The developers of the Manjaro Linux distribution, built on the basis of Arch Linux and aimed at beginners, announced the beginning of testing a new service MDD (Manjaro Data Donor), designed to collect statistics about the system and send it to the external server of the project. The author of the MDD intended to enable telemetry by default (opt-out), but the decision has not yet been approved and, judging by the objections of some developers and users, it is likely that telemetry will be offered as an option requiring prior consent of the user (a request to enable telemetry is proposed to be added to the greeting interface after the first download).
The report includes data such as host name, kernel version, desktop component versions, detailed information about hardware and drivers involved, screen size and resolution information, network device MAC addresses, disk serial numbers, disk partition data, information about the number of running processes and installed packages, versions of basic packages such as systemd, gcc, bash and PipeWire.
The sent data is stored on the project server in the ClickHouse database and visualized using the Grafana platform. The IP addresses of users are not stored, and the hash from the /etc/machine-id file is used as the system identifier.
Аccording to the code https://github.com/manjaro/mdd/blob/master/mdd.py#L40 sends everything.
That list about which data they’re collecting is longer than my highschool essay
hostname? MAC address? serial numbers? does "partitionx data also include names and GUIDs?
why would they need these? what is wrong with them??
Manjaro is already less stable than arch, now it collects your data involuntarily? Fucking wild how anyone can use it.
I don’t get why someone would use Manjaro after so many fuckups… If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re either too new to Linux or don’t care. Just look for “manjaro certificates” or “manjaro drama” and you’ll find out for yourself.
Why on earth do they need to know hostname? MAC addresses?
Opt-out? I see it’s time for the seasonal Manjaro fuck up.
They’ll find some way to make this change break the AUR again
I get the usefulness of technical telemetry such as kernel version, RAM, disk space, processor type, etc… but NIC MAC? HDD serial? WTF?
Yeah that makes no sense lol. Who needs MAC addresses to debug and fix bugs? No one.
I said elsewhere, I hope this is just some way to track changes over time per user.
But they need to take an anonymous hash of some non changing data or create an install id that is used for this and nothing else (e.g it identifies a unique user but not the person or hardware behind the user).
Too much identifying info is just pushed around like we shouldn’t care, it’s become a real problem.
I just don’t see a good reason to use Manjaro and many reasons not to.
Friends don’t let friends use Manjaro
The report includes data such as host name, kernel version, desktop component versions, detailed information about hardware and drivers involved, screen size and resolution information, network device MAC addresses, disk serial numbers, disk partition data, information about the number of running processes and installed packages, versions of basic packages such as systemd, gcc, bash and PipeWire.
That’s insane
Opt-out? Seriously? What are the Manjaro devs smoking?
Whatever they can get their hands on, including your unique hardware identifiers
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Why do they need information about the hostname? Is it really valuable for them to know how many systems are named daves-pc?
enable telemetry by default … MAC addresses, disk serial numbers
Another reason to not use Manjaro. Just use Endeavour instead.
Edit: I’m not against telemetry pre se. I have the KDE feedback enabled for example but that was opt in and sends no unique data.
It’s all about trust. Manjaro has given me reasons to distrust them.
When?
Edit: I misread, though it said “trust” instead of “distrust”
They’ve let TLS certs expire on multiple occasions. They’ve made the decision to enable the AUR in the default installation, which can cause conflicts with out-of-date dependencies because of the delayed release schedule compared to Arch. They’ve shipped software on their stable branch that included unmerged upstream code. One of their developers temporarily broke Asahi Linux.
I don’t hate the project, but I can’t trust the developers and management.
One of their developers temporarily broke Asahi Linux.
Wait, how??
He’s also a contributor to Asahi Linux. One of his MRs changed the build options that somehow caused it to (IIRC) use mainline Mesa instead of the branch that is specifically modified to work on ARM.
(edit) Aussie linux man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDRiBbzzREw
It’s not only his fault, but mostly.
They’ve let TLS certs expire on multiple occasions.
And they told their community to set their clocks back. As a workaround, it will work but all your created and modified data will have the wrong timestamps.
That time they ddosed the AUR is an example. Incompetence is reason enough for me.
wait, is that name “manjarno” like when brad pitt says bonjorno in inglorious basterds??
They’ve done it more than once now
Another reason to not use Manjaro. Just use Endeavour instead.
Endeavour could be useful if it’s your first time running an Arch-based distro and you’re looking for software/configuration suggestions. Otherwise, Arch Linux is fine by itself and it doesn’t have telemetry
I don’t think anybody would say otherwise. Both Manjaro and Endeavour mean to make Arch more appealing to users who aren’t comfortable with command line configuration.
Endeavour has arguably done better than Manjaro, but yeah. They’re just some configs on top of a system that does very well on its own.
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Why?
Let me put the question back to you. How do think the uniquely identifiable information will help them improve Manjaro?
Do you think they’ve got a Russian satellite and will track down your HDD serial number from space?
