Brew commands send data to Google Analytics
tobiastom.name
tobiastom.name
Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Some other times it's just for spying on the users.
Let's stop complaining about stuff that someone does and tell you they do it. There are many more that do the same things without telling you.
Furthermore, now that you know, for brew specifically, will you opt out? Is your brew command history so secret that you care more about noone looking at it than helping making brew better? Chances are you use brew quite often. Chances are brew is not perfect. Will you choose to make its progress slower because of no real security reason?
How do we expect open source to become better if everyone is being a crybaby because brew got a history of how often they do brew update?
The EU approach to privacy (eroded by lobbying and lack of control over US companies) is that citizens have a right over their information. They can ask what personal information a company has on them, ask that it be corrected or deleted. This has resulted in companies that are more careful with data.
Whenever I read a post like yours I immediately think of so-called "useful innocents", to put it euphemistically [1]. Fighting for a non-goal of better open source through analytics (get real), corporate dominance and fewer rights for individuals.
Companies don't need analytics to improve software. They certainly don't need analytics from Google, the leading spyware-as-a-service company in the world.
I expect open source to become better through writing quality software, engaging with users and if need be doing some surveys or organsising other reach-out initiatives in the open. Not analytics turned on by default but it's-ok-cause-we-tell-you-we're-fucking-you.
For me, my answers are yes no yes. A while ago, you did that, and you get an old version of the thing you just installed. With analytics, they saw that many people forget to update before installing after a while, so they added an update step in that case.
I call that progress, no matter how small. I didn't change that and to you didn't change that. The brew devs changed that. Maybe they would have changed it anyway later.. Who knows. But the fact that brew because a tiny tiny bit better because of analytics, in part from me, makes me a happier user. Now I don't need to remember to update before installing.
Of course it's not the best way to "contribute", but it's something. Definitely better than "contributing" your data to companies, like you said.
Bash would like to record analyitics. y/n/more information
> y
> ls *.c
ls would like to record information about how you use it.
y/n/more information.
> y
file1.c file2.c file3.c
> grep 'string' *.c
grep would like to record some information about your
usage. y/n/more information.
> y
file1.c:8: string
> vim file1.c
vim would like to record information usage, to help
improve vim in future. y/n/more information.
> y
The 'C' package in vim would like to ...I'm amazed we're even having this discussion
The very idea of your shell or file listing program sending analytics to the mothership is ridiculous. They shouldn't be even talking to a network directly. They have a set of well-defined tasks, and spying on you is not one of them.
Simple answer, Yes.
It would lead to conversations about the elephant in the room. It also alleviates the assumption I trust all providers(comprehend the EULA/ToS) and puts their actions under scrutiny. If more people realized what data is collected and by whom for whom they could make an informed, cost/benefit choice. Other useful results are, what is the applicability of that data to the project, what characteristics define the 'Trusted Partners' that data is shared with and, possibly, inject some restraint into the collectors' decisions of what to collect.
edit: removed unintended paste fragment
$ git pull
(long wait)
^c
$ git pull
(got distracted and had to leave keyboard for a bit)
Can't execute program until you accept xcode license
1. paraphrasing the words
Worse, that fraction will be the statistically unusual people who bother reading and finding such options, meaning we can't derive any statistically useful results about the user base from them!
By the way I think that browser history should be disabled by default too.
I remember some IM app for linux had history turned off by default. I was really surprised then.
I get that there may be money involved, but presumably self-hosting also gives them more of the information to build out what they need.
> (...)and have been trying to find people who will provide us with non-Google hosting but: we're chronically understaffed and underfunded[1]
More like, this has resulted in things like nonsensical "Cookie warnings" that only waste the user's time.
Of course, websites that don't track their users are exempt: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
I guess the EU didn't expect websites to cling to tracking cookies like their lives depended on them.
The law is pretty simple: If you track users, or transmit information to third parties which could track the user, you have to get the user to opt-in.
The original intention was to get rid of Facebook’s shadow profiles, which it did – in the EU, websites don’t embed Facebook’s like button anymore, but have a two-click solution, where you have to click it, then it’s actually loaded, then you can like.
That alone is worth such a law.
