ubuntu-privacy team mailing list archive

[JaSauders <1054776@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm quite surprised this issue has not been taken care of by now. When
it first surfaced I almost ignored it because I thought for sure enough
noise will be made to reverse this decision. I fully understand the
business side of it, but it really is far from logical when you look at
it from the end user point of view. To date, approximately 0 people I
know personally have considered the Amazon integration to be a good
thing. Oddly enough, most find it weird, intrusive, or scary to have on
the system by default. I've installed Ubuntu on countless machines for
people, and everyone has contacted me wondering how the computer is
magically showing them relevant shopping searches. To most people, it's
scary. It's not helpful, it's downright scary. If this would be an
option that the user would need to enable, it'd be a totally different
story because then the user knows it's there and the user knows what to
expect as a result. In a world where malware is a common practice it
stands to good reason that even your most computer illiterate grandma
out there would be nervous about how a computer knows so much about what
you just typed in. Once you take a step back and look at this situation
without any degree of bias or with some sort of business related
underlying agenda, you'll see that, guaranteed.

By default, I disable the privacy and shopping integration as a first
step when I install Ubuntu. I find that I'm downright angry each time I
do it, because I know, deep down, it's not right. It's. Just. Not.
Right. Having this enabled by default is just foolish and I am beyond
disgusted with the fact that it's here by default.

But wait... there's a catch... I've been an Ubuntu user since 2006, and
I have tried countless other distributions but each time I come back to
Ubuntu. I love what Canonical is doing and I love how Ubuntu is shaping
up to be such a fantastic and easy to use (yet crazy powerful)
distribution. In the event that this option was disabled by default, I
would actually go out of my way to enable it. Yeah - not joking here. I
work in IT, so I'm continually having to purchase various parts for
systems. Amazon is, ironically, my first (and usually my only) stop to
finding what I need. In the event that this was disabled by default I
would put forth the effort to support Canonical and Ubuntu by ensuring
that each purchase I made I would do so via the Unity dash. But
considering that it's enabled by default, I find myself so incredibly
disgusted that I find it's difficult to even use Ubuntu any more. I
can't help but to wonder "what's next" on the agenda if things like this
are going to be baked into the operating system from the get-go.
Fortunately, there are other distributions that don't have "features"
like this enabled, which are becoming all too attractive with each
passing day...

I know I'm just one person, so clearly I understand that what I just
said will hardly be persuasive. Instead, I'll let the masses do the
talking. As a frequent user of the UbuntuForums, AskUbuntu, and the
Ubuntu IRC channels, I have yet to find a single end user who has said
"This was a good idea." That's not an exaggeration - that's a straight
up fact based entirely on my personal experience with these contact
channels. I have yet to see anybody blatantly support this. Instead it's
done nothing more than raise a substantial level of concern and
distrust. That should be eye opening for you folks, but so far, it's
been simply ignored. Upon 13.04's release today, countless web sites
have popped up with articles entitled "First 10 things to after you
install Ubuntu 13.04." There again, on every single one I've found,
"disable the shopping lens" is listed. But I'm sure that too will fall
on deaf or uncaring ears.

As a one liner summary, we are sick of just being "okay" with disabling
the shopping lens. This should be disabled by default. Period.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Privacy Team, which is subscribed to the bug report.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1054776

Title:
  Don't include remote searches in the home lens

Status in Unity Shopping Lens:
  New
Status in “unity-lens-shopping” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  Recent news (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/online-shopping-
  features-arrive-in-ubuntu-12-10) indicates that the home lens will, by
  default, search Amazon for products to put in the 'More suggestions'
  section. This means that regular searches for local applications and
  files are transmitted to a remote server, which I believe breaks an
  expectation of privacy. It also seems somewhat tasteless for my
  operating system to be advertising things I might want to buy.
  Finally, the idea that Ubuntu is now ad-supported has brought
  considerable negative PR on tech news sites like Slashdot and Hacker
  News.

  All of these problems could be easily avoided if the shopping lens
  were separate, rather than showing results in the home lens.  The
  shopping results would still be very convenient when the user wanted
  to see them - they could opt in with a single click, as we currently
  can with the video lens, for example.

  To anticipate one likely response: I understand that this feature can
  be removed by uninstalling the package. I believe it should be opt-in,
  not opt-out, and I also think the feature is useful, so I don't want
  to remove it completely from my system.

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