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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

#51

Post by jancsika »

codezero wrote: post #12

FWIW that isn’t a unique identifier for the author, it’s for Wacom’s GA account. I didn’t see any meaningful identifier being sent. Of course the set of most opened apps and your IP are probably enough to identify you. That said, yep, it seems lame they don’t disclose this tracking. I can understand why they’d want to know what apps their device pairs most often with, but tracking all app opens seems aggressive, but…

FWIW that isn’t a unique identifier for the author, it’s for Nike’s marketing account. I didn’t see that the Nike employee who hid in the author's closet wrote down any meaningful identifier on their form. Of course the set of the most popular gym floors where the author wore the shoes and the author's home address are probably enough to identify you.

That said, yep, it seems lame they don’t disclose this tracking. I can understand why they’d want to know where their pairs of shoes most often travel, but tracking all gyms seems aggressive, but maybe it’s the only way to identify what gym floor the shoes were used in.

(I work for Adidas)

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#52

Post by leppr »

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?

It's anonymized to the website owner (who has your IP anyway), not to Google. That means even non-Chrome users are forced under Google's omniscient watch of the web.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#53

Post by 0xff00ffee »

Great article!

I love how he MITM'd Wacom on his host machine. Slick!

Also this: "I dug around in the driver’s logfile and found the following snippet that confirmed my suspicions..."

Arms race time: this is an alert to shady developers to not put meaningful messages about data collection in their log files.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#55

Post by AlexandrB »

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?

When a company with the reach and market share of Google is involved, "anonymized" is meaningless. They have so many other channels to gather data (Android, ReCaptcha, Chrome, Google Search, etc.) that I'm sure it's trivial to de-anonymize and correlate GA data to a real person if that becomes profitable/necessary.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#56

Post by 0xff00ffee »

moron4hire wrote: post #19

"their device, which - remember - is essentially a mouse" ... that has per-application configuration settings that change how the tablet can be used. They aren't just wantonly collecting unrelated data. They have features tied to this. I read the whole article to see if there was any mention of app-specific config. Doesn't come up once.

Hmm... Good point. I could see how Wacom could make context sensitive control panels based on the app, without having to ask the user, but then I still would want control over that: what if the functionality becomes too different between to apps and I find it annoying? This should be exposed to the user.

It makes it feel less nefarious, I guess. But I still don't want a C&C server knowing this much about me.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#57

Post by Joe-Z »

penagwin wrote: post #36
codezero wrote: post #12

FWIW that isn’t a unique identifier for the author, it’s for Wacom’s GA account. I didn’t see any meaningful identifier being sent. Of course the set of most opened apps and your IP are probably enough to identify you. That said, yep, it seems lame they don’t disclose this tracking. I can understand why they’d want to know what apps their device pairs most often with, but tracking all app opens seems aggressive, but…

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?

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#58

Post by exKitsune »

danShumway wrote: post #24

On Linux you'd be using the community-maintained drivers[0], so I assume this wouldn't be a problem (correct me if I'm wrong). But as far as I can tell, there's not equivalent Open Wacom drivers for Windows. People with more Windows knowledge than me: any thoughts on why? Is it just that someone using Windows probably doesn't care about Open drivers, so the demand isn't there? Or is there something about Windows that…

Here is an open source driver that has been made that supports Wacom and Huion tablets https://github.com/hawku/TabletDriver

These were made to reduce input latency to increase performance in a rhythm game called "osu!"

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#59

Post by excerionsforte »

I'm fine with Wacom collecting this kind of data as long as it doesn't open any security holes. There are certain classes of products where I would not care what they collected as long as it was relevant to improving the product. i.e. Wacom wants to know popular apps I use my tablet on, ok. If they wanted to know my approx location though then I'd be alarmed.

Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open

#60

Post by AlexandrB »

cmcd wrote: post #13
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting voted down, but is this not true? My iPhone knows all my top apps and shows them on whatever that screen is called, with the search, and adjusts them over time as usage changes. Maybe it’s not “more important,” but why vote this down? How do I know that data doesn’t go back to Apple with “telemetry”?

A Wacom tablet is not the same as a phone, it is a peripheral. This is like your Dell keyboard tracking your keystrokes and what application they go into.

Which is a thing that has already happened with Razer[1]. They back-pedalled (a little) after pressure from customers[2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/8klf7a/razer_synap...

[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/razer-synapse-3-app-delivers-...

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