Richard Matthew Stallman has called Ubuntu "Spyware".
Does the program called Zeitgeist spy? How can I disable it? What type of data does Zeitgeist send out?
Richard Matthew Stallman has called Ubuntu "Spyware".
Does the program called Zeitgeist spy? How can I disable it? What type of data does Zeitgeist send out?
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:
sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
. You will need to log out and back in for this to take effect.sudo apt-add-repository ppa:markjtully/ppa
, followed by sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-lens-shopping-alternate
, followed by sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
. You will need to log out and back in for this to take effect.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.
Other way to disable Zeitgeist is to type "Privacy" on dash, and turn off the "log of activities" on the inferior button.
I was never asked for confirmation, or even was notified, of the fact that Zeitgeist daemon will collect all my activity on the system, when I installed Ubuntu (12.04 in my case). There was also no frontend application installed on my system, so Zeitgeist daemon clearly collected that information not for my own consumption. That pretty much is the definition of spyware, so I share the concern of the question poster.
"Data it gathers is never sent over the network" is only a hypothesis. There's HUGE gap between not collecting users' activity without their consent, and doing that without consent and behind their backs, and once that gap is crossed, it's only small next step to also use and forward that data without users' consent. Quoted article from Richard Stallman is the proof that every user of Zeitgeist should be well aware and concerned regarding their private data.
Answering the original question posted, to remove Zeitgeist, run:
sudo apt-get remove zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub
(Taken from http://martesmartes.blogspot.com/2012/06/even-nicer-little-improvement-in-linux.html)
Regardless of whether it's intended for local use, the info it gathers could be a high-value target. It has no utility that I can see, but would be of great use to someone implementing spyware within Ubuntu. I prefer uninstalling it over simply disabling it. You're better off without it.
Zeitgeist has 526MB of "activity" logged on me, including the URLs of downloads that I made in Chrome incognito mode and/or from the command-line, stuff that I've copy-pasted and I thought I had cleared, web searches (perhaps copy pasted), command line stuff that I had deliberately excluded from by bash history, torrent URLs I've downloaded, and at least three of my main passwords including my main server password, in the clear.
It turns out that the Clipit aka Diodon applet which I installed, thinking that it could be useful, logs everything I ever copy-pasted into to Zeitgeist, and it remains in Zeitgeist even after I "clear" the history in Diodon. I suppose that Zeitgeist and Diodon were created with good intentions, but this is very user-hostile in my opinion. I don't expect some random Gnome daemon that I didn't even intend to install to collude with a clipboard manager to log half a gigabyte of personal stuff in the clear, much of which I was actively trying to avoid logging, without asking me or letting me know. It is not at all apparent that this is happening from the UI of the clipboard manager.
The Diodon package description says:
Description-en: GTK+ Clipboard manager
Diodon is a lightweight clipboard manager for Linux written in Vala which
"aims to be the best integrated clipboard manager for the Gnome/Unity desktop".
.
Diodon features include Ubuntu indicator, clipboard sync (primary selection
and Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V clipboard) and a zeitgeist integration for an infinite
clipboard history.
I think it's the "zeitgeist integration for an infinite clipboard history" that is biting me here.
If you use Clipit aka Diodon, or to check what else Zeitgeist might have on you, try these commands for starters:
cd ~/.local/share/zeitgeist
sqlite3 activity.sqlite
select * from text where value like '%pass%' and length(value) < 1000; -- put a bit of one of your passwords between %s in the query
select * from text where value like '%porn%' and length(value) < 1000; -- smut
select * from text where (value like '%mp4' or value like '%jpg' or value like '%torrent') and length(value) < 1000; -- media / smut / torrents
select * from text where length(value) > 1000; -- large copy/paste or files
The sqlite3
program also logs what we enter, so you might want to shred -u ~/.sqlite_history
if you enter passwords in an sqlite query.
If an enemy got a hold of my activity.sqlite
file, they could potentially do me considerable damage:
I'm blaming Diodon for this more than Zeitgeist, but I'll be removing both.
I reported some bugs around this issue: