I, for one, want to know Rick's story...
How was the day he got famous internally in Wacom, just because some XML that no one was meant to see..
Wacom tablets track every app you open
81–90 of 469 posts
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#82I'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.
Then they should be very open, up front, and explicit about asking for your consent, including describing what they will be collecting, and also making it very clear you can decline without negative consequences.
I'm fairly comfortable with data collection if the user opts in, but the current trend--dark patterns where you put out a blanket "we will collect stuff" disclaimer that lacks any specifics, while not making it clear what the consequences are of declining--is deeply troubling and, I hope, becomes illegal thanks to things like GDPR and CCPA.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#83I received one as a gift but, to be honest, I never used it after seeing the obscure mandatory propietary format to save the files. If I can't open my files later in GNU and there is not a method at sight to save it as jpeg, png, etc... is useless. Just a cheap model probably. Collecting dust somewhere. My other wacom, and older model, was awesome as a mouse replacement; but it toke months to work in Linux and I don'…
My wacom experiences on linux have been plug and play so far. Maybe I got lucky with the model numbers.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly this isn't a trivial or very fun job (last time I used them, the Linux drivers were buggy as hell). Who would have the motivation to do it on Windows, where you have a driver that works and users have little expectation of privacy to begin with?
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…
Just because it would be better doesn't mean it will be made. So long as something is "good enough", it will strangle new projects in the crib.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#85Earlier 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?
I know this is the popular conclusion - but from a developer perspective, data such as what software your product is used with is INCREDIBLY valuable for project planning and prioritization. People hate web tracking, but knowing what browsers or devices are visiting your website can be enormously helpful.
Also I don't know all the details here - I know that Vizio TVs where collecting data and explicitly kept the IP and other personal data with it. I don't know if wacom is doing that.
Now that said - I don't like that they're handing this data to Google through Google Analytics. I also think they should be far more up front about what they collect, what they use it for, etc.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#86While this implementation obviously has privacy issues, the anonymized aggregate data would be quite interesting, e.g. how many people use photoshop, illustrator, etc. with their wacom tablets. The problem then seems to be more about the false positives. If you use "Half Life 3 Test Build" that is useless info for wacom because it (presumably) doesn't care about pen input. Q: If the data were filtered to just art/gra…
> 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?
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#87I'm surprised Wacom is still around with iPad and Apple Pencil being such a hit. I know I've migrated.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#88Earlier 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?
> IMO the more simple explanation is they want this data to sell to data aggregators
Seems the obvious answer, yep.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
One reason why is that Google Analytics is not being limited to giving the web site owner traffic information, the analytics are also being used by Google to collect and correlate larger traffic patterns, as well as track individual users across multiple sites. These are things Google gets to see, but the neither the site owners nor the users have access to. What Google does exactly with this information is not entir…
Google, and anyone who has access / can gain access to the data, whether by technical means (NSA) or by law.
Re: Wacom tablets track every app you open
#90The 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'm going to go on a limb and say that tracking people who visits your blog is a little better than tracking app launches for the entire computer.
Certainly, although I would call it less bad, rather than better.