Fedora Planning A Per-System Unique Identifier For DNF To Count Users

[starshipeleven]

Next day they will realize that they need (want) more info. So they take it (the hardware info).
Next day they will realize again they need (want) more info. This time it will be the software info. What programs you install / use.
Before you know it, I bet they will have a big profile about what you use.

I'm sure it does not matter to your paranoia, but this is still wildly generic information to use for any other purpose than basic hardware and software statistics.
They could not monetize it even if they wanted.

[F.Ultra]

Unique identifiers are used more for tracking than for counting
Having a unique identifier on the internet is the same as having a GPS device always on in real life.
The one that put it in you pocket might say that he just want to count how many times you entered a bar or a shop, but we know that actually it can do much more than just counting.
Do you honestly believe that they will restrict themselves to just counting? Just because they say so?
Next day they will realize that they need (want) more info. So they take it (the hardware info).
Next day they will realize again they need (want) more info. This time it will be the software info. What programs you install / use.
Before you know it, I bet they will have a big profile about what you use.
All because of the unique identifier, that they said initially that it was just for harmless counting.
Let's wait and see if I'm right.

At least I know for sure that I will never use Fedora!

Sorry but you are paranoiding yourself into stupidity here (if that ever was a word).

A guy putting a GPS in your pocket knows that he put device A in the pocket of person B (yes that is you) and from that moment he can track every movement of that person.

Fedora can only see that some computer out there that happens to have 5c7adfab-fe21-485a-9dba-3ccc76024d68 stored in /etc/os-release have yet again polled "https://archives.fedoraproject.org" for an update. They do not know who is running this server, don't know where it's located and so on. So no these two things cannot be compared at all.

If you want to fall even deeper into that paranoid hole of yours then you should contemplate that they (as in Fedora) have complete control over the software that you install on your system and they could at any time replace a random binary on your system and take full control of your entire computer and network. For us normal people this means that Fedora can do a shit ton of stuff in secret if they wanted to be evil so that they are using UUID:s in public to track the number of users of their platform is just that; a means of counting the users and nothing more.

Being upset about a change now because "whay if they do something completely evil thing next time" reminds me of this part (28:38) in Shaun:s excellent video (the link should go the correct place):

[Danny3]

This is counting and not tracking. And they are not even counting "your usage" aka there will not be a post at the Evil Fedora HQ no-sql database with "Danny3: downloaded xterm 33 times".

Unique identifiers are used more for tracking than for counting
Having a unique identifier on the internet is the same as having a GPS device always on in real life.
The one that put it in you pocket might say that he just want to count how many times you entered a bar or a shop, but we know that actually it can do much more than just counting.
Do you honestly believe that they will restrict themselves to just counting? Just because they say so?
Next day they will realize that they need (want) more info. So they take it (the hardware info).
Next day they will realize again they need (want) more info. This time it will be the software info. What programs you install / use.
Before you know it, I bet they will have a big profile about what you use.
All because of the unique identifier, that they said initially that it was just for harmless counting.
Let's wait and see if I'm right.

At least I know for sure that I will never use Fedora!

[F.Ultra]

I'm getting a kick out of all the UUID hate. We don't know how they're going to come up with their UUIDs to know if they're using a method that can be tracked to an individual user.

Y'all would get a kick out of my UUIDs. I do stuff like a1000000-a100-a100-a100-a10000000000 for the first disk in a raid, a2blah-blah becomes the next disk, etc....it makes for easier tab completion.....and remembering passwords.....like, I can use "Horse Battery Staple, a1." for the first disk, "Horse Battery Staple, a2." for the 2nd (complete with commas and periods).

I'm taking a very much not so wild guess here and say that they will use the already existing "uuidgen" application (that is just a front end for the libuuid library that is installed on virtually every distro out there) which by default creates it from /dev/random

[F.Ultra]

How is IP address personal? What ISP aren't aggregating and NATting many users behind the same dynamic IP in 2019?

Don't know, I have had the same "dynamic" external ip on the mobile network that I use for Internet at home for the last 10 years. Of course it could change at any time but to this day it hasn't.

[F.Ultra]

There is in that this will be information that is going to be transmitted elsewhere. Your example is local.

You where talking about "creating a new type of identity related information" which can only be a problem if a local attacker can fetch that from /etc/os-release (or for some reason not just create such a unique id themselves on your system) or if a man-in-the-middle somehow can connect that uuid with your particular machine. The mac address of your NIC fits both purposes quite nice, especially since you keep broadcasting it on your local LAN.

More importantly there is no connection between _you_ and this UUID so exactly what good is it to a possible attacker to "aha now we have fetched this magic id of '2ff1e0ff-3200-4cfb-a38b-fce9f1eb97c1' from zee interwebs!!!".

[Awesomeness]

Hehe. Imagine if Canonical made a announcement like this, using the exact same words...

That would be cool. Then people could, for a change, finally verify Shuttleworth's bold statements over Ubuntu's user base size.

But they won't do it. They prefer to make BS user numbers up, just like they only make CLA'ed software they can sell proprietary licenses for.

[kgonzales]

Its a flawed idea and they know it. Quick disposable VMs / containers are going to generate a new UUID and false count a new user.

But RedHat know this, they want to start exerting control like all the other crooks.

At most, debians opt-in Pop-con (Popularity Contest) is as far as I will ever trust. And even then I always opt out.

Will be fun watching Fedora fizzle out (Like Ubuntu) whilst blaming "user-interest" rather than their own arrogance.

What's hilarious is that you probably actually believe everything you just typed.

[skeevy420]

I'm getting a kick out of all the UUID hate. We don't know how they're going to come up with their UUIDs to know if they're using a method that can be tracked to an individual user.

Y'all would get a kick out of my UUIDs. I do stuff like a1000000-a100-a100-a100-a10000000000 for the first disk in a raid, a2blah-blah becomes the next disk, etc....it makes for easier tab completion.....and remembering passwords.....like, I can use "Horse Battery Staple, a1." for the first disk, "Horse Battery Staple, a2." for the 2nd (complete with commas and periods).

[skeevy420]

Something like linux-hardware.org
Definitely needed to improve the whole Linux ecosystem hardware wise.

Yeah, but not necessarily just Linux.