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Telemetry in webapps is incredibly tempting, because it's just so easy to collect. Even without JavaScript, web browsers offer a dazzling array of ways for appl

Telemetry in webapps is incredibly tempting, because it's just so easy to collect. Even without JavaScript, web browsers offer a dazzling array of ways for applications to call home with fingerprinting and tracking information. Because it is easy, it is commonplace, and many will use this as a justification for their own decisions. It is true that, in some cases, telemetry can make it faster and easier to improve software, but this is ultimately placing the convenience of the developers ahead of the privacy and autonomy of the users. I believe that software should serve the interests of users, and informed, affirmative consent for phoning home is an absolute baseline for respecting their wishes.

Entinel 4y ago
> but this is ultimately placing the convenience of the developers ahead of the privacy and autonomy of the users. Is it though? Putting aside the issue of whether you trust the person collecting telemetry for a second. You can collect telemetry completely anonymized. You don't have store IPs or any sort of personal identifier. I know a certain crowd still won't like it but in practice how does that harm the privacy of the user?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > You can collect telemetry completely anonymized. You can't. You can decide to discard identifying information (although only if you aggregate and don't insert some sort of "anonymous" identifier), sure. But you're still going to collect it. So it all boils down to trusting not only the developer, but any company or interest that might acquire the developer or product in the future. And I think it has been repeatedly demonstrated that this trust is not well-placed.
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    > You can't. Of course you can! Just route telemetry through Tor.
- Lammy 4y ago
  The very act of making a network connection (data points: network address + time of use) makes it impossible to be truly anonymous https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
JohnFen 4y ago
> Even without JavaScript, web browsers offer a dazzling array of ways for applications to call home with fingerprinting and tracking information. This is why I don't use web apps or web-based services unless I have no other option.
- waboremo 4y ago
  What are the other options?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Native binaries. They even come with the additional benefit that I can firewall them off individually, so I can selectively allow telemetry collection if I'm OK with it.
    - chatmasta 4y ago
      It's funny to see this comment, because any time someone complains about the Zoom desktop app, there's a comment bragging about how they only use Zoom through their web browser. I'm surprised that anyone claiming to be security- or privacy-minded would prefer a native desktop app to a website running in a sandboxed web browser. Even if you build the code yourself, you're probably safer with the web app. At least in the browser, you can monitor and block any connections from the web app. Good luck doing that for a native binary without inspecting the source and build process for underhanded code exfiltrating data from your machine through some unknown number of obfuscation techniques. Amusingly enough, the OP article is about telemetry of "frontend tooling," which does not refer to "web apps," but to "native binaries for building web apps."
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        > I'm surprised that anyone claiming to be security- or privacy-minded would prefer a native desktop app to a website running in a sandboxed web browser. That shouldn't be so surprising, really. It's a question of what threats you are the most concerned about. That decision is pretty individual. > Good luck doing that for a native binary without inspecting the source [...] I don't have to do all of that. I firewall off all outgoing traffic by default. If a binary is trying to exfiltrate data, it won't get past the firewall. That's hard to do in a web context. > which does not refer to "web apps," but to "native binaries for building web apps." Indeed so! I'm not saying that just using native binaries all by themselves is sufficient. I'm saying that I have more tools available to mitigate the problem when it's a native binary. Just look at the impossibility of effectively stopping browser fingerprinting for an example of the difference between the two things.
