Does Ubuntu upload personal information by default and without permission now?

[David Barth]

Le 11/10/2011 22:04, Matthew Paul Thomas a écrit :
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> Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote on 11/10/11 12:43:
>> ...
>>
>> I had difficulties believing this to be true, so I tested it. I
>> searched for an artist of which I have no records, and sure
>> enough, the music lense told me I could purchase it. I then
>> disconnected from the network and searched again and this time, I
>> got no advertisement. A very simple test that anyone can perform,
>> and it indicated to me that the search was indeed being sent to
>> some online service. Does this apply to all my searches? What else
>> is being uploaded about me?
>>
>> I was just about to sniff my network to see for myself when I came
>> to my senses... If people even get the impression that they are
>> being monitored by their own system, then Ubuntu has certainly
>> lost. Technologies like Zeitgeist are great, but they also mean
>> it's more important than ever that absolutely no information is
>> being transmitted without asking permission first and that user
>> always knows what is being sent. The feeling of loosing that
>> confidence was not a good one.
>>
>> ...
>
> Apple had an equivalent privacy problem with the iTunes MiniStore five
> years ago.<http://boingboing.net/2006/01/11/itunes-update-spies.html>
>
> They fixed it by (a) making it opt-in, and (b) explaining it inside
> iTunes itself.<http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/itunes_ministore>
Which I think, under further guidance of the Design team, we could turn 
into a mode whereby results are only retrieved if the user unfolds the 
section containing suggestions.

At the moment, search queries are passed to all scopes in advance, to 
let them retrieve results as fast as possible and provide feedback for 
the user as he keeps typing. That is the case for both scopes working on 
local content, as well as online ones.

We can look into differentiating them for O+1 (now Precise). However I'm 
afraid that the only way to solve that particular privacy concern is to 
remove the scope altogether for now:

apt-get remove --purge unity-scope-musicstores

as also mentioned by Jason in this thread.

Note however (and I think Mikkel mentioned it as well) that no queries 
are made if you search from the Home dash lens. If you hit <SUPER> and 
type your query, it won't go hit the Ubuntu One servers. Unity only 
makes queries to the Music store if you explicitly search into the Music 
lens itself.

I hope this clarifies.

David