Re: Phoning home

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Russ Allbery writes ("Re: Phoning home"):
> I suppose that apt never updates itself unless you have something
> configured to do so (although does synaptic default to running aptitude
> update periodically?).

We can serve our users better by having our apt phone home to ask if
there are updates, because that way the user is more likely to be able
to conveniently install security fixes which are can be very
important.

>  But at least in theory Debian could track all
> sorts of interesting information about users based on what packages they
> download and when.  We *don't*, of course, but companies who software does
> similar things do so.

Indeed.

So we should
  * Phone home only when we need to
  * Send as little information as necessary when we do so
  * Connect to servers which are as trustworthy as possible
  * Trustworthy servers, amongst their other good attributes,
    store as little information as possible

Ian.