6 ms·

Telemetry settings in Kibana

37 points by aendruk 4y ago

emsixteen 4y ago
This is would be entertaining if it weren't simultaneously depressing.
- jraph 4y ago
  (this comment was meaningful with the initial HN title, saying that telemetry.optIn was true by default)
  - emsixteen 4y ago
    Thanks. Looks like the title on HN was changed to something which misses the entire point of the post.
Tomte 4y ago
"To prevent users from changing it, set telemetry.allowChangingOptInStatus to false."
moepstar 4y ago
Not sure if i'm missing something, however both Grafana and InfluxDB also default to sending data back: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#analytics https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/config... https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1.8/administration/config/#reporting-disabled--false https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1.8/administration/con... So... by default, i assume whatever i'm using is spying on me, until proven otherwise - and yes, that's kinda depressing... (and one more reason to use something like Pi-Hole to have at least some attempt to throw a wrench into that practice)
- debugnik 4y ago
  I guess the point is opt-in by definition implies a default to false. This is opt-out. Even worse is the existence of allowChangingOptInStatus which completely contradicts the meanings of both opt-in and opt-out.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > allowChangingOptInStatus which completely contradicts the meanings of both opt-in and opt-out I could imagine a sysadmin wanting to prevent users from enabling telemetry from the web interface by setting allowChangingOptInStatus to false and telemetry.optIn to false. That's not bad, especially since allowChangingOptInStatus is true by default. (IIUC)
- CitizenKane 4y ago
  I work at Grafana Labs, and this isn't an official statement by any means, just my personal perspective, but we pretty much need some type of tracking to hold us accountable and get a general idea of how widely Grafana is deployed. You can actually see exactly what is tracked here https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/pkg/infra/usagestats/service/usage_stats.go#L33 https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/pkg/infra/usage... and beyond basic statistics we collect an anonymous ID which is a random UUID which we have no way to correlate back to the running instance (and which can easily be reset).
- sofixa 4y ago
  Might be an unpopular opinion around here, but I think that a random software vendor collecting anonymous basic usage statistics (user XXXXXXXXXXXX runs version a.b.c, with plugins z,w.e.y enabled) is not spying on you, and is totally justified. You and others like you are trivialising the much closer to spying on you done by data hoarders like Facebook, Google, TikTok, and the actual spying done by NSA, CIA, MI6, etc. etc. by lumping everything together. Usage statistics are super important, especially for freemium (open source with optional Enterprise) software. It's not like they have any other way of knowing which feature is actually used, needs improvement, can be safely deprecated, etc. Would I prefer for it to be opt-in? Yes. Do I understand why they would default to collection considering close to nobody would go out of their way to enable it? Yes.
- aendruk 4y ago
  I think what you missed is this situation being described as “opt in”, a new low.
n0n0n4t0r 4y ago
Enabling by default this setting is quite annoying from the point of view of the user... But, from the point of view of the software developer, the choice is not so easy: You decide to either be totally blind on the usage of your software or you jump into the exact situation they are in in this comment thread: piss of people. At least they choose to let us opt out easily, no?
- jraph 4y ago
  > At least they choose to let us opt out easily, no? Everybody does. Even MS and Google tools. I would say it's the bare minimum.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    IIRC you can't opt out completely from sending telemetry in Windows. Your choices are "basic" and "full", or something similar.
    - jraph 4y ago
      Ah, right, hadn't thought of Windows, I was thinking about dotnet and other MS (open source) cli stuff I read about.
  - CodesInChaos 4y ago
    Opt out via environment variables (like dotnet requires) is hardly "easy" and it's quite fragile.
- snehk 4y ago
  I think it's more about the naming. OptIn doesn't really suggest that it would be true by default. It being named telemetry.optOut and being set to false by default would make more sense.
  - Kiala 4y ago
    Or, how about: telemetry.enabled?
jraph 4y ago
This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to use Debian packages built by Debian, and not the official binaries / Docker images. I know Debian usually sets sane defaults. For instance, a Chromium or a Firefox packaged by Debian is less likely to phone home without asking / telling you on first use.
- m463 4y ago
  I vaguely recall gnome phoning home, not sure if this happens on debian.
  - POPOSYS 4y ago
    Source please. "Vaguely recall" is not anything you should write on the internet.
    - m463 4y ago
      I block traffic on new installs and track down all connection attempts. I had to do: gsettings set org.gnome.software download-updates false unfortunately I only have evidence ubuntu needed this turned on, not sure about arch and debian. https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/auto-updates.html.en https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/auto-up...
aflag 4y ago
Shouldn't it be telemetry.optOut if the default is to send telemetry? Seems misleading.
- laserlight 4y ago
  Perhaps, that's the intention. In that case, telemetry.notOptOut would have been a better choice.
- jraph 4y ago
  Yep, or telemetry.enabled If you are not going to use the meaning of "opt-in" or "opt-out", you might as well keep things simple.
  - skrause 4y ago
    Or go the usual Microsoft route: 1. First have an telemetry.opt-out setting with the default value of "false". 2. Wait a few versions and then switch to telemetry.enabled with a default value of "true". And then just ignore the old setting, don't migrate it.
kmac_ 4y ago
What's the problem? There's a large popup with the info after a fresh deploy. They need usage data to shape the product.
- kinggencha 4y ago
  Unless you investigate this, and keep investigating it continuously, you can't know what information they are exfiltrating from your system intentionally or unintentionally. "Shaping the product" should not require this kind of behavior.
mouse_ 4y ago
This post had its title changed from "telemetry.optIn defaults to true" (which is the headline) to "Telemetry settings in Kibana" which is somewhat useless as a headline. What's the big deal?
- mylasttour 4y ago
  "Telemetry settings in Kibana" indicates that it is about telemetry settings in Kibana. Which is what the article is. "telemetry.optIn defaults to true" indicates that some setting, somewhere out in the world, defaults telemetry to true. It's a clickbait title. Poster should have titled it "Kibana Telemetry Is Opt-out" if they wanted it to be a proper title.
  - threecoins 4y ago
    OP's problem is not about telemetry. Their problem was exactly what the title meant, "Opt-in" means user should make it true if they need, instead they have an opt-out with a name opt-in. Imagine buying wipes labelled wipes, but they were actually dry tissues.
    - aendruk 4y ago
      Precisely, thank you. It’s not about Kibana, or telemetry, or telemetry being opt-out. It’s about exactly what I copied from the page for lack of a deep link: the opt-out setting is deceitfully named opt-in.
  - emsixteen 4y ago
    It's more than just that it's opt-out - It's that the setting is even named 'opt in', while not being opt in at all.
reacharavindh 4y ago
Are there any good alternatives to Kibana? The last time I was looking into ELK stack for centralised logs, I was trying to see if there was a better way to do it, but though many alternatives existed for ElasticSearch and Logstash parts of it, the UI - Kibana stood out as a blocker with no alternatives. Does anyone know of one?
- rsdbdr203 4y ago
  I've been working on one: log-store.com It has a DB built-in that is schema-less, but it's really the frontend I've been trying to focus on, as I think the interface to Kibana is poor.
- jesse_faden 4y ago
  Grafana is a fork of Kibana is the open source viable alternative to Kibana.
aendruk 4y ago
The submitted title was “telemetry.optIn defaults to true”, which is verbatim text from the page. The changed title has mislead readers into missing the point; top comments are now a generic discussion of telemetry itself and don’t even acknowledge the discrepancy between the setting name and behavior.