But according to this website: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm Cookies clearly exempt from consent according to the EU advisory body on data protection- WP29pdf include: (...) third‑party social plug‑in content‑sharing cookies, for logged‑in members of a social network.
So, I think what you say about Facebook is not true.
I was talking about non-logged in users. The shadow profiles.
> The law is not simple. 100 words sentences of law jargon are not simple. Many, many pages of such sentences is the opposite of simple.
The German version of the law is just as simple to read as any newspaper or book you read in German high school, so at least I haven't had an issue before.
Such a thing could provide significantly more useful information, too - I envisage a notification with "This site wants to use a cookie on your computer" at the top, "allow/deny, now/always" buttons and a "What are cookies?" link at the bottom, and a user-friendly breakdown of this particular case in between, things like:
• "only visible to this site" vs "visible to ad.doubleclick.net" etc - maybe including, say, the Organization Name from the cookie domain's SSL cert, at least in the case of cookies set to "Secure" (maybe only if the cert's EV)
• "until you close your browser" vs "for a week" etc - perhaps with a way for the user to force session-only if desired
• possibly some kind of warning about snooping risk if the cookie's not marked secure, or not HTTP-only & 3rd-party scripts are on the page, etc
• for the case of 3rd-party cookies, it'd be possible to list which other sites have used the same cookie in the past
And so forth. The most importantant point being that you could actually trust this information - your browser has no motivation to lie to you about it, but any random site might.
[0] eg, https://i.imgur.com/NcxWz8zh.jpg
The law allows storing session info, config options, etc without prompting. The browser couldn’t reliably test that.
Unless you’d also let login to sites be handled by the browser, akin to Mozilla’s Persona.
Damn, that’d actually be a much nicer web.
Or, to look at it another way... so what if the browser pops up notifications more often than the law requires? Might encourage people to make less use of cookies for functionality that doesn't really need them, which would be no tragedy. And if your site really can't do without them, you could pop up a message explaining the situation & politely asking to be unblocked.
I suppose there'd be a danger of alert fatigue... maybe some heuristic analysis of the cookies themselves would be in order, to at least tentatively classify them as "tracking" vs "other". Eg, Google Analytics & Piwik cookies could be identified pretty reliably.
But that's happening with the current solution as well (not to mention all those crappy sites with their modal popups that teach you to close anything opening asap anyway)
Or maybe they want to persist session information?
Maybe browsers should prompt, instead of each website, but it's too late for that now.
That’s specifically exempt from the cookie law: Any technical cookie – session information, config options, etc – is allowed without any request.
The Cookie law only requires opt-in for tracking. Such as Google Analytics.
I was with you except this line. Data is needed to make better choices and prioritize improvements. How would you like people to collect data? Google Analytics is free, easy, and powerful. Adding the cost of buioding a KPI tracking and reporting later from scratch... simply would be too much for most open source projects.
Take a dozen, or two dozen, users and give them your product, let them use it, and get far more results from that?
You can even do these things for free, especially in open source many of your potential users are willing to do this.
This still doesn't mean we should just shut up and take it for desktop software. What anyone does on its OS shouldn't leave the LAN - same critique stands for recent MS endeavour with Windows 10.
This is a classical attempt to muddy the waters.
That's because this post is about brew. Windows 10 got tons of flak when it pulled this crap as well. "There are worse cases" is not an excuse for a project doing something shitty.
Search HN for "Windows 10" and you'll get plenty of complaints.
No, it is not so what. This is a major problem with Google instead. The fact that a single company can track majority of the web traffic is a huge risk.
But that doesn't change the validity of the proposal that opt-in should be the standard - exceptions from which must have solid reasons. Just making it easier for someone to make money off people is not one of those reasons. Neither is vague "making the product better".
--
[0] - INB4 yes, there are also valid arguments that opt-out organ donations will reduce doctors' willingness to fight for patient's life. Human societies are complicated.
Actually, I've opted out because my next of kin stand to lose quite a lot (the harvesting of organs needs to be done quickly, well within the mourning period of the people I care about the most). The decision to leave sight of my body needs to be theirs, and theirs alone.
If your in the position to donate organs you most likely died in an accident. You likely won't have that rosy picture of your family and friends around your beside. You might not have anyone.
