unwanted data logging

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

ubuntu comes with a zeitgeist daemon, which - after reading the poor information available about it - seems to log several events on my desktop

a) without informing me about that
b) without asking me whether I want that
c) without telling what sort of data is logged
d) without explaining how to configure what is to be logged or how to delete data
e) without giving the slightest hint what this is good for and why I would need/want that.

So this is a severe danger for data privacy , security, and protection against forensic analysis.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: zeitgeist-datahub 0.7.0-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.22-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Nov 21 13:02:31 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/tcsh
SourcePackage: zeitgeist-datahub
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-29 (22 days ago)

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

Which, btw., violates german laws.

This is a sort of surveillance software which is unlawful under german law if installed on computers provided by an employer for employees, because it records activities.

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

With the current default setup, the data logged by Zeitgeist isn't much different from GNOME's recently used framework (the biggest difference being that Zeitgeist remembers every time you used a file, while GtkRecentManager only keeps the last few uses).

You can visualize most of the logged information using GNOME Activity Journal.

If you want to delete logged data or exclude particular sorts of data from being logged, you can use Activity Log Manager for that (https://launchpad.net/activity-log-manager).