4 ms·

Are they still dialing home about your app usage though?

by lambdasquirrel 5y ago

userbinator 5y ago
For those who missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847
asddgsgsaxg 5y ago
KennyBlanken 5y ago
Oh, but it gets better. When the furor over the app usage collection hit, they disabled the data collection via remote server 'kill switch' (the driver hits an XML file.) About a month later, after the furor died down - they flipped it right back on. https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr... Super fucking scummy.
bo1024 5y ago
Right? How is Wacom considered an acceptable option after that, especially for FOSS people?
- ninjin 5y ago
  To me, because the world is too complex to allow us to deal in absolutes – especially when dealing with corporations. Wacom deserves to have their name shamed when it comes to spying on their customers, but they equally well deserve praise for their Linux kernel drivers and libraries. As far as I can see there is no perfect option out there, so for now I (as a “FLOSS person”) have no choice but to settle with an imperfect alternative (or world for that matter) and praise the good parts and shame the bad while hoping for things to gradually improve.
  - danwills 5y ago
    Not sure whether it's any consolation but the drivers do work when there's no internet connection (like on our intranet at work). Presumably this means it shouldn't be hard to prevent them phoning home even when there is a connection available? It's surprising to me that there aren't forks with this aspect removed.. maybe there are and I just haven't looked far enough?
    - ninjin 5y ago
      To be clear, if I recall correctly the spyware was in the package of (usually rubbish) software that came with the drivers for Windows (and maybe also macOS?). The Linux drivers are upstreamed in the official source tree and there is no way in hell you would be able to do that with spyware.
    - diffeomorphism 5y ago
      That is only in the Windows driver (which I don't think is FOSS) and just one checkbox to disable/uncheck on install. Also (probably going to get crucified for this), what is the big deal? It is not like it is sharing any sensitive or personally identifiable information and it asks when you install the driver whether you are okay with that. So it also was never hidden, people just don't read. I would also prefer an unchecked instead of checked box by default, but this seems to be blown way out of proportion.
aTh8Geer 5y ago
I use a cintiq 13HD on GNU/linux with the wacom driver, and I can report that it does not phone home in any way. I use opensnitch to explicitely whitelist (or reject) any app that wants to access network, nothing related ever popped up. Additionally, I run my own dns resolver on a raspberry pi to monitor dns request logs of all my devices, and I confirm it doesn't log anything when I plug my tablet and start using it (this doesn't help if the software tries a direct connection by IP). Additionally, I've read the code of the driver, since it's FLOSS, and didn't see anything suspect in it. I can confirm this is actually the code I'm using, because I'm running Gentoo and I inspected directly the tarball used by my package manager to build the driver. So, obviously, I could still have missed something, but it looks to me like solid enough evidence for me to trust the software (at least, its current version). If it tries funny business in the future, I'll see it pop up anyway (plus, I block all requests to google-analytics ). My bet : Wacom put those "features" only in windows/macOS driver, presuming users of those OSes don't care about privacy, or at least not as much. This doesn't make their behavior acceptable, obviously. EDIT: I realize there are actually two parts in the driver, a X input driver and the kernel driver. The one I checked was the X input one. I've just checked the sources of my kernel (directly the ones used to build the kernel as well), and there is no issue there either.
karussell 5y ago
Is that an issue under Linux too :) ?

Are they still dialing home about your app usage though?

userbinator 5y ago

For those who missed it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056847

asddgsgsaxg 5y ago

KennyBlanken 5y ago

Oh, but it gets better. When the furor over the app usage collection hit, they disabled the data collection via remote server 'kill switch' (the driver hits an XML file.) About a month later, after the furor died down - they flipped it right back on. https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-track-name-of-every-application-you-open/ https://robertheaton.com/2020/02/05/wacom-drawing-tablets-tr... Super fucking scummy.

bo1024 5y ago

Right? How is Wacom considered an acceptable option after that, especially for FOSS people?

ninjin 5y ago
To me, because the world is too complex to allow us to deal in absolutes – especially when dealing with corporations. Wacom deserves to have their name shamed when it comes to spying on their customers, but they equally well deserve praise for their Linux kernel drivers and libraries. As far as I can see there is no perfect option out there, so for now I (as a “FLOSS person”) have no choice but to settle with an imperfect alternative (or world for that matter) and praise the good parts and shame the bad while hoping for things to gradually improve.
- danwills 5y ago
  Not sure whether it's any consolation but the drivers do work when there's no internet connection (like on our intranet at work). Presumably this means it shouldn't be hard to prevent them phoning home even when there is a connection available? It's surprising to me that there aren't forks with this aspect removed.. maybe there are and I just haven't looked far enough?
  - ninjin 5y ago
    To be clear, if I recall correctly the spyware was in the package of (usually rubbish) software that came with the drivers for Windows (and maybe also macOS?). The Linux drivers are upstreamed in the official source tree and there is no way in hell you would be able to do that with spyware.
  - diffeomorphism 5y ago
    That is only in the Windows driver (which I don't think is FOSS) and just one checkbox to disable/uncheck on install. Also (probably going to get crucified for this), what is the big deal? It is not like it is sharing any sensitive or personally identifiable information and it asks when you install the driver whether you are okay with that. So it also was never hidden, people just don't read. I would also prefer an unchecked instead of checked box by default, but this seems to be blown way out of proportion.

aTh8Geer 5y ago

I use a cintiq 13HD on GNU/linux with the wacom driver, and I can report that it does not phone home in any way. I use opensnitch to explicitely whitelist (or reject) any app that wants to access network, nothing related ever popped up. Additionally, I run my own dns resolver on a raspberry pi to monitor dns request logs of all my devices, and I confirm it doesn't log anything when I plug my tablet and start using it (this doesn't help if the software tries a direct connection by IP). Additionally, I've read the code of the driver, since it's FLOSS, and didn't see anything suspect in it. I can confirm this is actually the code I'm using, because I'm running Gentoo and I inspected directly the tarball used by my package manager to build the driver. So, obviously, I could still have missed something, but it looks to me like solid enough evidence for me to trust the software (at least, its current version). If it tries funny business in the future, I'll see it pop up anyway (plus, I block all requests to google-analytics ). My bet : Wacom put those "features" only in windows/macOS driver, presuming users of those OSes don't care about privacy, or at least not as much. This doesn't make their behavior acceptable, obviously. EDIT: I realize there are actually two parts in the driver, a X input driver and the kernel driver. The one I checked was the X input one. I've just checked the sources of my kernel (directly the ones used to build the kernel as well), and there is no issue there either.

karussell 5y ago

Is that an issue under Linux too :) ?