What a waste.
I said the decision should be theirs. I did not say my body couldn't be parted from them, I said it was their decision to do so. I used to be registered as a donor, but because the law has now changed that my donorship overrides the wishes of my loved ones, I have withdrawn it.
And I said they may not be there to give that decision, so that's moot really. Organs like lungs and hearts expire very quickly. Reading comprehension indeed.
> Try a little empathy next time
For the dead person, or the person who misses out on a life saving organ due to the dead person?
It's your body and your choice obviously, but I think saying it's up to my relatives to decide isn't a great reason to be taken off the donor registry. There is plenty of time for them to grieve but only a few hours to take a vital organ. If you want to do something great if you expire unexpectedly then it's up to you, don't put that on your parter/relatives.
For example your wearables get to collect so much biometric info, if that data can be connected to detecting conditions early it would provide a lot of value down the road. At some point we will have the option to collect data about what you ate, what you did, where you went and then how that affected your biometrics, and we can inexpensively collect huge scale DNA samples, etc. all that data if available publicly could really provide insights in to things that are really not practical in limited group studies.
For reasons such as this I think I'm fine if services collect anonymized (unless we solve identity theft and such security concerns) information about me, I'd just want them to make this data free.
Remember; there's no such thing as "anonymized data", there's only "not enough other data to correlate out identities from it".
I am saying is that these benign things are opt-out not because most people wouldn't want to do them if they weigh the prons and cons but because they don't want to put in the effort of doing so and will just be conservative - which is logical from an individual perspective - but will cause us to lose out on opportunities as a whole.
Also this data is getting collected weather you want it or not, even intelligence people are just taping over their webcams as a security measure - the attitude that we must protect every bit of privacy by default will lead to the future where hidden data collection is the only way to access data - people will be making money off it, it won't be available to general public (for eg. public research) and there will be no transparency about it. And if you think the government will protect you - well they are the biggest transgressor here.
So instead of fighting a lost battle with trying to keep absolute privacy why not just make most of that data public and available and focus on protecting the really sensitive stuff.
Because you can't. You cannot build something that protects the really sensitive stuff out of stuff that's leaking data left and right, making it harder and harder to protect the really sensitive stuff.
Yeah, carrier contracts also "disclose" everything, there's a reason why it's called "small print".
It would only take to make it opt-in, instead of opt-out to rectify this.
Homebrew lead maintainer here. This is exactly why we do it. To repeat myself from below: we're chronically understaffed and underfunded.
> Furthermore, now that you know, for brew specifically, will you opt out?
It's worth noting: if everyone who uses a niche piece of software opt-out when it breaks we'll look at our analytics and likely remove it from Homebrew instead of fixing it. This may be unfair but given the amount of work: we need ways to prioritise. Analytics have helped us do that so we can prioritise fixes on things that are critical for many people.
If just 1% of users opt-in to telemetry, you would have more than enough data for a representative sample set.
This is the whole point. You can do the right thing without any loss of data usefulness. So why persist in doing the wrong thing??
The team behind Brew is doing a great job and if analytics can help them do a better job, then be it. Nobody is forcing you to use it and opting out is simple enough.
From initial discussion with Mike, there are two parts that would be needed for a (self hosted) setup:
a) The hosting itself (this is something I can likely help with)
b) Setup and ongoing management of Piwik. This isn't a skill set I have (nor am interested in). However I'm generally thinking the Homebrew Community is big enough to rustle up at least a few people with the right skill set for getting this done (and keeping it done :>).
Trying to get both hosting + Piwik setup/mgmt from the same set of people may be a tall order, so doing them separately is probably more achievable.
As a data point, this kind of approach - sponsored hosting/hw/similar + volunteers to look after Community infra - is used successfully in other projects. PostgreSQL is a good example.
Can't really think of any obvious reasons it wouldn't work for Homebrew too. ;)
Additionally, this (kind) offer is pointing to other organisations that may be able to host the servers and discussing potential solutions to the other options. It's not a slam-dunk by any means.
This is all done in my free time so I don't need an excuse to do or not do any of this.
No, it's not. µblock, µmatrix + clean links.
