[justabystander]

> There's also a warning the first time you use it

If you'd actually read the issue before commenting, you'd realize that this behavior was added after people complained about the telemetry not being obvious. It's the sixth comment on the issue (by guardrex) - not even that far down. The very next comment is an MS contributor saying that he makes a good point that it wasn't obvious, and that they'd improve it in a future release. Which is why there's now a warning when using it. I mean, the link is old, but it should be understood that an issue on preview tooling from over a year ago might not represent the current state of the tooling. But yeah, on first release, all the notice you got was a blog post, if you even bothered to look for it.

It's also a fair point that it's still not made very clear that what information is collected under what circumstances. It's a huge problem with Windows, so you can understand why people have their jimmies rustled even over something small. Especially since windows 10 makes it impossible to completely opt-out of telemetry. Even after disabling the visual options, it's still regularly calling out to Microsoft servers. Even if you disable the services, updates will turn them back on and other services will start it up. And then it chews through your system's CPU like it's starving. Which means it's probably collecting far more data than it needs.

Finally, sometimes it's not even about what's collected or that there's an opt-out procedure. Sometimes just having a mechanism for transferring data can cause problems. 'sushihangover' comments on that issue that someone failed their HIPAA audit based on this behavior. I've no idea if it's an accurate example, but there are government, medical and enterprise environments where any non-sanctioned traffic is strictly prohibited and can cause liabilities.

Telemetry needs to be easy, simple, and thorough in its opt-out mechanisms. Microsoft has failed its users on this frequently and recently. I don't think this particular instance is that bad, but they should be doing damage control in all products based on the public perception that they're spying on users.

SQL Server Management Studio, on the other hand, is much better about its analytics opt-in request. Microsoft is a big company with varied practices. Not every division deserves a high-five about their privacy practices.

> It's definitely nothing out of the ordinary and is common practice among many tools and apps you already use. Your smartphone sends back way more data if you're that concerned.

Let MS take their knocks when they earn them. And it's totally fine if people point out that Microsoft has a problem with opting users into unwanted telemetry. Even if it's not important data, it's data that someone didn't volunteer to give up. It's a horrible, common-place practice that needs to end.

Honestly, they might not need automatic telemetry if they just made volunteering information during a bug or slowdown significantly easier. If it was easy to, for example, enable telemetry for a Visual Studio session to track down why it runs like a whale, and then to review the information sent before it was sent, people would use it all the time to better the software. Instead, people turn off everything they can and don't bother to enable it (required for some MS feedback apps) to report issues because they don't know what'll sneak across.

When your telemetry is easy, open, and transparent, people will gladly opt-in when they think it's needed. Or they can hide the data they care about and share the rest.

[Santosh83]

> When your telemetry is easy, open, and transparent, people will gladly opt-in when they think it's needed.

Well said. As a favour to the developers, I have always chosen to opt in for telemetry when it was asked upfront and in a transparent and guileless manner. One example is Firefox, where I opt in for its telemetry.

What I suspect I (and others) don't like is software that treats the user as if they're too dumb to decide for themselves and somehow too inconsequential to have full control over the software that they have bought. It gives off the impression that the software is more important than the user or their work/machine, which is why we see such a backlash. Stallman is right in this sense. You don't need to open source your software, but make the user your priority. Treat them well. And watch your software be praised far and wide. Conversely....

[contextfree]

they don't just want to get a lot of data, they want representative data. they're afraid that, even if many/most people opt in, if the sort of person who opts in is different from the sort of person who doesn't, and has different usage patterns, the data will be skewed.

[ksk]

I think one of the issues is the maintainer of an open source project will always have the final say in which patches are accepted. So the best way to not have any telemetry would be to fork the project and remove the offending code. Also historically, is /var/log any different from telemetry? I can easily figure out which applications were installed, what the hardware on the system is, which cron jobs were executed etc.

But in any case I agree that MS should definitely allow the owner of the machine the ability to block the transmission of any and all telemetry data.

[justabystander]

> fork the project and remove the offending code

Yeah, it's possible. And it will probably happen at some point or another, now that it's open source. But that won't stop the momentum of the core product.

> Also historically, is /var/log any different from telemetry? I can easily figure out which applications were installed, what the hardware on the system is, which cron jobs were executed etc.

Telemetry by definition includes the transmission of logged data. System logs may be collected and transmitted internally by an organization, though by default it is not. But pretty much everyone would be up in arms if a software vendor collected logs of not only what their own software is doing, but what other software on a user's system is doing. And that's the main problem with Windows telemetry - it's too invasive, resource intensive, opaque, and integrated for people to stomach. So they turn it off wherever they can, and thus starts this disgusting game of whack-a-mole with Microsoft.

The dotnet cli isn't as bad, but Microsoft has earned some black eyes from the behavior of their other departments. So everyone's going to feel the heat until they learn too control their greed for data.

[ksk]

Yeah, you're correct.. telemetry does include the transmission.

>And that's the main problem with Windows telemetry - it's too invasive, resource intensive, opaque, and integrated for people to stomach. So they turn it off wherever they can, and thus starts this disgusting game of whack-a-mole with Microsoft.

Ironically, its mainly the technical users who fiddle with all the knobs the OS provides anyway. The same technical users who write tech blogs, influence IT decisions, etc etc. Not having those knobs exposed for telemetry was a bad business decision on MSs part. I've managed to block it at the IP level when I installed W10, but I definitely don't want to be micro managing that.