So, you are afraid that in the future, death squads will come in your town looking for your back for what you did on Internet, just like maybe happens in Afghanistan?

Then stop using the Internet! Play safe! Nobody forces you to use the Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
Regarding you calling me paranoid when using the internet- I am curious who else you would put in this group? Somebody we know?

And - "audacity" is in in SBo. So indirectly it is part of Slackware.
Maybe??? Think again ... Changes are being made to hide data of Afghan Internet users from prying eyes.

And y'all need to stop calling people, who care about privacy and oppose data collection, "drama queens".

I understand the frustration with those companies, I just don't understand the frustration with Audacity. You haven't leveraged any frustration at LQ, when it is collecting more that can actually, potentially be traced to *you* than what Audacity does with the update check (which can't be traced to you).

What is being collected by Audacity is optional. If you choose to enable those features, then the IP can't be traced back to you (since they don't even log the IP itself and it's hashed) and the error report is optional to send and you can view the report before sending it. How often do people post backtraces on bug report sites? This just saves a few steps but the user still has to choose to send it.

I get the frustration with the original telemetry plans. Those were invasive and would understandably upset a lot of people. However, I don't see anything nefarious with these new plans. Even if you download the binaries (which have these features enabled by default), you can easily disable the features once you start up the program. The update check saves less info than probably the server logs from downloading the source/binary.

The tarball is actually worse than you think. Uncompressed, it's 179MB. However, 87MB is from other libraries that are included in this tarball (under lib-src/), 37MB is samples under tests/samples/ (which don't compress well and are likely the bulk of that 60MB tarball), 35MB in locale/ (about 600K per locale and there's 57 locales), and only 12MB in src/.

The reality is that software is complex, but with version control and the announcements over the past few months, you don't think people have been going over those new commits? If the whole repo was just created and needing to go through all that source, it would be difficult, but we only need to review the recent commits to see if they've been trying to hide anything (unless you don't trust the developers before the Muse transition, then you'd need to go further back).

However, I guarantee you that there are a lot of people who are familiar with coding who have been keeping an eye on the commit log to make sure they aren't trying to sneak anything in that goes against what they're saying.

It's all about Choice.

=====

If you think I will not do that, then think again. I have made much more radical choices to get where I wanted to be in life.

One of the lesser radical choices I have made in the recent past is that when the owner of the company I worked for wanted to do more with social media, I simply quit. I just walked away. I hate social media. I think it is dangerous for society.

=====

github.com/audacity/audacity/discussions/1353

The language in the privacy policy about “…necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities…" scares people off.

For people who are not software developers and not technical, who just want to edit/record audio, it is much harder to change their ways and make hard choices.

The core issue is that all this data collection, threats of law suits & law enforcement, leads to self-censorship. People will not speak freely anymore, because they're worried about law suits, govt. surveillance, etc.

Can we just agree to disagree? Thank you.

I accept that you are not as worried about companies' data collection, and that you trust what muse/audacity writes about truncating ip addresses, etc.

It would be nice if you could accept that other people do not share your optimism and rather use different software/hardware.
=====

Regarding LQ - you mentioned LQ a few times now.

Yes - of course LQ collects ip addresses, but there's ways around that. And LQ works fine without javascript. All you need to login and post on LQ are session cookies. Session cookies are transient.

Thank you Jeremy for not blocking access to LQ when people do things a little different than the majority.

I had a little run-in with Jeremy three years ago about privacy, deleting LQ accounts specifically. But I made a choice to come back, because I made some changes on my side.

And I am not saying that the EU is better than other places, they are not. But the GDPR did force website owners to change what data they collect. So over the years I have slowly changed what sites I use.

And I missed talking about Slackware and related topics.

=====

Recent News:

theintercept.com/2021/08/25/atlas-citizenship-denaturalization-homeland-security/

www.wired.com/story/geofence-warrants-google/

3 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, and you have the choice to use or not use the software. If you decide to use it, you have the choice to build it with or without networking options (which enables/disables the telemetry).

You should read this more carefully... you seem to be operating on outdated information.

Have you actually looked at the new privacy policy? "Law enforcement" and "litigation" are not found in it and "authorities" is only used once in regards to providing you contact info for data protection authorities as a way for you to get more information on data protection rights.