Not according to its creator https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode
No, we don't know. This article wouldn't have hit the front page if it wasn't subtle and user-hostile by default (opt-out).
>Data is being sent to Google everytime you do almost anything in almost all websites, using the same technology. So what?
Brew is not a website, it's a CLI tool. People expect this behavior of websites, not of sysadmin tools. How would you feel if you found out your compiler shipped off a copy of your code to a remote server each time you encountered a compiler error "to improve the compiler" and you had to opt out of this behavior?
>Some of the times it's to make the product better, or better targeted. Some other times it's just for spying on the users.
It's always spying, regardless of the motivation.
>How do we expect open source to become better if everyone is being a crybaby because brew got a history of how often they do brew update?
Somehow open source has functioned all of these years without silently harvesting users' usage data. I don't know how new you are to open source, but this is definitely not the way you do QA for an open source project.
What commands do you run in brew that isn't specific to brew? Whereas, compiling code is a very specific-to-you scenario. If brew fails, it's likely to be caused by brew itself or a package that is part of the repository. If you your compiler runs into an issue, it's not inherent to the compiler necessarily. I'm not a fan of brew at all, and I can't really find the malice here. Either opt out, stop using brew, or accept it. Why are you on OSX if you care that much about your package manager anyways? Ive worked at many companies, and any that let you choose a MacBook will let you opt for a Linux laptop instead (YMMV I guess).
Command line tools do not usually do this at all, particularly FOSS command line tools. This is a very worrying development and reduces my trust in FOSS.
--edit-- to whoever downvoted me, can you explain why?
I love FOSS but I also lovemy privacy. I have come to generally have a default level of trust for popular FOSS projects. Things like this make me question that trust. Why is this wrong?
Agreed.
> reduces my trust in FOSS
Please don't distrust a whole category because of a single tool. Most FOSS tools don't do this, especially if they're "Free Software" as opposed to just being "open-source", since "Free Software" indicates a moral, not just practical stance on software.
I guess I'm not really thinking "distrust them like they actively include malware" just that it looks like I need to at least keep a look out for stuff like this.
I love FOSS. I believe in it, I use it all the time, I've made a few minor contributions here and there too. It's not like I'm saying "OMG FOSS is teh evil!", just that maybe my trust level was calibrated a little high :)
These kinds of complains are fine, I don't think we should stop them.
It's a bit like corruption in politics, it's not going to be solved anytime soon, but complains do raise awareness and prevent abuses. Who know what's going to happen if we stop complaining?
No real security reason? We can test that. The developer who added this feature can easy earn trust in such statement by changing the disclaimer and making themselves liable if information extracted through this mechanism causes any identifiable harm.
If this is a sure bet, no risk, perfectly guarantied to be safe, then such change should be trivial.
not on browsers I control
if you know about it
> There are many more that do the same things without telling you
This makes it right?
> Will you choose to make its progress slower because of no real security reason
Some will, you think it's OK not to give them the choice?
> How do we expect open source to become better
Is opt-in that hard?
I probably would have still say OK but I like to at least be aware. Shame on me.
Really that is all it takes. Everything else just goes against the fundamentals of open source software, which is, respect user rights.
If developers needs an information about how user uses a program, they should ask them to help.
I've worked on products with tens of thousands of users, and the vast majority of those users never communicate.
Worse (in my opinion), the users who communicate most tend to be experts, leading to programs tending to become better for expert users, and worse for beginners / occasional users -- see for example how many linux programs have options you can turn on to make them more user-friendly, but of course as a beginner how do you find them?
On the other hand, not listening to users but analytics leads to dumbed-down inflexible programs that can't get out of their own way for expert users.
If you have "tens of thousands of users" and most of them don't communicate, I'd call that successful. They're satisfied.
And your answer to that is to spy on them unless they read fine-grained details that even the generally expert users on this site missed?
Also maybe they do not say anything because everything works ok for them?
Nor is it a reason to even try tracking with Google Analytics.
In my case, I ensure that the backend server is also FLOSS, that no problematic data is transferred, and so on. All FLOSS, everything verifiable by the users.
But running Google Analytics? Without prompting the user?
Great...
Free software is supposed to do what the user wants, not what its developer wants.