37 points by aendruk 4y ago

emsixteen 4y ago

This is would be entertaining if it weren't simultaneously depressing.

jraph 4y ago
(this comment was meaningful with the initial HN title, saying that telemetry.optIn was true by default)
- emsixteen 4y ago
  Thanks. Looks like the title on HN was changed to something which misses the entire point of the post.

Tomte 4y ago

"To prevent users from changing it, set telemetry.allowChangingOptInStatus to false."

moepstar 4y ago

Not sure if i'm missing something, however both Grafana and InfluxDB also default to sending data back: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#analytics https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/config... https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1.8/administration/config/#reporting-disabled--false https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1.8/administration/con... So... by default, i assume whatever i'm using is spying on me, until proven otherwise - and yes, that's kinda depressing... (and one more reason to use something like Pi-Hole to have at least some attempt to throw a wrench into that practice)

debugnik 4y ago
I guess the point is opt-in by definition implies a default to false. This is opt-out. Even worse is the existence of allowChangingOptInStatus which completely contradicts the meanings of both opt-in and opt-out.
- jraph 4y ago
  > allowChangingOptInStatus which completely contradicts the meanings of both opt-in and opt-out I could imagine a sysadmin wanting to prevent users from enabling telemetry from the web interface by setting allowChangingOptInStatus to false and telemetry.optIn to false. That's not bad, especially since allowChangingOptInStatus is true by default. (IIUC)
CitizenKane 4y ago
I work at Grafana Labs, and this isn't an official statement by any means, just my personal perspective, but we pretty much need some type of tracking to hold us accountable and get a general idea of how widely Grafana is deployed. You can actually see exactly what is tracked here https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/pkg/infra/usagestats/service/usage_stats.go#L33 https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/pkg/infra/usage... and beyond basic statistics we collect an anonymous ID which is a random UUID which we have no way to correlate back to the running instance (and which can easily be reset).
sofixa 4y ago
Might be an unpopular opinion around here, but I think that a random software vendor collecting anonymous basic usage statistics (user XXXXXXXXXXXX runs version a.b.c, with plugins z,w.e.y enabled) is not spying on you, and is totally justified. You and others like you are trivialising the much closer to spying on you done by data hoarders like Facebook, Google, TikTok, and the actual spying done by NSA, CIA, MI6, etc. etc. by lumping everything together. Usage statistics are super important, especially for freemium (open source with optional Enterprise) software. It's not like they have any other way of knowing which feature is actually used, needs improvement, can be safely deprecated, etc. Would I prefer for it to be opt-in? Yes. Do I understand why they would default to collection considering close to nobody would go out of their way to enable it? Yes.
aendruk 4y ago
I think what you missed is this situation being described as “opt in”, a new low.

