5 ms·

>I'll play the devil's advocate. Your point is basically "surveillance data is useful". And, well, yes. There would be zero debate over surveillance if there

>I'll play the devil's advocate. Your point is basically "surveillance data is useful". And, well, yes. There would be zero debate over surveillance if there were literally no desirable reasons to have it.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Calling it surveillance is misleading in most cases. The most recent crash reporting system I worked with was little more than a stack trace without any user data recorded at all. Not even IP addresses of the report. We didn’t care who was crashing and we didn’t collect any PII at all. It was a simple report about where in our code the crash occurred. It was very useful for fixing bugs. No surveillance or PII involved.
- tjoff 5y ago
  If that was the norm then people would opt in. But the trust is gone now, bad actors have ruined it for everyone. And the solution to that is not to enable it by default.
  - nlarew 5y ago
    Most people have no idea what "the norm" or "telemetry" even is so I highly doubt this would affect opt-in rates at all.
  - adkadskhj 5y ago
    I think this might be the winning argument. There may not be any meaningful reason for telemetry to outweigh the bad actors and damage they've done. For me, i'd love to enable telemetry for some of my more liked, FOSS apps - but even with those my question immediately arises "What are you sending?". Without someway to monitor, are they sending filenames? Are they sending file contents? How much is it? etcetc To satisfy my questions i need some sort of router-enabled monitoring of all telemetry specific traffic. So i can individually approve types of info... and that seems difficult. But the days of blanket allowances from me are long gone due to the bad actors.
    - ryandrake 5y ago
      Excellent point. As a user, here are my requirements if you want me to opt into your data collection scheme: 1. All exfiltration of data must be under my direct control, each time it happens. You can collect all the data you want in the background, but any time it is transmitted to the company, I must give consent and issue a command to do it (or click a button). 2. All data that is exfiltrated must be described in detail before it is exfiltrated. "Diagnostic data" isn't good enough. List everything. Stack trace? Crash report? Memory dump? Personal info (list them all out)? Location information? Images (what are they, screenshots? from my camera?) Time stamps from each collection. If it's nebulous "feature usage data" then list each activity that is being logged (localized in my language). Lay them all out for me or I'm not going to press that Submit button. 3. I need to be able to verify that #2 is accurate, so save that dump to disk somewhere I can analyze later. 4. The identifiers used to submit this data should be disclosed. Is a unique user id required to upload? Do you link subsequent uploads to the same unique id? Is that id in any way associated with me as an account or as a person in your backend? I want you to disclose all of this. 5. For how long do you retain the data I sent? How is this enforced? Is there a way for me to delete the data? How can I ensure that the data gets deleted when I request it to be deleted? 6. Do you monetize the data in any way, and if so, am I entitled to compensation for it? I don't know of many (if any) data collection schemes that meet this bar, yet.
      - throwaways885 5y ago
        I'm fairly sure Android crash reporting is all manually done, and even zips it up for you to inspect. But some of these are impossible, e.g. how do you localize a stack trace?
        david_allison 5y ago
        If you install an app via Google Play, crash reporting & some telemetry are silent and enabled by default. This is in addition to any crash reporting built into the app. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6078260 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6078260
  - fomine3 5y ago
    For ad industry, trust is gone now. But for telemetry? I think most people don't much care.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Until you realize that most telemetry infrastructure is provided by ad companies (Google Analytics for example).
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        That, and additionally, if there's an opportunity to monetize data from (or derived from) telemetry further, companies won't hesitate selling it (or access to it) to third parties. That, and additionally, if the data is stored, it's a question of when, not if, it'll become a part of some data breach. To developers and entrepreneurs feeling surprised by the pushback here, please take a honest look at the state of the software industry. Any trust software companies enjoyed by default is gone now.