Agreed, but please note that Homebrew is only open-source, it is not "free software"[1].
[1] - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
For websites, there's a standard process for blocking this shit. For desktop applications, there isn't.
I can understand why this might upset people, but for me I hope it will make brew a better product. I'm sure we all know as developers how annoying it can be to not know the problems users have, and what they are using your software for -- that's why most websites have analytics.
I'm hoping to add something similar to software I work on, with an opt-out of course. I believe it will help me serve my users better.
If you don't believe they read the prompts closely, you're an asshole for stealing data by default.
My problem is that I believe that 90% of the users of my app won't care one way or the other if I record these stats. If I default opt-out these people, then I lose all that useful data and in the process, I believe, make my app worse for everyone.
I won't deny this is not an obvious choice, but I think personally on balance it's better to opt-in. Especially when the data is anonymised and doesn't contain any private/identifying information. But I understand how others would disagree. If there was some kind of OS-wide "don't record what I do" option I could hook into, I would use it.
Look at the outcry when Microsoft put this stuff in Win 10.
At the very least you should present a question on install. Hiding a notice amongst licenses and other information, as often happens, is underhanded and scammy.
If those people wouldn't volunteer to opt-in, it's just as likely that the reason they are not opting-out is because they missed the notification that someone is collecting data about them.
It's a UX anti-pattern to default behavior to something the users may not want. If you're worried they'll accept whatever default there is, just explicitly ask them if they want to relay usage stats and you'll be surprised how much of the 90% you claim don't care will start caring.
Look at the comments on this thread, there are multiple accounts of people surprised by this. The very fact that this article is on the front page is proof that Brew tricked users.
>Especially when the data is anonymised and doesn't contain any private/identifying information.
You've either made massive breakthroughs in the field of information security or this is a bogus statement. If the user's computer even connects to an analytics service, they've already got an IP address, frequency of connections from that IP, etc and all of the correlation that comes with enabled by their other data sets. Just because it's anonymized by the time it comes out of Google in Brew usage reports doesn't mean it hasn't given Google additional information to profile people.
I think, based on the conversation here, I'm going to make it very clear there is analytics, but not allow turning them off. This is (I think, you are welcome to disagree of course) the best situation:
* Everyone knows there is analytics going on, no hiding. * I get good quality analytics from my actual users, as no-one can opt out (well, you could start port blocking, I'm not going to make the program stop working in that situation).
Of course, that suggests we should introduce some kind of standard, then bash (or whatever shell you use) could prompt you once, and every other program could use that setting.
Unless of course you are fundamentally opposed to tracking of any kind, then a fork is required. It is a fairly massive infrastructure to recreate however...
You appear to be saying that it's wrong to send any data to Google - which strikes me as an indefensibly extreme position. For example if they were tracking a simple count "number of times anyone anywhere has run brew" and it was stored as a single global integer then it's hard to imagine what issue you could have with it as it's basically no worse than a simple hit counter on a website.
So what are you saying? Surely the problem has to relate to what data is collected?
And after all the Snowden revelations it's very naive to assume that Google (or any other company) will protect your data.
What is the threat model here?
(Also, downloading a movie is a different thing - there you're not stealing nor exfiltrating anything, you're downloading data as intended by uploader, who may or may not have the copyrights for that data.)
(INB4, ripping a DVD and uploading it is not data theft. Exfiltrating a pre-release copy from movie company's servers would be data theft.)
The sharing or getting something from a shared thing would merely be copyright infringement.
This is the usage I'm most firmly resisting.
> PII, launch codes or identities
All inaccurate to varying degrees - or at the very least metaphorical/rhetorical uses. If you're allowed to push a meaning in one direction then I'm allowed to point it out and attempt to bend it back a little.
I'm not pushing anything. Your argument is about whether or not copying information is 'stealing'. I'm just pointing out that it's a very commonly agreed upon vernacular all over many industries. Call your credit card company and tell them someone stole your credit card number and see if they understand what you are talking about and/or try to correct you by saying it was merely copied.
Go ahead and try to change the definition, but don't waste time on HN with that crap when the subject isn't even about whether or not it's "stealing" because it makes for boring conversation.
