There is no way to tell ubuntu-bug what information to send (it violates users privacy)

[luca]

Binary package hint: apport

This bug is closely related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/132800 but since that was closed and it was about a very specific piece of information I'll open a new one.

There is no way to exclude sensitive information from a bug report using ubuntu-bug, and is a real PITA to report a bug via web directly (you have to search the magic URL, find the source package for the problematic package and then edit the magic URL with the source package).

To report a bug to Ubuntu you either have to sacrifice your privacy or go through a painful set of steps, none of them seems tempting for me, so I tend to avoid reporting bugs to Ubuntu.

I understand that is hard to give a naive user a lot of options, but it would be enough to:

1) State very clearly that the users privacy *will* be compromised, *always*, any information you send, becomes public and in the general case it shouldn't. If I want to report a spelling error, all you need is what the reporter of the bug have to say (and the version of the package at most). Everything else, is violating users privacy, making public a lot of information that makes no sense. See this very same bug report (reported via ubuntu-bug). How many information provided by ubuntu-bug is needed to understand/fix this issue?

2) Add an "Advanced" button (or whatever you want to name it) where you can select what to include or exclude from the bug report.

I hope you address it soon since I think is a very serious issue. As time passes I have less and less desires to report bugs when using Ubuntu (being mostly a Debian user I would love if you adopted report-bug, but I guess that won't happen :S).

Thanks.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: apport 1.13.3-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CheckboxSubmission: ed35fdf4b543543c92b16453fb132835
CheckboxSystem: edda5d4f616ca792bf437989cb597002
Date: Wed May 19 15:23:34 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100406.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=es_AR.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: apport

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 107103, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[luca (llucax)]

The title and the description of that bug report are not very consistent. The body only talks about ways to avoid sending a password in an attachment, this bug talks about a much more general problem. I'm saying sending *any* unneeded file is a privacy violation, not just files with passwords or important serial numbers.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.