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"Telemetry" frequently includes more than low-cardinality metrics. This article (and my root comment) mentions crash information, for example, which could easi

by Groxx 3y ago

"Telemetry" frequently includes more than low-cardinality metrics. This article (and my root comment) mentions crash information, for example, which could easily include function names and other user information (username is often part of file paths, which are often part of crash information). And the example is really not contrived. For example, homosexuality has waffled between "get married, love is love" and "your government is explicitly trying to kill you" repeatedly around the world. Congratulations! You worked on Grindr two years ago when they started their internet dragnet, as they can see by information coming from your compiler, on your machine, at your home! You now have to flee the country. They're not going to be looking for your compiler crash logs, they're looking at everything they can possibly collect for keywords, and oopsie, there's one. You (you personally and the "royal" you) cannot predict what will matter in the future, and your legitimate-threats do not match everyone else's legitimate-threats. I agree privacy-extremists exist, but so do other kinds of extremists and extreme situations. Ignorance of those doesn't mean they don't exist.

estebank 3y ago
For crash reports the only elements included are coming from the compiler (the symbols of the stack trace do not leak user data), but the panic description can leak symbols from the user's code. For automated mechanisms you could make it so that nothing user generated is sent, but a lot of consideration is needed to not make a mistake.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
Crash reports are not telemetry, they are debugging/error reporting tools. Every application that has ever had a crash reporting function, did so by prompting the user to submit it first. The reason is pretty obvious: crash reports contain more data than a user might like to submit, and so the user gets to choose to submit it or not. Often they do choose to submit it, but again, they get the choice, and don't need to go through an awkward process to manually copy their offline data into an online process. Nobody has stopped using operating systems and browsers just because they have a crash reporter that can optionally submit the crash report to an internet site. Telemetry is not sensitive data. Telemetry is "signals". For desktop software, telemetry is often what operating system, cpu architecture, and software version you're running. Your OS reports that, your browser reports that, every self-updating application you use reports that. This is not controversial nor sensitive data and has no privacy implication.

by Groxx 3y ago

estebank 3y ago

For crash reports the only elements included are coming from the compiler (the symbols of the stack trace do not leak user data), but the panic description can leak symbols from the user's code. For automated mechanisms you could make it so that nothing user generated is sent, but a lot of consideration is needed to not make a mistake.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

Crash reports are not telemetry, they are debugging/error reporting tools. Every application that has ever had a crash reporting function, did so by prompting the user to submit it first. The reason is pretty obvious: crash reports contain more data than a user might like to submit, and so the user gets to choose to submit it or not. Often they do choose to submit it, but again, they get the choice, and don't need to go through an awkward process to manually copy their offline data into an online process. Nobody has stopped using operating systems and browsers just because they have a crash reporter that can optionally submit the crash report to an internet site. Telemetry is not sensitive data. Telemetry is "signals". For desktop software, telemetry is often what operating system, cpu architecture, and software version you're running. Your OS reports that, your browser reports that, every self-updating application you use reports that. This is not controversial nor sensitive data and has no privacy implication.