You don't think that is possibly somewhere towards the further reaches of consensus on what is a reasonable application of the word?
You're welcome to disagree with my position but you're going a touch further than that. You're also accusing me of arguing in bad faith and being somehow aware that my argument has no merits. Considering I think I'm stating a fairly reasonable view I find that somewhat disingenuous in return.
This is a prompt:
"Do you want Homebrew to enable anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics (yes/no):"
This is not a prompt:
"Homebrew has enabled anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics."
This avoids both the problem that the user doesn't consent with opt-out, and the problem that nobody cares to opt-in. The disadvantage is it doesn't work with unattended upgrades.
We can argue the merits of distrust and of the user's choice to distrust, but the software itself is the same.
Edit: downvoted for asking a question?
That means that you'll either get something close to 0% telemetry if it's default off, or 90% if it's default on. So, it makes sense to be default on if you want your telemetry dataset to be big enough to be worth it.
But then we get to your question - why bother with an opt out? Well, if the decision is either to use the product and send telemetry or not use the product, that 10% of people aren't going to use your product. They care about not sending telemetry that much.
At that point, as a dev you just have to ask yourself is it really worth losing 10% of your users to an always-on telemetry policy or is it OK to make the concession of allowing an opt out in order to grow your user base?
Personally, I'd rather make the concession and get that 10% of people on board. If they're vocal enough to complain the shortcomings of my product they're probably vocal enough to also talk about the good things and give me free advertising.
If people aren't turning telemetry on, do you think they really want to send you data in the first place?
What you are doing is exploiting users assumptions of how normal CLI tools behave. They don't assume it's going to relay my information back to google when I use it.
Your entire argument essentially boils down to, "I'm sure I can get away with taking my users' information by making it the default behavior with a buried notification and I can placate people who care about privacy with an opt-out."
Your entire justification doesn't even mention privacy or caring about users, it only mentions dealing with pesky users who care to get your user-base higher and promote your product. You clearly have very loose ethics when it comes to privacy so I don't think there is much we will agree on. I just hope one day this behavior will be shunned enough that it will stop due to market forces before something like the EU regulates it away.
My argument is not specific to telemetry, it's a general one. If you have an option to do something that's not a default and it's not part of the software's core functionality, most people aren't going to consider it even if it would be to their advantage. For example, make -j.
It's for that reason that I don't think the "if they aren't turning it on then they don't want it" argument holds as much water as you think it does. That argument groups together three groups of people: people that know about the setting and don't want it on, people that don't know about the setting and don't want it on, and people that don't know about the setting and would be happy if it was on.
Ironically, if you had good telemetry you'd be able to figure out how many people fall in to each group and make decisions about settings based on accurate data. Without that, you're forced to work on assumptions.
> Your entire argument essentially boils down to, "I'm sure I can get away with taking my users' information by making it the default behavior with a buried notification and I can placate people who care about privacy with an opt-out."
I think you're making the assumption that telemetry has to violate your privacy in all kinds of heinous ways and therefore only be a bad thing. If that's your mindset, of course you're going to think that I'm the kind of person that's out to trick and fool people and betray their privacy. And in all fairness to you, it's reasonable to be jaded when companies like Microsoft have horrible things like P2P software update distribution enabled by default. It's reasonable to be jaded when you don't get told exactly what kind of data is being sent back as telemetry. There's a fine line between "this is good" and "you're just relying on people not knowing how to change the defaults in order to try and get away with horrible things" and all too often that line is crossed.
But I'm an idealist. I see the good things that can come out of having telemetry. I want to know if my software has started getting popular in locales that I haven't written translations for yet so I can commission a translation to improve the experience for people in that locale. I want to know if there's a setting many people turn off so that I can consider turning it off by default to match user expectations. I want to know if my users are sticking to older OS versions because if they are I need to keep older hardware around in order to test and provide them the best possible experience.
I don't think anyone would have an issue with software sending back that data (and only that data) if you clearly tell them that's happening, and I also think that most people would be perfectly fine with that being a default behaviour. Of course, there is always going to be a group of people that will have an issue with sending back that data and that's why I made the point about keeping it as an option.