    - nofunsir 5y ago
      They don’t care because they don’t know.
  - kazinator 5y ago
    Analogy time: in the early days of the Internet, any IP address could send an e-mail by directly connecting to the mail change host listed for the domain of the To: address via SMTP. This was a good, nice thing. Bad agents, spammers, ruined that. The trust is gone, and wow it's a terrible idea to accept SMTP connections from any random IP addresses. Legitimate senders have to "opt in" to the SMTP sending system by getting a static IP of good repute, or else using a forwarding host which has those attributes.
- ezconnect 5y ago
  I think the old crash report screen will be answer to the paranoid crowds now. App crash the stack trace windows appears with the data and a button to click to email the stack trace to the developers. That used to be the norm before privacy data became lucrative business.
- Seirdy 5y ago
  How do users know if that's all the data that's submitted? Auditing every program to see exactly what gets sent (and repeating the process for every update) is way too much work; it's safer to just opt-out by default. Now that I think about it, it's safer to simply not use software that opts users into studies (like telemetry analysis) without informed consent.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > How do users know if that's all the data that's submitted? That's the thing, isn't it? They'll never know. They can't; it takes deep technical knowledge to even be able of conceptualize what data could be sent, and how it could be potentially misused. Which is to say, it's all a matter of trust. Shipping software with opt-out telemetry (or one you can't disable) isn't a good way to earn that trust.
    - infogulch 5y ago
      Even with deep technical knowledge and severely pared down telemetry, PII embedded in side-channel like outlets could be missed. Think a simple stack trace with no data is PII-free? Probably. But are you sure that the stack of functions called doesn't depend on the bytes in your name?
- drran 5y ago
  In Linux, we use `abrt` for that, but user need to review and submit bug report with stack trace manually, so nobody complains about that. Yep, it's very useful.
  - marcthe12 5y ago
    I think that is red hat specific. I have seen it on fedora but not arch or gentoo.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lojack 5y ago
  Does removing PII preclude data from being surveillance?
- ccsnags 5y ago
  It sounds like there must be a standard of privacy for certain apps. I work with UL a lot and they have lists of standards and specifications that help us meet the safety requirements of electronic devices. These standards are then used to meet the customers demand for a high level of safety. Customers in my field do not even consider products that don’t have UL. This strategy is good to better inform the consumer while standards are kept by an independent firm whose incentives are aligned to maintain their credibility. I am not deep in the software field but I can imagine that groups like the EFF or similar orgs have a standard. The issue is that the consumers of these products don’t seem to care about this outside of the privacy advocate world.
- pabs3 5y ago
  Stack traces can include private user data too, I always review all of the data in a stack trace before filing bug reports.
closeparen 5y ago
The anti-tracking point in the era of Do-Not-Track was “building advertising profiles that follow people around the web is evil.” Software telemetry is neither a personal profile, nor for advertising, nor correlated across more than one surface. As such I think it’s a little bit of a stretch to put this in the same bucket as 3rd party JS adtech crap.
jrochkind1 5y ago
> Your point is basically "surveillance data is useful". And, well, yes. There would be zero debate over surveillance if there were literally no desirable reasons to have it. Well, not exactly. The original comment was that "surveillance data" is useful to the user and their installation. For instance in getting better response to your error report. Or, I'd say, in keeping your software patched and up to date (check for updates is included in the OP as suppressed by 'do not track', since it necessarily reveals IP address). Even if none of these things that make it useful to the actual users were in effect... surveillance would still be happening because it lets the vendor monetize the users data. Useful to whom and for what seems relevant, instead of just aggregating it all as "sure, it's useful in some way to someone or it wouldn't happen."

