VSCode still sends search keystrokes to Microsoft with telemetry disabled | Hacker News Reader

VSCode still sends search keystrokes to Microsoft with telemetry disabled

mstdn.io

49 pointssiddhant10 comments

Sigh, this again.

Microsoft is very upfront about this. Right on the download page for the nightly build is this link: https://code.visualstudio.com/license/insiders and it says

> DATA. The software may collect information about you and your use of the software, and send that to Microsoft. Microsoft may use this information to provide services and improve our products and services. For this pre-release version, users cannot opt out of data collection.

(emphasis mine)

That’s not a great example of upfront, who reads licenses or license agreements?

I’ve been using VSCode for more than a year, including pre-release versions and had no idea this was happening.

If I was asked for consent it was not very clear that keystrokes were included in the data being sent to Microsoft.

Is this GDPR compliant? I would think not, since you can’t just squirrel things away in a dense user agreement and claim you’ve met the bar.

You clearly do not use the nightly version to judge. They literally inform you this, not hidden in any TOS, like really straight up telling you you can't disable telemetry on Nightlies. They even told you that you can compile your own, which will include none of the telemetry

Meh, it's just the search in the settings page (see https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/04/25/bing-settings...), and there's a setting to disable it: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/49161

I think that with the preview versions of most Microsoft software you get telemetry that can't be disabled. I guess Microsoft thinks that is a fair exchange: you get free software to test early, they get test data.

The released versions have less telemetry and opt-in or out that should work.

As a consumer (not businesses) You pay for Microsoft software with personal data, that has been clear for a while. See also Windows 10.

I use Atom quite a bit and I'm now curious if it phones home as well. Guess it's time to get out Wireshark.

It does, but only when you opt-in to have telemetry gathered. Introduced in Atom 1.11: https://blog.atom.io/2016/10/11/atom-1-11.html

Semi-related but the new Windows update also made it impossible to disable Bing searches in the Start menu.

privacy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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