That group isn't just "pesky users who I only care about for promotion" (perhaps I was too flippant about saying that in my original comment). They could be trying to harden a machine so that it only uses the network under known circumstances. At the same time, you'd hope that software intended for use by people who need comprehensive privacy like whistleblowers wouldn't have telemetry at all.
Given that OS X isn't 100% free software, no one should be using brew in that kind of comprehensive privacy situation and so having telemetry isn't inherently bad.
It's the "clearly tell them that's happening" bit that's the issue here. If you have software that has been around for a long time that doesn't do something and then in a new release it starts doing that thing, you need to let people know that! It doesn't matter whether that's telemetry or anything else - if it's something that violates existing expectations you need to tell your users loud and clear.
Maybe the reason they needed analytics in the first place is because of this myopic perspective. If you assume everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, you're going to stall really quickly.
brew analytics offAnyway this option should have been available in their man page. But anyway they have clearly mentioned it.
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
If they want data, I will happily fill up their survey form but please don't take it for granted that my personal data is yours otherwise I may go to China for their great wall.
The entries look like this:
address=/doubleclick.net/0.0.0.0
address=/gravity.com/0.0.0.0
address=/outbrain.com/0.0.0.0
...
Then set up the router's DHCP to use this server.
> As far as we can tell it would be impossible for Google to match the randomly generated Homebrew-only analytics user ID to any other Google Analytics user ID. If Google turned evil the only thing they could do would be to lie about anonymising IP addresses and attempt to match users based on IP addresses.
Look, by now Google knows my whole stack and what I'm doing with each project, and Homebrew using Google Analytics doesn't bother me much. I still disabled it a while ago and after reading "if Google turned evil" put like a remote possibility I won't turn it back on. There are two extremes in tech — paranoia about everything and magical optimism about everything. This is an example of the latter.
A corporation of Google's scale and relevance to different industries simply cannot afford to not be evil.
Doesn't mean they're absolutely evil and just waiting for an opportunity to partner with a hypothetical fascist government — just that you can't assume the best.
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/Datensparsamkeit.html
It's a principle for good software design. This principle is also written down in German law:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenvermeidung_und_Datenspars...
>Damit gilt in Deutschland der Grundsatz, dass die Erhebung, Verarbeitung und Nutzung personenbezogener Daten und die Auswahl und Gestaltung von Datenverarbeitungssystemen an dem Ziel auszurichten sind, so wenig personenbezogene Daten wie möglich zu erheben, zu verarbeiten oder zu nutzen.
Rough translation: Thus in Germany we have there principle, that the collection, processing and using of person related data and the selection and design of data processing systems have to be guided by the aim to collect, process or use as few as possible person related data as possible.
Here, now someone has a list of software installed on various machines and the versions of that software, and whatever else information. It may be enough data to identify me or other users, the computers and the installed software. It may also allow other uses, which I have no idea of.
It's likely that this information spreads to unintended places.
I don't think this is a good idea.
I never liked the idea of using Homebrew, and this makes it even more suspicious.
A more accurate summary would be "Brew is sending usage data to a google owned analytics service".
Does not exist like you think when it comes to projects. People are very secretive about lots of projects for all kinds of internal political reasons. Using data they technically have the right to use in a somewhat scummy way is a perfect example of a project that would be kept out of the spotlight.
I can totally see someone caving for the one and not the other.
https://www.google.com/amp/arstechnica.com/information-techn...
Perhaps they don't "use" it directly, but surely they use it to improve their statistical profile of the specific users? Does anyone know if the GA cookie sent by brew is same or correlated with the one in the browser?
In terms of the analytics URL they set the client-ID, which indicates a "particular instance of an application install": https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
Opting out [0]
Homebrew analytics helps us maintainers and leaving it on is appreciated. However, if you want to opt out of Homebrew's analytics, you can set this variable in your environment:
export HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1
Alternatively, this will prevent analytics from ever being sent:
brew analytics off
Is the problem that they are using google's service? Is it the tracking that people don't like? Is it the messaging/copy to the users? I'm sure there's plenty of people on hacker news that build analytics software for a living. I've worked on email click and open tracking. Doesn't seem terrible if it helps them build their product.
> Is the problem that they are using google's service?