swyx 4y ago
> this is ultimately placing the convenience of the developers ahead of the privacy and autonomy of the users this is a biased framing of the problem. first of all, the telemetry is often more useful for PMs (not developers) to make decisions on what efforts to prioritize vs not, and to assess relative success of launches. less of a convenience thing, but an industry standard way to get some meager signal from all your users, not just the ones that fill out surveys (and i'm sure theres plenty of complaints about surveys being unrepresentative too). second of all, the work that developers and PMs do with this anonymized data is usually intended to help users. pitting developer vs user is a false binary.
- RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
  If usage information is so valuable, why not ask for it instead of simply taking it?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    The answer I've gotten to this question from multiple sources is: because if we ask, not enough users say yes. Which speaks volumes.
    - flangola7 4y ago
      I've learned that a lot of people somehow made it to adulthood without a single lesson on what actual enthusiastic true consent is.
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      The followup to that is: '...and they'll switch to alternatives that don't ask.'
  - swyx 4y ago
    because 80% of users dont opt in, dont opt out, they roll with the defaults, and when asked dont mind that youre getting anonymized telemetry back. most users are not privacy maxis like those motivated to comment 3 threads down on hn posts like these. they want to get their stuff done and expect the product to improve and understand that we have evolved these practices as pragmatic tradeoffs.
mhink 4y ago
The site in question isn't even talking about web apps. They're talking about telemetry in tools commonly used to build webapps, which is perhaps more surprising. The Next.js CLI phones home to Vercel with statistics about how many times e.g. `next dev` is being called, along with details of the developer's OS and CPU, as well as what Next.js plugins they're using in their project.
- BaronVonSteuben 4y ago
  Wow, I'm really disappointed by that in Next.js. I love the product, and I'm sure they're being ethical about what they collect and how they track it, but I deploy this on my production servers. The idea of them doing stuff on my production instances that I'm not aware of and don't approve of is not pleasant. Not to say it's fine if it's on personal machines, because I don't think that is either, but yeah.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    The telemetry runs when you call next dev, so does not run on your production instances. (And you can opt-out and they display a warning, tough of course that is indeed not an opt-in.)
    - ricardobeat 4y ago
      The fact developers even have to worry about that is a problem. How do you know where they will draw that line?
      - Vinnl 4y ago
        I agree that it's annoying that you can't just plug any tool into your code and hope that it does not do malicious things, but alas, that's the world we live in.
    - Joeri 4y ago
      Offering opt-out is odd from a GDPR standpoint. If the next.js project is collecting ip addresses together with this info they are processing personal data under GDPR. They need to do so under one of the 6 bases for processing, which in their case is either consent or legitimate interest. If consent, opt-in is required and opt-out is a violation. If legitimate interest then opt-out is alright and in fact not even required, but they have a high bar for clearing that standard, especially since opt-out is offered (which somewhat disproves the claim of legitimate interest). I assume the project is in non-compliance and one complaint to a regulatory authority away from a proceeding that may lead to a fine if they don’t switch to an opt-in model.
deleted 4y ago
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Entinel 4y ago

