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Every website you and everybody know you visits is full of telemetry used to improve the website. Why should "real" desktop software be any different?
by spookthesunset 9y ago
Every website you and everybody know you visits is full of telemetry used to improve the website. Why should "real" desktop software be any different?
- flukus 9y agoReal desktop software has access to a lot of private and often sensitive information, my browser doesn't share that with any website.
- ManlyBread 9y agoBecause the desktop software is executed on my desktop - and since I'm the owner I'd like to have full control over what is happening on it instead of giving up that power for the benefit of a faceless entity and a foggy promise of "better user experience".
- svick 9y agoA lot of telemetry gathering done by websites is also executed on your desktop. I don't think it makes a different that it's written in JavaScript and not C++.
- ManlyBread 9y agoOf course it does make a difference - I can easily block the JS ones by installing NoScript.
- Typhon 9y agoClient-side Javascript is executed in the browser, not on the desktop, it is sandboxed, it has no unlimited access to my local data on the disk.
- beagle3 9y agoThat's also bad, but at least it is reasonably well documented, and there are a variety of tools (Ghostery, uBlock Origin, uMatrix, Disconnect, Privacy Badger, AdBlockPlus, ....) that can all help you with controlling it. Unlike files, your OS has access to every file, every key press, etc; some of these get sent in the telemetry. Also, Win10 is mostly a black box in these respects, you don't know what gets sent and there is hardly any documentation either.