Re: F40 Change: Privacy-preserving Telemetry for Fedora Workstation (System-Wide)

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



While I understand the goals are not to track individual users, the
linked blog post about the Endless OS system really doesn't inspire
confidence considering it can track and report rough user location
along with machine model and apps used, which _could_ be combined with
other telemetry data and build a specific user profile. While I
understand the utility of statistics for developers, this proposal
need to be more concrete in terms of what will be collected and for
the potential of data abuse be more seriously considered.

The most important issue here is user consent. If you want to collect
even potentially sensitive user data, make sure the user knows the
full extent of their options and is given a choice. Now, I also
understand the concern of no one turning the telemetry on and not
getting useful data, but I strongly disagree with relying on a default
switch and a dark pattern (pressing next on a toggle under "privacy"
that is turned on). That is *not consent!* The options given must be a
clear Yes/No prompt with a full explanation of what data is sent. If
you want to nudge users to turn it on to avoid the aforementioned
problem, you could make sure the 'Yes' button is in an easy-to-reach
spot like where the 'Next' button is, or to color 'Yes' blue and color
'No' red, which still preserves their semantics but maybe nudges users
who don't care or would be on the fence.

Lastly, for consent to matter the parties involved need to know the
extent of their choices. Here Fedora could get inspiration from other
projects. Syncthing is a great example:
1) They present to the user the exact JSON that will be sent over
their Yes/No prompt.
2) They version the sets of data sent by the client, so if the data
collected changes the user is asked again to consent before new data
is sent.

Also, before we got this proposal, have other methods of collecting
whatever data the desktop team wants been considered? Why were they
not chosen?

Without the above precautions I'm not sure what the Red Hat team is
looking to accomplish except create distruct in their community and
potentially drive people off.
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue




[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[Index of Archives]     [Fedora Announce]     [Fedora Users]     [Fedora Kernel]     [Fedora Testing]     [Fedora Formulas]     [Fedora PHP Devel]     [Kernel Development]     [Fedora Legacy]     [Fedora Maintainers]     [Fedora Desktop]     [PAM]     [Red Hat Development]     [Gimp]     [Yosemite News]

  Powered by Linux