5 ms·

Couldn't agree more. These days we have to protect ourselves more from our own software than from viruses. Assume any software is a trojan horse, even the OS.

Paul_S 11y ago
Or you could use free software.
- mucker 11y ago
  How, pray tell, does free change the problem except in fantasies? There is plenty of "free" software that contains the same problem.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    At least, with those, you can audit the code and have someone fix it. No such luck with proprietary software.
  - mackal 11y ago
    Free as in freedom, not beer. You can look at the code of the free software, therefore tell if it's phoning home or not. More importantly, changing it.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      How many people have the time or inclination to validate everything that way?
      - dripton 11y ago
        Not many, but the effort is parallelizable. If you find a security problem and report it in public, others can verify it, and still others can benefit from the fix even if they never would have bothered to look for themselves.
      - creshal 11y ago
        It doesn't take many. The problem is making sure that someone is doing it (cf., OpenSSL).
    - morganvachon 11y ago
      Exactly. This is how the Google Chromium always-on voice recognition payload was discovered, for example. We may never have known about it if it wasn't an open source project, or at least we wouldn't have heard about it until long after it shipped.
- justThis1Post 11y ago
  Not a guarantee of privacy or anonymity. See: SourceForge. Generally a step in the right direction though.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    Many software projects I use are hosted on SourceForge. While SF has been using some nasty techniques with binary installers, the source code is, as far as I know, untouched. And, as soon as it's touched, the project maintainers can shut down the SourceForge repos and move on to someplace else. It's not a guarantee of security, privacy or anonymity, but open source is still your best chance to get any (or all) of the three.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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- wl 11y ago
  Counterexample: Ubuntu sending local file system searches off to Amazon because apparently online shopping and file searching are things you want to do simultaneously.
  - RexRollman 11y ago
    Which is why being open source is not enough. It needs to be non-commercial.
  - thejosh 11y ago
    Which you can fix by either using another distro/uninstalling it/disabling it/using another window manager.
  - foiboitoi 11y ago
    The main difference between Ubuntu and Windows 10 is that Ubuntu will respect your decision to opt-out.
    - mosselman 11y ago
      "Your information is ours unless you are aware of it and spend unreasonable amount of time searching for the information leaking settings and disabling them." Yaay
      - awalGarg 11y ago
        This is incorrect. Ubuntu told me in clear words that dash searches will be sent after installation when I used dash. That's how I came to know of it, and that's why I disabled it. I didn't like the fact that that it is opt-out and not opt-in, but yeah, way way better than Windows 10 for now. Also note that Canonical took steps to ensure amazon doesn't get to imprint your system by proxying the requests through their server.

Paul_S 11y ago

Or you could use free software.

mucker 11y ago
How, pray tell, does free change the problem except in fantasies? There is plenty of "free" software that contains the same problem.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  At least, with those, you can audit the code and have someone fix it. No such luck with proprietary software.
- mackal 11y ago
  Free as in freedom, not beer. You can look at the code of the free software, therefore tell if it's phoning home or not. More importantly, changing it.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    How many people have the time or inclination to validate everything that way?
    - dripton 11y ago
      Not many, but the effort is parallelizable. If you find a security problem and report it in public, others can verify it, and still others can benefit from the fix even if they never would have bothered to look for themselves.
    - creshal 11y ago
      It doesn't take many. The problem is making sure that someone is doing it (cf., OpenSSL).
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    Exactly. This is how the Google Chromium always-on voice recognition payload was discovered, for example. We may never have known about it if it wasn't an open source project, or at least we wouldn't have heard about it until long after it shipped.
justThis1Post 11y ago
Not a guarantee of privacy or anonymity. See: SourceForge. Generally a step in the right direction though.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  Many software projects I use are hosted on SourceForge. While SF has been using some nasty techniques with binary installers, the source code is, as far as I know, untouched. And, as soon as it's touched, the project maintainers can shut down the SourceForge repos and move on to someplace else. It's not a guarantee of security, privacy or anonymity, but open source is still your best chance to get any (or all) of the three.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
wl 11y ago
Counterexample: Ubuntu sending local file system searches off to Amazon because apparently online shopping and file searching are things you want to do simultaneously.
- RexRollman 11y ago
  Which is why being open source is not enough. It needs to be non-commercial.
- thejosh 11y ago
  Which you can fix by either using another distro/uninstalling it/disabling it/using another window manager.
- foiboitoi 11y ago
  The main difference between Ubuntu and Windows 10 is that Ubuntu will respect your decision to opt-out.
  - mosselman 11y ago
    "Your information is ours unless you are aware of it and spend unreasonable amount of time searching for the information leaking settings and disabling them." Yaay
    - awalGarg 11y ago
      This is incorrect. Ubuntu told me in clear words that dash searches will be sent after installation when I used dash. That's how I came to know of it, and that's why I disabled it. I didn't like the fact that that it is opt-out and not opt-in, but yeah, way way better than Windows 10 for now. Also note that Canonical took steps to ensure amazon doesn't get to imprint your system by proxying the requests through their server.