Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> It doesn't spy on you or anything, it's just a hyperlink. You are incorrect. It's much more than a hyperlink. It's an application which was installed in Ubuntu. It specifically runs:

  unity-webapps-runner --amazon --app-id=ubuntu-amazon-default

The unity webapps runner manual says (among other things):

  Application Options:
    -a, --amazon                    Launch amazon (with geoclue store selection)
    -i, --app-id                    Launch a webapp with a specific APP_ID
    -c, --chrome                    Launch a webapp in default browser

Look at that. Amazon and Google. The --amazon switch tells amazon where you're at ("geoclue"), at the very least. And, Chrome being the "default" browser? That's funny, because Chrome isn't even installed.

So, that webapp also runs

  /usr/share/unity-webapps/userscripts/unity-webapps-amazon/Amazon.user.js

Guess what that script does? If you even accidentally click the Amazon "hyperlink", you've now associated the _machine_ to a user.

Okay, ignore that. What else is default installed as webapps? Looking around the

  /usr/share/unity-webapps directory shows only Google and Amazon.

> Such as? In Ubuntu 16.04, the "Search your computer" will also search "sources" such as "Applications", "Dash plugins", "Files & Folders", "Google Drive".

Dash plugins include things like Facebook and Google Drive (again?)

At least the search bar has more applications than just the proprietary garbage. There's things like Flickr, Shotwell, Yelp, Picasa... hmmm.

I'm not a fan of that either, nor do I use Ubuntu (for other reasons).

However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying" and an idea on how to disable it. Perhaps in less than an hour you'll have a good idea on exactly what data is being sent.

Compare that to say, Windows, there we have no idea on exactly what data is being sent out or how to completely disable it (beyond being a company with volume licences or using firewall rules).

> However, in what.. 10 mins? you've been able to discover exactly what causes the "spying" and an idea on how to disable it.

True, but that's only because I've been using the OS for a while. A lot of this is accumulated knowledge. There were a lot of gotchyas over the past 4.5 years (approx time I've been using Ubuntu .. coincides with my current employment time) that have been... eye opening.

Yes, it's still better than Windows as far as inspectability for the reasons you just identified. And it's still better than OS X as far as usability (my opinion). But it's still be very disappointing on many levels. I'm sure there are other things which could cause additional disappointments in Canonical that I have yet to discover.

Honestly I use Fedora at home. Even that isn't ideal -- I very much dislike the default GNOME environment and have repeatedly encountered trouble upgrading to different releases. I've been seriously thinking of just building my own personal distro.

It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way. Back in version 12.04 there was a scandal wherein searches on the desktop could return remote results from Amazon. Canonical countered that all data was going through them and no personal info was leaked but nobody actually wanted to see ads in their desktop search or share data about their files with Canonical thus this was changed in 14.04 or 14.10 if I recall correctly.

Essentially this hasn't been an issue in about 4 years.

> It doesn't compromise the users privacy in any meaningful way.

I would have to disagree. The mere fact that it's there and visible by default means it can be accidentally clicked on. Doing that opens a native application which loads an Amazon-provided javascript file. Cards are off the table after that loads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com