What kind of Telemetry do you allow?

birdcat@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 251 points –
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I allow everything from FOSS that I like, you?

31

Manual bug reporting by manual log selection.

And FairEmail doesn't seem to have any bugs. Really. I had issues, but Marcel responded and cleared them within an hour.

Yea he's an absolute treasure. I think even if he'd stop updating fairemail, it would take years for anything else to even come close to it.

The only issue I ever had was not understanding how to activate the pro features on a new device.

He responded literally within minutes with detailed and easy to understand instructions.

If only there was this option on more software!

I generally feel fine if I can preview the payload and it doesn't contain too identifiable stuff. Even better if you can redact fields. NewPipe has a simple implementation of this where it just opens up your email client with a pre-filled body.

I'm hostile towards telemetry by default because of how much spyware there is in today's technology. I'll only allow it if it's reasonable ( e.g. a GPS getting your location, system diagnostics for software devs ) and it's consentual.

GPS is "passive". It's basically (i'm oversimplifying) sitting there listening to the satellites each broadcasting info, then triangulates itself based on the passive receipt of that data.

Bug reports and error logs. Helps support the development of the software without it feeling like my data is sold for money unnecessarily.

Zero. I don't cotton to my devices phoning home ever.

So, if an application crashes on your device, you're okay with it never getting fixed because the developer has no idea it's a problem?

I love how you're implying a bug will never get fixed because I, of all people, am not using telemetry. If it's bugging you so much that's when you open up a ticket on their issue tracker.

Honestly? Yeah, that would be an okay tradeoff. If it's not, I'd go file an issue with steps to reproduce it like I'd be expected to anyways.

That's the developer's responsibility to fix their own shit. I ain't no snitch.

Nothing automatic, if it's a serious issue I'll replicate on a controlled environment if they need dumps, but usually a bug report with steps to reproduce is sufficient.

On KDE Plasma I have "User Feedback" set to "Detailed system information and basic usage statistics"

None. If I encounter a bug in something I care about, I'll report it myself.

Almost none. I want all telemetry off by default, and only gets turned on by me when I want it, and with all conditions and content known.

I like the optional error reports where I can choose just the error report to send.

Of course all this only for FOSS apps.

I let FOSS apps collect crash reports and the like. Proprietary stuff though, no chance.

Nothing. Unless itโ€™s for a product I exceptionally like (count=1) I just allow bug reports.

I'll happily allow telemetry if its an open source piece of software that gives you the option to "preview" what is being sent (and preferably, not automatically, but as a "Here is what we've got, does this look good?" thing). I'll have a look, make sure its nothing confidential, and send it.

Steam does this with their hardware survey, Fedora does it with its crash reporter system (as did Ubuntu when I used it long ago), and actually macOS was usually pretty good about this too from what I remember (though macOS of course isn't open source).

I always turn on KDE telemetry since it doesnt collect any identifiable info.

But honestly, privacy is not the same as anonymity. I would also turn on fedoras proposed telemetry if the draft bill gets approved.