welcome to disagree with my position but you're going a touch further than that. You're also accusing me of arguing…

I think you've tired of me but I want to finish with one last thought: "Choose your battles wisely" - this might not be the best place to make our last stand. There's a danger of tiring out potential allies before the point things really matter.
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