Popularity Contest

[Ed Fletcher]

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I was looking for something else in Synaptic and came across
popularity-contest.  It was installed, so I got curious and had a look
at it.  It turns out that it's run by cron.weekly and lists all the
packages on your system, sorts them by how recently they've been
accessed and emails the results to survey at popcon.debian.org

Now I'm not against this in principle, but I'm not fond of information
leaving my computer when I don't know anything about it.  I really think
that participation in this program, worthy as it may be, should be on an
opt-in basis.  This could easily be done during the install process so
the user/sysadmin has the opportunity to make an informed choice.

Now maybe I was offered the choice back when I did the install many
months ago.  If so then it's my fault for accepting and then forgetting.
~ If not, then I think that this should be changed.

If this was being done by Microsoft, I doubt many people would be
comfortable with it.

Ed
- --
Ed Fletcher
ed at fletcher.ca

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty or democracy?  -  Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

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