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I don't want to derail this thread, but Sentry isn't tracking. Can you hypothetically track users with Sentry? Sure. Do we provide any of those capabilities? No

by zeeg 5y ago

I don't want to derail this thread, but Sentry isn't tracking. Can you hypothetically track users with Sentry? Sure. Do we provide any of those capabilities? No. Treating products like Sentry the same as advertising and analytics companies can only be harmful for our industry.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dpedu 5y ago
> Can you hypothetically track users with Sentry? Sure. > Do we provide any of those capabilities? No. Yes you do. When I view a bug in Sentry it tells me how many users have hit the particular bug and which users they are. I can even search by user and see what bugs they've hit.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I mean… that’s kind of the point right? Even if you only send an event when a bug happens it’s still handy to send some metadata along.
mikepurvis 5y ago
It's definitely not just crashes— your documentation talks all over the place about custom events, extra data blobs, breadcrumbs, etc: https://docs.sentry.io/product/cli/send-event/ https://docs.sentry.io/product/cli/send-event/ Other places discuss sending "info"-level log events: https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/python/guides/logging/ https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/python/guides/logging/ These things aren't necessarily bad, but they're 100% the building blocks for various forms of badness, and I can fully understand track-free users just saying no to all of it. In any case, the solution for Sentry-the-company is just to have a separate domain for receiving events, so getting that blocked doesn't block your corporate landing page.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Why would someone use Sentry for that when stuff like OpenReplay exists. It’s like trying to hammer your nail in with a screwdriver.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I don't think you would if your upfront goal was "telemetry" and you actually evaluated solutions for that. But if you had the Sentry pipeline in place already for crash reports, it would be very easy to slide into using it for tracking other kinds of custom events.
maximedupre 5y ago
Time to innovate, then :D
krono 5y ago
If it looks, walks, and quacks like a behavioural advertising/tracking/analytics platform... why should it not be treated like one? Especially when you consider Sentry seems to be moving towards enabling these use-cases even further. A way to opt out of personal data collection that is provided by Sentry to end-users would put Sentry back on track. Until then, I'll be running my own solution.
- BYK 5y ago
  You mean things like these: https://docs.sentry.io/product/relay/#pii-data-scrubbing https://docs.sentry.io/product/relay/#pii-data-scrubbing, https://docs.sentry.io/product/data-management-settings/scrubbing/ https://docs.sentry.io/product/data-management-settings/scru...
  - krono 5y ago
    More along the lines of a client-side and end-user controllable way to prevent data (or specific categories) from being collected in the first place. Edit: A cross-domain cookie could work for this
Noughmad 5y ago
But Sentry can be used for the same analytics as ads. You can send events manually, it doesn't have to be an actual error, with all the info attached. I'm a very satisfied user of Sentry, but I use it for an internal project. I also use LogRocket which is far more intrusive. For public projects, I would use Sentry but certainly understand that many people would block it. I would never use LogRocket without informing users though.
account42 5y ago
> Treating products like Sentry the same as advertising and analytics companies can only be harmful for our industry. Normalizing collecting information about users and their behavior without getting informed consent in advance is harmful to our industry.
- XCSme 5y ago
  One thing to note is that I think a website is different than a software product that you install on your local machine (in terms of privacy). When you access a website you access resources on a remote server, this means that is almost impossible to not leave any trace of you visiting that website (access logs, ISP logs, DNS logs, etc). I do think there should be explicit consent for a locally installed software to send logs or analytics to an external server, but I don't think explicit consent must be given when the user is the one accessing the server. Also, there is a big difference between technical logs (app crashes, 404 pages, resources that fail to load) and storing user-specific information or actions (exact location, products purchased, items viewed) most importantly when this information is used for marketing purposes, not for improving the user experience (by making the website faster/easier to use/more secure, etc.).

by zeeg 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dpedu 5y ago

> Can you hypothetically track users with Sentry? Sure. > Do we provide any of those capabilities? No. Yes you do. When I view a bug in Sentry it tells me how many users have hit the particular bug and which users they are. I can even search by user and see what bugs they've hit.

Aeolun 5y ago
I mean… that’s kind of the point right? Even if you only send an event when a bug happens it’s still handy to send some metadata along.

mikepurvis 5y ago

It's definitely not just crashes— your documentation talks all over the place about custom events, extra data blobs, breadcrumbs, etc: https://docs.sentry.io/product/cli/send-event/ https://docs.sentry.io/product/cli/send-event/ Other places discuss sending "info"-level log events: https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/python/guides/logging/ https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/python/guides/logging/ These things aren't necessarily bad, but they're 100% the building blocks for various forms of badness, and I can fully understand track-free users just saying no to all of it. In any case, the solution for Sentry-the-company is just to have a separate domain for receiving events, so getting that blocked doesn't block your corporate landing page.

Aeolun 5y ago
Why would someone use Sentry for that when stuff like OpenReplay exists. It’s like trying to hammer your nail in with a screwdriver.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I don't think you would if your upfront goal was "telemetry" and you actually evaluated solutions for that. But if you had the Sentry pipeline in place already for crash reports, it would be very easy to slide into using it for tracking other kinds of custom events.

maximedupre 5y ago

Time to innovate, then :D

krono 5y ago

If it looks, walks, and quacks like a behavioural advertising/tracking/analytics platform... why should it not be treated like one? Especially when you consider Sentry seems to be moving towards enabling these use-cases even further. A way to opt out of personal data collection that is provided by Sentry to end-users would put Sentry back on track. Until then, I'll be running my own solution.

BYK 5y ago
You mean things like these: https://docs.sentry.io/product/relay/#pii-data-scrubbing https://docs.sentry.io/product/relay/#pii-data-scrubbing, https://docs.sentry.io/product/data-management-settings/scrubbing/ https://docs.sentry.io/product/data-management-settings/scru...
- krono 5y ago
  More along the lines of a client-side and end-user controllable way to prevent data (or specific categories) from being collected in the first place. Edit: A cross-domain cookie could work for this

Noughmad 5y ago

But Sentry can be used for the same analytics as ads. You can send events manually, it doesn't have to be an actual error, with all the info attached. I'm a very satisfied user of Sentry, but I use it for an internal project. I also use LogRocket which is far more intrusive. For public projects, I would use Sentry but certainly understand that many people would block it. I would never use LogRocket without informing users though.

account42 5y ago

> Treating products like Sentry the same as advertising and analytics companies can only be harmful for our industry. Normalizing collecting information about users and their behavior without getting informed consent in advance is harmful to our industry.

XCSme 5y ago
One thing to note is that I think a website is different than a software product that you install on your local machine (in terms of privacy). When you access a website you access resources on a remote server, this means that is almost impossible to not leave any trace of you visiting that website (access logs, ISP logs, DNS logs, etc). I do think there should be explicit consent for a locally installed software to send logs or analytics to an external server, but I don't think explicit consent must be given when the user is the one accessing the server. Also, there is a big difference between technical logs (app crashes, 404 pages, resources that fail to load) and storing user-specific information or actions (exact location, products purchased, items viewed) most importantly when this information is used for marketing purposes, not for improving the user experience (by making the website faster/easier to use/more secure, etc.).