n0n0n4t0r 4y ago

Enabling by default this setting is quite annoying from the point of view of the user... But, from the point of view of the software developer, the choice is not so easy: You decide to either be totally blind on the usage of your software or you jump into the exact situation they are in in this comment thread: piss of people. At least they choose to let us opt out easily, no?

jraph 4y ago
> At least they choose to let us opt out easily, no? Everybody does. Even MS and Google tools. I would say it's the bare minimum.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  IIRC you can't opt out completely from sending telemetry in Windows. Your choices are "basic" and "full", or something similar.
  - jraph 4y ago
    Ah, right, hadn't thought of Windows, I was thinking about dotnet and other MS (open source) cli stuff I read about.
- CodesInChaos 4y ago
  Opt out via environment variables (like dotnet requires) is hardly "easy" and it's quite fragile.
snehk 4y ago
I think it's more about the naming. OptIn doesn't really suggest that it would be true by default. It being named telemetry.optOut and being set to false by default would make more sense.
- Kiala 4y ago
  Or, how about: telemetry.enabled?

jraph 4y ago

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to use Debian packages built by Debian, and not the official binaries / Docker images. I know Debian usually sets sane defaults. For instance, a Chromium or a Firefox packaged by Debian is less likely to phone home without asking / telling you on first use.

m463 4y ago
I vaguely recall gnome phoning home, not sure if this happens on debian.
- POPOSYS 4y ago
  Source please. "Vaguely recall" is not anything you should write on the internet.
  - m463 4y ago
    I block traffic on new installs and track down all connection attempts. I had to do: gsettings set org.gnome.software download-updates false unfortunately I only have evidence ubuntu needed this turned on, not sure about arch and debian. https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/auto-updates.html.en https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/auto-up...

aflag 4y ago

Shouldn't it be telemetry.optOut if the default is to send telemetry? Seems misleading.

laserlight 4y ago
Perhaps, that's the intention. In that case, telemetry.notOptOut would have been a better choice.
jraph 4y ago
Yep, or telemetry.enabled If you are not going to use the meaning of "opt-in" or "opt-out", you might as well keep things simple.
- skrause 4y ago
  Or go the usual Microsoft route: 1. First have an telemetry.opt-out setting with the default value of "false". 2. Wait a few versions and then switch to telemetry.enabled with a default value of "true". And then just ignore the old setting, don't migrate it.

kmac_ 4y ago

What's the problem? There's a large popup with the info after a fresh deploy. They need usage data to shape the product.

kinggencha 4y ago
Unless you investigate this, and keep investigating it continuously, you can't know what information they are exfiltrating from your system intentionally or unintentionally. "Shaping the product" should not require this kind of behavior.

mouse_ 4y ago

This post had its title changed from "telemetry.optIn defaults to true" (which is the headline) to "Telemetry settings in Kibana" which is somewhat useless as a headline. What's the big deal?

mylasttour 4y ago
"Telemetry settings in Kibana" indicates that it is about telemetry settings in Kibana. Which is what the article is. "telemetry.optIn defaults to true" indicates that some setting, somewhere out in the world, defaults telemetry to true. It's a clickbait title. Poster should have titled it "Kibana Telemetry Is Opt-out" if they wanted it to be a proper title.
- threecoins 4y ago
  OP's problem is not about telemetry. Their problem was exactly what the title meant, "Opt-in" means user should make it true if they need, instead they have an opt-out with a name opt-in. Imagine buying wipes labelled wipes, but they were actually dry tissues.
  - aendruk 4y ago
    Precisely, thank you. It’s not about Kibana, or telemetry, or telemetry being opt-out. It’s about exactly what I copied from the page for lack of a deep link: the opt-out setting is deceitfully named opt-in.
- emsixteen 4y ago
  It's more than just that it's opt-out - It's that the setting is even named 'opt in', while not being opt in at all.

reacharavindh 4y ago

Are there any good alternatives to Kibana? The last time I was looking into ELK stack for centralised logs, I was trying to see if there was a better way to do it, but though many alternatives existed for ElasticSearch and Logstash parts of it, the UI - Kibana stood out as a blocker with no alternatives. Does anyone know of one?

rsdbdr203 4y ago
I've been working on one: log-store.com It has a DB built-in that is schema-less, but it's really the frontend I've been trying to focus on, as I think the interface to Kibana is poor.
jesse_faden 4y ago
Grafana is a fork of Kibana is the open source viable alternative to Kibana.

aendruk 4y ago

The submitted title was “telemetry.optIn defaults to true”, which is verbatim text from the page. The changed title has mislead readers into missing the point; top comments are now a generic discussion of telemetry itself and don’t even acknowledge the discrepancy between the setting name and behavior.