[Swlug] Fix Ubuntu

[Matt Willsher]

On 9 Nov 2013, at 09:40, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 9 November 2013 09:26, Matt Willsher <matt at monki.org.uk> wrote:
>> That option isn't the same in scope as Toby's change if
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/25/ubuntu_13_04_review/ is anything to
>> go by.
> 
> That is an old post about 13.04.  My understanding is that the option
> stops all online searching in the Dash (as it says).  Are you
> suggesting this is not correct?  Can anyone with in-depth knowledge
> confirm one way or the other?

So, I installed 13.10 in a VM and armed with tcpdump found the following.

All dash searches go to productsearch.ubuntu.com by default. This allows them to, in their own words, anonymise results but also collect and aggregate them. We just have to take their word that they’re just anonymise and not aggregating.  http://slashdot.org/story/13/09/22/1538202/the-dash-is-now-anonymized-in-ubuntu-1310

Switching ‘Include online search results’ to off does indeed stop queries to the product search site however it also to stop searches to my other online accounts - it’s an all or nothing approach, as the Register article mentions. It would appear that nothing has changed from 13.04 to 13.10 regarding privacy and the privacy control panel has yet to materialise in any meaning sense.

So yes, it disables the ads, but it also removes other functionality. The steps in https://fixubuntu.com/ remove the ads but allows the user to still use other scopes for searching on their terms. 

That Canonical tried to get the site shutdown shows their true colours - they are clearly out to monitise through advertising and are not above using strong arm tactics against dissenters. What particularly sticks in my craw is that they are riding Debian to do so and taking a closed source policy across a number of parts of their business.