No.
There’s lots of benefits to telemetry.
As I basically said, if you bothered to read my comment.
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network device MAC addresses, disk serial numbers
That’s enough. I’m calling it evil from now on.
we seriously need to get the reporting domain added to popular blocklists
Thought it’s probably fine after reading the title, but this shit isn’t fine. What the fuck.
The MAC address is anonymized with sha256, and IP adresses aren’t stored.
So this seems to me to be perfectly anonymous.MAC addresses are 48 bit, and half of that is just the manufacturer. So 24 bits really, and those bits aren’t random, I think manufacturers just assign these based on some scheme, like a serial number. Point is you could easily reverse the SHA by brute force.
You can’t calculate any useful statistic from a hash so literally the only use this would have is some sort of tracking.
Edit: I just looked up some data and I found someone using hashcat on an RTX 3090, which looks like it can do almost 10000 million SHA256 hashes per second of salted passwords (which are longer than 48 bit MACs, so MACs should be faster). 2²⁴ is 16.8 million, so it’ll take about 1.7 ms per vendor. I found a database with (all?) 53011 vendor ids:
>>> 2**24 * 53011 / 10000 / 1000 / 1000 88.93769973759998Yup, 89 seconds. You can calculate the SHA256 of every single MAC ever potentially issued in 89 seconds on a bog-standard 3090.
this would have is some sort of tracking.
It’s right at the top of the announcement, that it’s mainly for more accurate stats on unique users.
It’s not that I think this is a good idea, because I don’t, but some people are blowing it out of proportions. Especially since this isn’t at all decided. Which I seriously doubt it will.You don’t need this to count unique users. You could just assign a random number on install or whatever. Or even more simply, just run the thing once per month, should be accurate enough. Do they expect the software to just randomly spam duplicate reports? Don’t write it that way.
Best case they don’t care about collecting minimal data and don’t understand that hashed MACs are easily reversible. So incompetent fools with no sensitivity to privacy.
Maybe this should be Manjaro’s tagline: Not purposely malicious, just grossly negligent and ignorant.
You could just assign a random number on install or whatever.
Funny, I thought the exact same thing.
Why collect such data though? And you can call some Big Tech telemetry completely anonymous too if you trust their explanations.
You can see the code of what is send.
I’m not aware that Google claims they collect data anonymously, on everything where you are logged in.
So that’s a false equivalence.I’m not aware that Google claims they collect data anonymously, on everything where you are logged in.
I meant other companies but ok.
It amazes me it’s still as popular as it is and still own goaling at least once a year.
This may be illegal in EU if they don’t use opt in.
Even then it may be illegal for under 18 year olds to collect MAC addresses and disk serial numbers, as those can potentially be used for identification.The data is anonymized, and the IP is NOT stored. So I’m not sure this violates GDPR?
From the code we can see the machine ID is anonymized, sending only a SHA256 checksum.
def get_hashed_device_id(): # Read the machine ID with open("/etc/machine-id", "r") as f: machine_id = f.read().strip() # Hash the machine ID using SHA-256 to anonymize it hashed_id = hashlib.sha256(machine_id.encode()).digest() # Convert the first 16 bytes of the hash to a UUID (version 5 UUID format) return str(uuid.UUID(bytes=hashed_id[:16], version=5))This makes it somewhat a nothingburger IMO.
Nah, it’s still considered Personal Data under GDPR, because it’s possible to connect to natural persons. So GDPR applies. And this is illegal, there is no legal basis for processing this data.
because it’s possible to connect to natural persons.
That’s debatable, and is only based on the claim that it’s just a 24bit decoding that can be brute forced. I don’t know for a fact that it’s true that it can be boiled down to 24bit.
I checked my own /etc/machine-id, and the folder doesn’t even exist, so what exactly is supposed to be in it IDK. And yes I use Manjaro.I edited my comment on your other reply and by my estimation, calculating every SHA256 of all MACs ever potentially issued takes less than 89 seconds on an RTX 3090.
I also think MACs are (or should be considered) personally identifiable information, since there is potentially a paper trail back to the person who bought it. Plus MACs are not secret information, it’s broadcast on the LAN and for wireless modules over the air in the immediate vicinity (though some systems will randomize wireless MACs for privacy reasons). Privacy-unfriendly software has been known to collect MACs (even from other devices on the network and in the vicinity), so there are already databases connecting MAC addresses with other data.
That’s not anonymous, that’s pseudonymous.
What is the point of this? The machine-id already looks to be some unique random number, so you’re calculating another unique random-looking number from that, might as well use the original number.
You can’t glean any useful information from a unique random-looking number that would help with developing Manjaro. You can’t calculate any statistics from that. The only use is tracking.
Edit: And as mentioned in my other comment, reversing the MAC SHA by brute force is trivial, so that one at least (and possibly the other hardware serial numbers they collect) shouldn’t even be considered pseudonymous.
