[andrewm4894]

Disclaimer - i work for Netdata Cloud.

We actually mask the ip address (https://github.com/netdata/dashboard/blob/master/src/domains...) so it's not even sent - we just send "127.0.0.1" as the IP into our self hosted PostHog. Likewise with any URL, referrer type event properties that could leak a hostname to us - we don't want that data at all so explicitly mask it before even capturing it in our telemetry system.

Previously, when using a fairly standard Google Analytics implementation, we could not really have this level of control all that easily.

So the hope is that with PostHog we can do better here while still enabling some really useful product telemetry to help us understand how to make the product better over time and try catch bugs and issues quicker too.

Oh and we have removed Google Tag Manager (GTM) from the agent dashboard too so that that's no longer around as a possibility for loading other third party tags too.

You can read more here: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/blob/master/docs/anonymou...

p.s. PostHog is really cool - check it out: https://posthog.com/docs#philosophy, https://github.com/PostHog/posthog

[sneak]

Your claim is false; the IP address cannot be "masked" the way you describe. The spy telemetry transmits the IP as the L3 source on each and every packet.

[andrewm4894]

I literally shared a link to the part of the code that shows we don't capture and record the ip address in our telemetry. You are being quite disingenuous calling things "spyware".

I do appreciate the opt-in vs opt-out argument and I think on balance if opt-out helps us make this free product better over time and help our users then, so long as there is a clear route for people to opt-out, it's worth it and crucially important.

But this is indeed more like an opinion that individuals might differ on in terms of the pros and cons.

I personally love sending telemetry especially to help make the products I love better :) feels like im giving something back. But that is just my own opinion.