Recently Richard Matthew Stallman call Ubuntu as "Spyware". Click here for more information.
The program called "zeitgeist" spies. How to disable it?
Zeitgeist is also available on Ubuntu 11.10. What type of data zeitgeist sends out?
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First of all, zeitgeist logs your activity using various sources on your computer to enable searching for recent documents, programs and activities. This is "spying" only for a very broad definition of "spying", and the data it gathers is never sent over the network. Secondly, RMS refers to the "shopping" results in the dash, which have little to do with zeitgeist. This feature has been controversial, mainly because it's on by default, and because it operates from the "home" lens instead of from a dedicated lens - so one is always sending local search queries over the network when using the dash. So if you have privacy concerns:
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The component with which RMS is unhappy is the fact that the Unity dash makes requests to Amazon (via Canonical servers, AFAIK) in order to show requests. This may be a useful feature to some, but doubtless was also considered by Canonical as a revenue source, since they will get affiliate income when you buy anything through this mechanism. Use of web requests in the Unity dash can be easily disabled (although it may be reasonably asked why upon first boot you don't get a dialog box asking you if you want to turn it on, rather than it being on by default as it currently is). Zeitgeist is a daemon which records actions in a number of GNOME programs, which in theory provides more useful information in the dash in terms of recently used applications. This can result in local information leakage (don't want other computer users (using the same account) to see the pictures or video you've been viewing recently?), but it does not broadcast this information anywhere, so I think describing this as spyware is unreasonable. This can also be disabled. Whether you trust Canonical (or Amazon) with your data is up to you. |
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Other way to disable Zeitgeist is to type "Privacy" on dash, and turn off the "log of activities" on the inferior button. |
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RMS has made several accounts against amazon, making privacy claims. Its not the matter of privacy its his biased against amazon. Other wise why would he not go against ads and search engines in general, because he commonly depends on his message getting out there even through means of ads & search engines. Yes it does take your search results much like anything does when you search, there is only a few search engines that don't sell your search results, and many claim not to but do. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/00/03/12/0917223/rms-writes-to-tim-oreilly-about-amazon |
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