WordPress 2.3 Does Not Spy On Users [UPDATED]

Marilyn Miller writes "Popular open-source blogging engine WordPress has been upgraded to 2.3 — with some unexpected nasties in the mix. As of version 2.3, WordPress now periodically (every 12 hours) sends personally identifying information (blog name & URI) to the mothership, along with an alarming amount of information including $_SERVER dumps, a list of installed plugins, and your current PHP/MySQL settings. Most unfortunately, it does not provide any way of disabling this functionality, and WordPress does not have any privacy policy protecting this information. In a thread about the issue, lead developer Matt Mullenweg defends his actions and staunchly refuses to add an opt-in interface, telling users to 'fork WordPress' if they aren't willing to put up with this behavior." Update: 09/25 17:52 GMT by KD : This article is misleading enough to be called "just wrong." Matt Mullenweg writes: "As mentioned in our release announcement, the update notification sends your blog URL, plugins, and version info when it checks api.wordpress.org for new and compatible updates. It does not include $_SERVER dumps, or any settings beyond version numbers (for checking compatibility), or your blog name, or your credit card number. We do provide a way of disabling this feature; in fact I link to one of the plugins in the release announcement and in my original response to Morty's thread."

Comments

Breathless Hyperbole.

[Some guy named Chris]

Read the thread. This isn't a developer admitting to spying on users. This is debate over a new feature written to help you keep from getting your blog haxored. They are collecting server and plugin data to help you to keep your software up to date.

Matt Mullenweg is being very reasonable and reasoned in dealing with a small but vocal groups paranoia. In the same breath that he mentioned forking Wordpress, he also mentioned that another option is using a plugin that disables this behavior.

The submitter should be ashamed.

What Matt wrote

[imaginaryelf]

Message-ID:
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:35:26 -0700
From: Matt Mullenweg
To: wp-hack...@lists.automattic.com
Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Plugin update & security / privacy
References:
In-Reply-To:

Moritz 'Morty' Strübe wrote:
> I know this will not change until Monday, but is it really necessary to
> transmit the URL?

Your blog URL and version has been sent by default for 4+ years to every
ping service in the world, including Ping-O-Matic, every time you make a
post. Of course you can turn that off, just like you can turn update
notification off, but statistically no one does.

The only new information being sent by the update checker is PHP version
and a list of plugins. If you don't like that feature, please install a
plugin to disable it:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-core-update/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-plugin-updates/

Of course don't forget the WP dev blog and planet RSS feeds, and most
importantly the incoming links feed which ALSO transmits your blog URL.

I would also recommend disabling the updates in Mac OS X, Firefox,
Windows, Thunderbird, Adobe Photoshop, and any other third-party
applications you have. As all of those are tied to your personal IP and
not your server IP they have far more implications for privacy.

> If that database
> gets public and you find a security bug in one of the plugins - there
> are enough - you can start a _very_ effective attack!

Such an attack would not be more effective, it would just be more
efficient. Historically, however, scripts that attack against WordPress
don't bother checking the version or if a plugin is there or not, they
just seek out every WP blog and check the specific capability or
vulnerability.

Nevertheless, we're beefing up the infrastructure and security of
WordPress.org, which Barry is working on right this instant. In 2 years
of running WordPress.com and Akismet, two extraordinarily
high-visibility targets, there has never been a problem on a server
Barry set up. The only problems we've had (once on WP.org, once on
PhotoMatt) have been things I set up, and I'm not setting up these new
ones. :)

I think this feature is actually going to dramatically improve the
security of WordPress overall. We all saw the survey that 95% of WP
blogs were vulnerable. That didn't even look a plugins. I think the
survey was flawed, but you still can't deny that for most people knowing
there is an update and actually updating just doesn't happen, and this
is a necessary first step. If the only "trade-off" is sending an ALREADY
PUBLIC blog URL to wordpress.org, then great!

I would like to remind the participants of this thread that WP.org !=
Automattic, so to be fair to the members of both please distinguish
which you're referring to.

Google Cloaking

[Trillan]

For those wondering what the big deal is, I expect a lot of the reaction is fueled by memories of Mullenweg being caught google cloaking in 2005. Once someone loses your trust, you don't really want to share any data with them.

Re:Surprised/

[ZaMoose]

Not true. There are two plugins that explicitly disable this functionality:
disable WordPress version check and disable plugin version check, both of which were mentioned by Matt in the thread above.

Summary Is A Troll

[bmo]

And not only is it a troll, it's tinfoil haberdashery and skating _really close_ to Libel.

Actually RTFA Matt's reasoning gives the opposite impression of the summary. Fork the submitter and Kdawson for greenlighting this.

--
BMO