> but this is ultimately placing the convenience of the developers ahead of the privacy and autonomy of the users. Is it though? Putting aside the issue of whether you trust the person collecting telemetry for a second. You can collect telemetry completely anonymized. You don't have store IPs or any sort of personal identifier. I know a certain crowd still won't like it but in practice how does that harm the privacy of the user?

JohnFen 4y ago
> You can collect telemetry completely anonymized. You can't. You can decide to discard identifying information (although only if you aggregate and don't insert some sort of "anonymous" identifier), sure. But you're still going to collect it. So it all boils down to trusting not only the developer, but any company or interest that might acquire the developer or product in the future. And I think it has been repeatedly demonstrated that this trust is not well-placed.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  > You can't. Of course you can! Just route telemetry through Tor.
Lammy 4y ago
The very act of making a network connection (data points: network address + time of use) makes it impossible to be truly anonymous https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

JohnFen 4y ago

> Even without JavaScript, web browsers offer a dazzling array of ways for applications to call home with fingerprinting and tracking information. This is why I don't use web apps or web-based services unless I have no other option.

waboremo 4y ago
What are the other options?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Native binaries. They even come with the additional benefit that I can firewall them off individually, so I can selectively allow telemetry collection if I'm OK with it.
  - chatmasta 4y ago
    It's funny to see this comment, because any time someone complains about the Zoom desktop app, there's a comment bragging about how they only use Zoom through their web browser. I'm surprised that anyone claiming to be security- or privacy-minded would prefer a native desktop app to a website running in a sandboxed web browser. Even if you build the code yourself, you're probably safer with the web app. At least in the browser, you can monitor and block any connections from the web app. Good luck doing that for a native binary without inspecting the source and build process for underhanded code exfiltrating data from your machine through some unknown number of obfuscation techniques. Amusingly enough, the OP article is about telemetry of "frontend tooling," which does not refer to "web apps," but to "native binaries for building web apps."
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > I'm surprised that anyone claiming to be security- or privacy-minded would prefer a native desktop app to a website running in a sandboxed web browser. That shouldn't be so surprising, really. It's a question of what threats you are the most concerned about. That decision is pretty individual. > Good luck doing that for a native binary without inspecting the source [...] I don't have to do all of that. I firewall off all outgoing traffic by default. If a binary is trying to exfiltrate data, it won't get past the firewall. That's hard to do in a web context. > which does not refer to "web apps," but to "native binaries for building web apps." Indeed so! I'm not saying that just using native binaries all by themselves is sufficient. I'm saying that I have more tools available to mitigate the problem when it's a native binary. Just look at the impossibility of effectively stopping browser fingerprinting for an example of the difference between the two things.

swyx 4y ago

> this is ultimately placing the convenience of the developers ahead of the privacy and autonomy of the users this is a biased framing of the problem. first of all, the telemetry is often more useful for PMs (not developers) to make decisions on what efforts to prioritize vs not, and to assess relative success of launches. less of a convenience thing, but an industry standard way to get some meager signal from all your users, not just the ones that fill out surveys (and i'm sure theres plenty of complaints about surveys being unrepresentative too). second of all, the work that developers and PMs do with this anonymized data is usually intended to help users. pitting developer vs user is a false binary.

RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
If usage information is so valuable, why not ask for it instead of simply taking it?
- JohnFen 4y ago
  The answer I've gotten to this question from multiple sources is: because if we ask, not enough users say yes. Which speaks volumes.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    I've learned that a lot of people somehow made it to adulthood without a single lesson on what actual enthusiastic true consent is.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    The followup to that is: '...and they'll switch to alternatives that don't ask.'
- swyx 4y ago
  because 80% of users dont opt in, dont opt out, they roll with the defaults, and when asked dont mind that youre getting anonymized telemetry back. most users are not privacy maxis like those motivated to comment 3 threads down on hn posts like these. they want to get their stuff done and expect the product to improve and understand that we have evolved these practices as pragmatic tradeoffs.

mhink 4y ago

The site in question isn't even talking about web apps. They're talking about telemetry in tools commonly used to build webapps, which is perhaps more surprising. The Next.js CLI phones home to Vercel with statistics about how many times e.g. `next dev` is being called, along with details of the developer's OS and CPU, as well as what Next.js plugins they're using in their project.

BaronVonSteuben 4y ago
Wow, I'm really disappointed by that in Next.js. I love the product, and I'm sure they're being ethical about what they collect and how they track it, but I deploy this on my production servers. The idea of them doing stuff on my production instances that I'm not aware of and don't approve of is not pleasant. Not to say it's fine if it's on personal machines, because I don't think that is either, but yeah.
- Vinnl 4y ago
  The telemetry runs when you call next dev, so does not run on your production instances. (And you can opt-out and they display a warning, tough of course that is indeed not an opt-in.)
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    The fact developers even have to worry about that is a problem. How do you know where they will draw that line?
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      I agree that it's annoying that you can't just plug any tool into your code and hope that it does not do malicious things, but alas, that's the world we live in.
  - Joeri 4y ago
    Offering opt-out is odd from a GDPR standpoint. If the next.js project is collecting ip addresses together with this info they are processing personal data under GDPR. They need to do so under one of the 6 bases for processing, which in their case is either consent or legitimate interest. If consent, opt-in is required and opt-out is a violation. If legitimate interest then opt-out is alright and in fact not even required, but they have a high bar for clearing that standard, especially since opt-out is offered (which somewhat disproves the claim of legitimate interest). I assume the project is in non-compliance and one complaint to a regulatory authority away from a proceeding that may lead to a fine if they don’t switch to an opt-in model.

deleted 4y ago

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