What you quoted here is what they had pulled out of the original privacy policy as an example of bad text and then the rest of the paragraph is explaining that they changed the privacy policy to remove that and better explain the misunderstanding. Here's the whole paragraph so you can read the whole thing:

You seem to be operating on outdated information. The new privacy policy doesn't threaten lawsuits, doesn't restrict software to 13 and older, and ensures no personally identifiable information is stored.

All your complaints seem to be unfounded with what information is collected and how that information is retained, which is covered in their new privacy policy and explained in the discussion you linked above.

So, your complaint now is that the information they claim they are collecting isn't accurate. That's fair, but this is the first you mentioned it. Even so, it's an IP. Your IP (or the public IP you're connecting through) is logged on many servers as you browse the internet. The rest of the information they're collecting can be validated by looking through the source code.

If your complaint was they screwed up royally and you can't trust them anymore, then that's valid too, but to say that they're doing all these horrible things when it's all optional and no personally identifiable information is being collected, it seems you're stuck on the original plan which is no longer in effect.

I just found it odd that everything you were complaining about was specifically addressed as something they're not doing in their new privacy policy. And on top of everything, any data sent to them is completely optional.

So, you have ways to prevent your actual IP from being logged when using LQ. You can do that same thing with Audacity, which in my mind, invalidates your claims, especially because they only receive that info if you choose to enable a disabled-by-default option and then choose to keep the check for updates option enabled or decide to send an error report. Also, as far as I know, Audacity doesn't use javascript or cookies, but I'll admit, I haven't researched it, it just seems logical.

Again, this has nothing to do with this situation. This is like telling a 16 year old not to drive because they may decide in 10 years to drive drunk and they might kill someone. While it's possible something crazy can happen in the future, it's not happening now. None of this is happening with Audacity right now and you're trying to make it seem like they're out to collect all the data.

This is fubar ridiculous.

You are worse than a politician. If that sounds like an insult, then that's because it is.

It does not matter what they (muse/audacity) said/wrote after their first statement. If you do not understand why, you have a lot to learn.

You and I are able to make that choice, but not everybody is.

You are obviously unable to comprehend that other people may not share your views about all the stuff mentioned above in this thread.

You are hellbent on your opinion, so guess which one of us is stuck.

You are annoying, but I will gladly reply and gladly up the ante.

If you can not learn and accept that the world is not as black and white as you would like it to be, then you are the cause of a lot of grief to yourself and those around you.

=====

blogs.imf.org/2020/12/17/what-is-really-new-in-fintech/
news.slashdot.org/story/21/08/19/2025215/your-credit-score-should-be-based-on-your-web-history-imf-says/
www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18211890/social-media-life-insurance-new-york-algorithms-big-data-discrimination-online-records/
www.theverge.com/2018/9/26/17905390/john-hancock-life-insurance-fitness-tracker-wearables-science-health/

Your current behavior affects your future.

If you do not oppose data collection & mass surveillance now (no matter how insignificant it may seem now), your future will be worse.

=====

You think VPNs provide privacy. Think again:
torrentfreak.com/movie-companies-want-vpns-to-log-user-data-and-disconnect-pirates-210830/

=====

It does not take much effort these days to find examples of data collection gone bad.

Quite a few personal attacks in #36, completely unfounded. Reported to mods.

2 members found this post helpful.

Go ahead. Ratting on neighbors feels good, doesn't it?

And btw - I offered an olive branch in #34. He declined.

tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/

Huh?? You yourself wrote that they only use 3/4 of the full ip address:
So stop turning this around on me.

In my world "3/4" of something means to truncate.

Yes but they can be modified. You are so wrong not going to waste my time on this hallucination of yours.
As a person that does understand Audacity and Open software it is just that.
This means what to you.
To me it isn't 1.
Unless you do what.?
little hint "yes"
or should I.
The world can see your replies.
Just like this.
https://github.com/audacity/audacity

When I started this thread, I was interested in what the response was going to be (if any) by the SBo maintainers. I was interested in a possible switch to a fork or just the opinions of the maintainers I have come to trust so much over the years. AlienBob and Ponce, particularly, have done an inestimable service to the Slackware community. I did not anticipate that this would turn into a thread of personal attacks. This seems more appropriate to a Reddit thread that linuxquestions. The actual question was answered long ago. I think it's time to let this go or take it elsewhere!

2 members found this post helpful.

