Bug#745668: ovito: keeps the users under permanent surveillance

uzoorei at googlemail.com uzoorei at googlemail.com
Wed Apr 23 21:51:30 UTC 2014


Package: ovito
Version: 2.3.2~git8178817e-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I'd like to point your attention to a nasty hidden feature of the ovito program.
The problem is that the ovito keeps the users under permanent surveillance.
In great details:
* for each user, unique persistent identificator is created in the configuration file
* the identificator will be sent to ovito.org each time the user starts the program
* this behavior is hidden from the user
* neither the users are informed about the tracking
* nor there is an option to disable it
* no information in README/doc/etc about who is collecting the data, how the data are used...

The good news is that it is easy to fix (at least it seems to be :)
The relevant part of the code is located in ModifyCommandPage.cpp, lines 375 - 412

Please help the debian users to keep their privacy!

Best regards
Alex


-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.13-1-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash



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