This is part of it I think. The brew devs get stats, but so does Google which they can aggregate across everything. Standing up your own analytics server/cluster, especially for a project the size of brew, wouldn't be trivial and I can see why they leverage Google's service.
But I can understand people not wanting to have data sent to Google. I moved everything off Gmail to my own E-mail server back in 2013 and moved search to DuckDuckGo.
As a side note, this has been the case at every big company I've worked at, not just Google.
Can anyone explain to me how this could be used against someone? I'm asking completely seriously as I don't see any harm in this no matter how hard I try.
Edit: I do agree that the notice should be more visible for those that are concerned about this. It should require user input even if it is just waiting for a key press to give you a chance to read it along with info on how to opt out.
This is called the "nothing to hide" argument. If you currently have no foes and are generally closer to the elite of a society than to the margins, then these few little data points collected on you (pseudo-anonymously or not) cannot really hurt your.
But as your digital shadow grows (and with google analytics et al being used to extensively, it certainly is) and you drift to the margins of society, possibly developing some foes in the elites in the process, the information about you that is now available to people in power becomes more threatening for you.
Say, you're now a black, female, delivery driver in Detroit instead of a Silicon Valley software engineer. Once you give cause for scrutiny, say, a conflict with your employer, the digital shadow of data-points can be searched to find anything that, taken out of context or not, can be used against you.
Or, put differently in famous exaggeration by Cardinal Richelieu:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.It's not normal that software is sending data to some server somwhere by itself by default. Devs used to have some decency and left this opt-in. They see there's little push-back and they're making it opt-out.
Almost all mobile apps and a significant number of desktop apps have analytics now.
Let's send a SWAT team and confiscate all your stuff just to make sure.
You can check it out: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
https://speakerdeck.com/patrickwardle/defcon-2016-i-got-99-p...
All the benefits and rights we have today were gained because our ancestors didn't fight for them and shrug their shoulders.
Who on Hacker News doesn't? At least on the desktop (where you use brew) this is a matter of a few clicks and an essential security measure.
(This link is provided in the initial notification)
There is no way that I would want to have this data and this amount of data, recorded and transferred to google. Especially not about software installation on my computers or computers of friends or clients.
Edit: the best $40..
No, only the ones without active informed consent. Privacy is the embodiment of personal choice, after all.
That said, even a ping to the mothership is an identifying information - at minimum, it already contains your IP address. Whatever additional data may be added to that ping will likely also reveal details about the machine you're using.
Personally, I'm not a privacy nut; I mostly don't care - I leave plenty of information about myself around. But the thing is, I'm doing it voluntarily and as a primary function of some service. I don't like when applications exfiltrate data for reasons not related to their purpose.
If I recall correctly, opt-out was chosen because they really want/need some analytics data and most of the users would not opt-in.
Which means users have chosen what they prefer and silently extracting despite that choice isn't exactly trustful.
Why? For what?
I wrote a follow up here: https://tobiastom.name/notes/4cda7d7b
As echoed by many others above, I never gave Homebrew consent to send any information to Google; it should be opt-in. Frankly, I was quite annoyed after updating Homebrew and found it already trying to connect to Google Analytics immediately after. Thankfully, I was able to block the request with Little Snitch and then opt-out of the analytics, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth that they’d start collecting data before even letting me opt-out first!
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebre...
I can live with the analytics. I'd might even consider to leave it on IF BEING ASKED PROPERLY.
All previous discussion says "oh you get notified". The point is, you don't get properly notified. And this is, why this is news again over the old discussion on HN.
Google collect obscene amounts of info on everything from government interactions to software preferences. So far it's largely been confined to the web and could be blocked by using an ad or tracker blocker.
Now that software may or may not do this stuff too... it ups the game and the threat.
This will make me less likely to use Brew. Likely no great loss to the team I'm sure.
https://www.pkgsrc.org/ http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-osx/
# brew analytics state
and switch it off
# brew analytics off
More info - https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....
I think this is paranoia.
And thanks a lot to Max for making this great piece of software.
I feel I need something like uMatrix, but for the entire OS. Is it time to familiarize myself with netstat and firewall rules?
Serves me right for running it via cron I guess.
What I don't expect is a package manager siphoning off data to Google.