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The answer given is, in part: "Atom is designed to run in an internet connected environment, doing things such as checking for updates (your first dialog) w

The answer given is, in part: "Atom is designed to run in an internet connected environment, doing things such as checking for updates (your first dialog) without prompting the user." The problem with that, as I see it at least is, "doing things such as..." If it said "It's ONLY checking for updates", that seems fine, but "doing things such as..." could be literally anything, and maybe some of those things are things that many people don't want done without consent.

sneak 7y ago
Checking for updates sends a packet out of your computer that contains your IP address, happens at a given point in time (timestamp), contains 'atom.io' in the TLS SNI, and is accessible to your ISP, their network providers, the national intelligence agencies that monitor those connections, Amazon network administrators, Microsoft systems administrators, and GitHub systems administrators. It's telemetry because it happens whenever you open your editor, and it includes your IP, which in the hands of some of those recipients (i.e. intel agencies, your ISP, and Amazon) means your exact physical location (because you ordered paper towels to your street address using that IP two hours ago). It can never be anonymous because it has to have a source IP on it, and even if the TLS connection is zero data, the fact that it has "atom.io" in the SNI field means that it's a data leak of the "person at 123 main street opened their text editor (Atom) at 1:23PM", and it leaks that information to a lot of people. "only checking for updates" is, unfortunately, a form of telemetry, and must be gated on a user's explicit consent to telemetry, otherwise it (no hyperbole) sends an activity event that becomes available to thousands of people against the wishes of the user. Remember when librarians got all up in arms about warrantless collection of what books you've taken out of the library? That was per-user. This is bulk collection, and is way more invasive: it has second-granularity timestamps. PS: Thank you, Edward Snowden.
- deleted 7y ago
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- mobjack 7y ago
  Almost any other network request puts you at more risk than this. If that is your concern, then you are better off turning off your Internet. If they were really trying to track you, there would also be an unique ID with the request as that makes it much easier to identify you. IP addresses alone are not as useful for those purposes.
  - sneak 7y ago
    That's fine; however opening my text editor (Atom), or running a static site generator (Gatsby), or burning an iso file to a USB drive (Etcher) is not a network request, and should not put me at risk.

sneak 7y ago

Checking for updates sends a packet out of your computer that contains your IP address, happens at a given point in time (timestamp), contains 'atom.io' in the TLS SNI, and is accessible to your ISP, their network providers, the national intelligence agencies that monitor those connections, Amazon network administrators, Microsoft systems administrators, and GitHub systems administrators. It's telemetry because it happens whenever you open your editor, and it includes your IP, which in the hands of some of those recipients (i.e. intel agencies, your ISP, and Amazon) means your exact physical location (because you ordered paper towels to your street address using that IP two hours ago). It can never be anonymous because it has to have a source IP on it, and even if the TLS connection is zero data, the fact that it has "atom.io" in the SNI field means that it's a data leak of the "person at 123 main street opened their text editor (Atom) at 1:23PM", and it leaks that information to a lot of people. "only checking for updates" is, unfortunately, a form of telemetry, and must be gated on a user's explicit consent to telemetry, otherwise it (no hyperbole) sends an activity event that becomes available to thousands of people against the wishes of the user. Remember when librarians got all up in arms about warrantless collection of what books you've taken out of the library? That was per-user. This is bulk collection, and is way more invasive: it has second-granularity timestamps. PS: Thank you, Edward Snowden.

deleted 7y ago
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mobjack 7y ago
Almost any other network request puts you at more risk than this. If that is your concern, then you are better off turning off your Internet. If they were really trying to track you, there would also be an unique ID with the request as that makes it much easier to identify you. IP addresses alone are not as useful for those purposes.
- sneak 7y ago
  That's fine; however opening my text editor (Atom), or running a static site generator (Gatsby), or burning an iso file to a USB drive (Etcher) is not a network request, and should not put me at risk.