It finally comes out! So, this has nothing to do with their current policy and what they're actually tracking. You're pissed about the initial statement. That's fair, but you should be up front when telling people about the software that it has nothing to do with what they're currently doing and everything to do with losing trust in them.

Losing trust in them is a fair and valid complaint and certainly a reason to stop using the software. But you're spreading FUD about what the software might do in the future without saying that it's just a hypothetical. That's dishonest. Why not present people with all the information and let them make an informed decision on whether or not they want to use Audacity based on what's happening now and what could happen in the future.

For those that get pre-built binaries that include networking, they still have the choice to enable checking for updates and they have the choice to send in an error report. In fact, they're presented with information on update checks and how to disable them when first starting the program.

This has nothing to do with "sharing views", but you are not providing anything to counter what Audacity is currently doing. You throw out a bunch of examples of other data collection that's gone bad, implying it's happening here. However, Audacity is not doing all the things you're alluding it does. You can certainly be worried that they will in the future, but you need to state that it's a worry that it might be implemented later on.

I've presented facts based on what Audacity is doing today with sources to back it up. I've laid out what they are and are not collecting. You keep throwing out hypotheticals of what might happen if they start collecting more than they are. Now, which one of those is opinion based?

Again with the articles that have absolutely nothing to do with Audacity's current situation. Could it get worse? Absolutely. However, since it's open source, we'll know if/when it does and we can deal with it then (just like people have dealt with it this time).

But what you do today is not a guarantee of what you'll do tomorrow. Muse/Audacity saw the backlash with this. There are already many forks of Audacity (some of which may become completely standalone, eg LibreOffice from OpenOffice & MariaDB from MySQL). You're absolutely correct that they may not learn their lesson with this and may try something similar in the future. But again, you're talking hypotheticals where I'm talking about the here and now. If it does happen, the community will do what needs to be done. It's open source.

Trust is certainly a difficult thing, but I can trust that enough people have looked through Audacity's source code to determine if they're accurate in what is being sent.

I have no reason not to trust that they're truncating any IPs that are sent, but it's fair that it's impossible to know for sure without some sort of data breach. However, I also know that I won't be using any update checks (even if that functionality is enabled when compiled) and I know I won't be sending error reports. Although, even if I did, no big deal. It's an IP. Here's my current IP. Have fun with it. It'll change in the next few hours anyway and it's plenty locked down, so I have no worries about getting hacked.

IF there is a data breach, AND I've checked for updates, AND they haven't truncated my IP, I know that some entity will know my Audacity version, that I'm running Slackware, the country my IP originated from, and that my IP at that time was 209.78.42.150. Oh no, I'll be ruined!

I also know that I'll be building any future versions of the software and I will be able to easily ensure that I don't enable networking features, since I have no plans on using them.

Fear mongering a little? This data collection is optional. Nobody is forcing anybody to send Audacity their data. What data is sent, is not personally identifiable.

There is no mass surveillance here. Hence, FUD.

Where did I say/think this? Don't put words in my mouth.

So then don't send them your data. It's optional!

Wow, this is showing some difficulties in comprehension...

It's an optional web connection. If you choose to initiate a web connection, every single web connection will contain the IP of the client to the server and the IP of the server to the client. They have no choice but to see the IP if someone decides to check for updates (which is optional). So when they get the IP for an update check, they truncate it. How difficult is that to understand?

They even go further than that (which you'd know if you actually read the Audacity discussion on github that you linked before):

BTW, as a matter of fun, your IP gives yours (or VPN's exit point) location with the precision of city/town: Union City, California, US of A.

https://en.ipshu.com/ip_d_list/209.78.42.150

However, I agree 101% percent with you.

The IP tracking "issue" is way out of proportions as is presented by those paranoiacs, IF the particular person have an dynamic IP allocation. Which are 99,9999% of cases.

Yep, one of the many reasons I'm not worried about my IP being public... because I'm not in California. But even if I was, the most they could do is know the rough city I was in and my ISP (and my legit city is in my profile and my ISP is unfortunately Comcast/Xfinity because there's no competition here).

If Muse/Audacity are lying about what they do with IPs and are actually saving the whole IP and a data breach occurs, in addition to knowing my rough city and ISP, hackers could also know my OS and the version of Audacity I used. Now, they would need to somehow link that to me directly and then find someway to ruin me... Oh no! I don't know how I'll ever financially recover from that!

Posted in wrong thread, moved to https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...nt-4175698435/