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The Dash Is Now Anonymized In Ubuntu 13.10
Last year, Canonical drew heat for the troublesome privacy implications that people like Richard Stallman saw in its in-built search-and-shopping facilities. An anonymous reader now writes "Long story short — Canonical now makes the user's data anonymous."
Posted from new Ubuntu.
typing a word in the Dash, pushes the word against (along with the locally-installed scopes) the Canonical servers, the Canonical servers decide the best results, the results are then anonymized and finally landed in the Dash.
The fuck? If you can't see any privacy implications here, you're a dilettante.
And anonymisation of results - what? If I search for "loli president bomb" then that's what's going to get me in trouble, not the results I receive.
The difference is that anonymity means they can still collect all your information, just not your identity. So, you're just one breech away from having all of your information spilled to them. What's more, when it comes to online services and such, the name isn't usually that important, they don't really know that my name is Sir Dragon King of the 4th order of New Castle.
Just because one is anonymous, does not mean that one has privacy, when I go out in public, I'm anonymous, but people can see everything that I do.
There may, or may not, be a story here. But, the submission is from someone who seems to not have mastered the English language, in which it is written, and therefore it makes little or no sense at all. The submisison is completely worthless.
Whether or not Ubuntu has restored any semblance of privacy to the desktop search remains an exercise for the reader. But, I can't be bothered. Ubuntu has broken my trust and I won't be arsed enough to see if they have chosen to change, a little bit, for now. There are still several Linux distributions that still lack the phone home and spyware trojans that Ubuntu has chosen to use.
I used to run 40+ Ubuntu clients. Unfortunately, Cannonical has added so many new features: Zeitgeist, Mono, Amazon monitoring, Unity, UEFI, MIR, etc. that most of the community left. Their Distrowatch ratings have been plummeting since the glory days of 10.4.
Although the desktop flavor of the month is Mint (an Ubuntu fork) right now, a lot of the crapware is removed, and much of the progress is going back to Debian. I am grateful for the investment by the Benevolent Dictator for Life (Mark Shuttleworth), and the progress that Linux has made because of Cannonical's work. That being said, there is an adage in the Linux user space:
"How do you become a millionaire selling open source software? Start out as a billionaire."
The profit model is broken for Cannonical. It is sad to see it wither.