[kasra85]

Author here. Just to be clear, this is false information. It's a toxic thread.

1) The author of that thread is calling a software with analytics a spyware. By that definition, any website you use, including this very website you left a comment on, is spyware.

2) NetData is built-in, but it's not enabled by default. Use is free to install/ or not to install the package.

[sneak]

Silent surveillance, which is not disclosed to the user. Additionally, the user's IP (and thus location) is also provided to Google with the surveillance data.

Webpages and local software are not the same thing. Local software does not need to report my activity to Google, a third party, to work. Webpages do require second party communication to function.

Surely you realize the difference. Your attempt to conflate the two is not productive.

[kasra85]

If you believe they're the same thing, let's call it "analytics" then, exactly what it is. Let's avoid using the terms like spyware or etc which is an umbrella term which covers very serious damages such as stealing your bank info.

[sneak]

Transmitting a user's activity silently and without their consent is called spying, not analytics.

The way that such surveillance is legitimized into not-spyware is via obtaining AFFIRMATIVE consent from the user.

Without that, it's spying, and software that does so is spyware. It's quite simple.