Console Do Not Track

A proposed unified standard for opting out of telemetry for TUI/console apps.

Gatsby has GATSBY_TELEMETRY_DISABLED. Homebrew has HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS. Syncthing has STNOUPGRADE, a config file setting for disabling crash reporting, and a GUI prompt for usage reporting. Google Cloud SDK CLI tools has gcloud config set disable_usage_reporting true. .NET Core has DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT. Netlify’s CLI has netlify --telemetry-disable. The AWS Serverless Application Model CLI has SAM_CLI_TELEMETRY=0. The Microsoft Azure CLI has AZURE_CORE_COLLECT_TELEMETRY=0. You get the idea.

This is a proposal for a single, standard environment variable that plainly and unambiguously expresses LACK OF CONSENT by a user of that software to any of the following:

  • ad tracking
  • usage reporting, anonymous or not
  • automatic update phone-home
  • crash reporting
  • non-essential-to-functionality requests of any kind to the creator of the software or other tracking services

We just want local software, and by providing it to us you are not entitled to our usage, our crashes, or our IP addresses.

Read in full here:

https://consoledonottrack.com/

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This really should be added to GDPR laws - where it is off by default and any software or tool has to ask specifically if they can track in any shape or form.

Anyway, for those wanting the homebrew command:

export HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1
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Have we learned nothing from history?

DNT ended up being used as an additional vector for tracking! :grin: Because that’s one more header that your browser sends so it automatically becomes one more tracking data point.

Opt-out mechanics for personal info leaks will NEVER work. If you don’t trust a program, run it from inside a container where you have strictly approved network connections to the minimum amount of network hosts that the program needs in order to be able to do its job.

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Or just use firefox with enhanced privacy enabled. ^.^

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Firefox integrated Pocket inside of it despite its community kicking and screaming (and Pocket having very sketchy privacy agreement) so truthfully, Mozilla have lost my vote of confidence a while ago.

Plus their main source of income – and I mean by a huge margin – is Google.

How privacy-friendly are they, like really how much?

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Good thing pocket doesn’t need to be removed and can remove the icon too if it bugs one so much. ^.^

At least it’s fully open source, and you can vet the information it sends.

Still, that’s unrelated to its enhance privacy modes, which significantly change headers and some functionality to reduce trackability.

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…Or they could have never added it in the first place. :smiley:

Which, too, is a vector through which to reduce privacy because only a small part of the users send such modified headers, is my point.

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Eh it’s a useful feature for many and for those that don’t touch it then nothing gets sent out anyway.

It doesn’t look modified, it just looks really really generic. Safari and brave and other browsers are doing the same as well, it makes it really difficult to tell one browser from the other, and even worse of one system to another.

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Ah, I see. That’s good then.

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