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Calling it surveillance is misleading in most cases. The most recent crash reporting system I worked with was little more than a stack trace without any user data recorded at all. Not even IP addresses of the report. We didn’t care who was crashing and we didn’t collect any PII at all. It was a simple report about where in our code the crash occurred. It was very useful for fixing bugs. No surveillance or PII involved.

tjoff 5y ago
If that was the norm then people would opt in. But the trust is gone now, bad actors have ruined it for everyone. And the solution to that is not to enable it by default.
- nlarew 5y ago
  Most people have no idea what "the norm" or "telemetry" even is so I highly doubt this would affect opt-in rates at all.
- adkadskhj 5y ago
  I think this might be the winning argument. There may not be any meaningful reason for telemetry to outweigh the bad actors and damage they've done. For me, i'd love to enable telemetry for some of my more liked, FOSS apps - but even with those my question immediately arises "What are you sending?". Without someway to monitor, are they sending filenames? Are they sending file contents? How much is it? etcetc To satisfy my questions i need some sort of router-enabled monitoring of all telemetry specific traffic. So i can individually approve types of info... and that seems difficult. But the days of blanket allowances from me are long gone due to the bad actors.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    Excellent point. As a user, here are my requirements if you want me to opt into your data collection scheme: 1. All exfiltration of data must be under my direct control, each time it happens. You can collect all the data you want in the background, but any time it is transmitted to the company, I must give consent and issue a command to do it (or click a button). 2. All data that is exfiltrated must be described in detail before it is exfiltrated. "Diagnostic data" isn't good enough. List everything. Stack trace? Crash report? Memory dump? Personal info (list them all out)? Location information? Images (what are they, screenshots? from my camera?) Time stamps from each collection. If it's nebulous "feature usage data" then list each activity that is being logged (localized in my language). Lay them all out for me or I'm not going to press that Submit button. 3. I need to be able to verify that #2 is accurate, so save that dump to disk somewhere I can analyze later. 4. The identifiers used to submit this data should be disclosed. Is a unique user id required to upload? Do you link subsequent uploads to the same unique id? Is that id in any way associated with me as an account or as a person in your backend? I want you to disclose all of this. 5. For how long do you retain the data I sent? How is this enforced? Is there a way for me to delete the data? How can I ensure that the data gets deleted when I request it to be deleted? 6. Do you monetize the data in any way, and if so, am I entitled to compensation for it? I don't know of many (if any) data collection schemes that meet this bar, yet.
    - throwaways885 5y ago
      I'm fairly sure Android crash reporting is all manually done, and even zips it up for you to inspect. But some of these are impossible, e.g. how do you localize a stack trace?
      - david_allison 5y ago
        If you install an app via Google Play, crash reporting & some telemetry are silent and enabled by default. This is in addition to any crash reporting built into the app. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6078260 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6078260
- fomine3 5y ago
  For ad industry, trust is gone now. But for telemetry? I think most people don't much care.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Until you realize that most telemetry infrastructure is provided by ad companies (Google Analytics for example).
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      That, and additionally, if there's an opportunity to monetize data from (or derived from) telemetry further, companies won't hesitate selling it (or access to it) to third parties. That, and additionally, if the data is stored, it's a question of when, not if, it'll become a part of some data breach. To developers and entrepreneurs feeling surprised by the pushback here, please take a honest look at the state of the software industry. Any trust software companies enjoyed by default is gone now.
  - nofunsir 5y ago
    They don’t care because they don’t know.
- kazinator 5y ago
  Analogy time: in the early days of the Internet, any IP address could send an e-mail by directly connecting to the mail change host listed for the domain of the To: address via SMTP. This was a good, nice thing. Bad agents, spammers, ruined that. The trust is gone, and wow it's a terrible idea to accept SMTP connections from any random IP addresses. Legitimate senders have to "opt in" to the SMTP sending system by getting a static IP of good repute, or else using a forwarding host which has those attributes.
ezconnect 5y ago
I think the old crash report screen will be answer to the paranoid crowds now. App crash the stack trace windows appears with the data and a button to click to email the stack trace to the developers. That used to be the norm before privacy data became lucrative business.
Seirdy 5y ago
How do users know if that's all the data that's submitted? Auditing every program to see exactly what gets sent (and repeating the process for every update) is way too much work; it's safer to just opt-out by default. Now that I think about it, it's safer to simply not use software that opts users into studies (like telemetry analysis) without informed consent.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > How do users know if that's all the data that's submitted? That's the thing, isn't it? They'll never know. They can't; it takes deep technical knowledge to even be able of conceptualize what data could be sent, and how it could be potentially misused. Which is to say, it's all a matter of trust. Shipping software with opt-out telemetry (or one you can't disable) isn't a good way to earn that trust.
  - infogulch 5y ago
    Even with deep technical knowledge and severely pared down telemetry, PII embedded in side-channel like outlets could be missed. Think a simple stack trace with no data is PII-free? Probably. But are you sure that the stack of functions called doesn't depend on the bytes in your name?
drran 5y ago
In Linux, we use `abrt` for that, but user need to review and submit bug report with stack trace manually, so nobody complains about that. Yep, it's very useful.
- marcthe12 5y ago
  I think that is red hat specific. I have seen it on fedora but not arch or gentoo.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lojack 5y ago
Does removing PII preclude data from being surveillance?
ccsnags 5y ago
It sounds like there must be a standard of privacy for certain apps. I work with UL a lot and they have lists of standards and specifications that help us meet the safety requirements of electronic devices. These standards are then used to meet the customers demand for a high level of safety. Customers in my field do not even consider products that don’t have UL. This strategy is good to better inform the consumer while standards are kept by an independent firm whose incentives are aligned to maintain their credibility. I am not deep in the software field but I can imagine that groups like the EFF or similar orgs have a standard. The issue is that the consumers of these products don’t seem to care about this outside of the privacy advocate world.
pabs3 5y ago
Stack traces can include private user data too, I always review all of the data in a stack trace before filing bug reports.

closeparen 5y ago

The anti-tracking point in the era of Do-Not-Track was “building advertising profiles that follow people around the web is evil.” Software telemetry is neither a personal profile, nor for advertising, nor correlated across more than one surface. As such I think it’s a little bit of a stretch to put this in the same bucket as 3rd party JS adtech crap.

jrochkind1 5y ago

> Your point is basically "surveillance data is useful". And, well, yes. There would be zero debate over surveillance if there were literally no desirable reasons to have it. Well, not exactly. The original comment was that "surveillance data" is useful to the user and their installation. For instance in getting better response to your error report. Or, I'd say, in keeping your software patched and up to date (check for updates is included in the OP as suppressed by 'do not track', since it necessarily reveals IP address). Even if none of these things that make it useful to the actual users were in effect... surveillance would still be happening because it lets the vendor monetize the users data. Useful to whom and for what seems relevant, instead of just aggregating it all as "sure, it's useful in some way to someone or it wouldn't happen."