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Comment by tomchristie | Hacker News Reader

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tomchristie

> He might be a nice target if you want to raise a stink and litigate.

* That Phone in your pocket? "No problem"

* The browser you're using right now? "This is fine"

* Your internet-enabled TV? "All good"

* Open source project collecting usage metrics? "Woah, hold on there buddy"

Get some perspective.

They're completely transparent about which very limited usage metrics they use. You can inspect exactly which metrics are sent. And you can turn off these metrics if you want.

You're not paying anything for the product, and the analytics aren't being used to target you as a consumer, or to pitch advertising at you.

Simply by reading this page on hacker news you've sent more information to a third party than you would using brew.

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if you want to raise a stink

If you have a judge who is not completly dumb he would laugh you off for such litigation. If you have a judge who still has his staff print out internet pages for him it might get compilicated for you as a contributor. Idiot judge already happened to me, that was an expensive lesson life taught me.

So no, I wouldn't risk sticking my name on something like that.

Because everybody else does it, doesn't mean you don't get away with it. (And over here the big boys google/apple can do a lot of things the small ones can't even begin to try - they have the advantage of getting before a "high enough" court with intelligent judges)

> If you have a judge who is not completly dumb he would laugh you off for such litigation.

Why?

Under European law, you can only transmit such information or track it if you have an explicit opt-in to it.

I'd doubt you'd get laughed out of court, considering the Cookie law was written for exactly this case.

They're completely transparent after they already took your data. Almost nobody notices that tiny notice.

If they were transparent, they would ask you before transmitting data.

Websites tracking you is expected. Local tools tracking you is not.

We do tell you before transmitting any data (as shown in the original comment).

I think the, valid, concern mentioned in the original comment is that the notification of this is not prominent enough.

Also Ideally I'd suggest you should be looking for informed consent before starting to gather information of this nature where an application previously did not do it.

Something similar to Debian's request to submit data for the package popularity ratings that is provided when you install debian might make sense.

Debian's popularity contest package gets it right. You're asked once during installation, with the default being to decline. If you keep choosing "next" without reading or thinking you get a working installation with your privacy intact, and it never bothers you again.

Debian's popularity contest package is completely biased and nobody uses it as a serious source. You can’t expect to have reliable data with opt-in.

It's used for bug triage, so I don't think bias is a problem. The bias is rewarding people who opted in by increasing the chance bugs in their software will be fixed.

I prefer local tools tracking me. That means I use them, that's why they are installed. And I want them to get better. That's why I'm fine with them tracking me. A random website, though, I honestly don't care, but if I could choose, I would opt out. Makes sense, right?

You're pretending there is an inconsistency in their argument when there is none. Let me give you a slightly (ever so slightly) exaggerated explanation of why you're incorrect in your analogies.

* A phone is a communications device. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.

* The browser is a communications application. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.

* An internet-enabled TV. We know it transmits information. Unwanted tracking that exceeds the metadata strictly necessary for the execution of it's purpose and usage of this metadata for any other purpose needs to be opt-in.

* Open source project collecting usage metrics? Downloading software packaged generates metadata. We understand that, and use the software on that basis. Any usage of that metadata and tracking my usage habits of said Open Source project needs to be opt-in.

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