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Computer Software => General software => Topic started by: Bowdon on July 05, 2021, 10:36:22 PM

Title: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Bowdon on July 05, 2021, 10:36:22 PM: If any of you guys use the audio program Audacity then be aware that since its been bought out by a new company they have changed the privacy policy so its going to be grabbing lots of data on users.

Audacity users are seriously angry right now
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/audacity-fans-are-absolutely-furious-right-now-heres-why (https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/audacity-fans-are-absolutely-furious-right-now-heres-why)

Quote
Under the new privacy policy, Audacity will collect information such as OS version, CPU and error codes, but also the location of the user. According to the policy, this information is required for analytics purposes and to improve the application, although it’s unclear where location data slots into this picture.

The policy goes on to state that Audacity will collect “data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests”, but does not expand on what type of information this clause might cover, leading to speculation it could be used to justify an unacceptable breach of user privacy.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: banger on July 05, 2021, 10:45:31 PM: That's me not updating it. I thought Muse had backed down from telemetrics. Maybe not.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Alex Atkin UK on July 05, 2021, 11:12:49 PM: The ....? Especially that second paragraph.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Bowdon on July 06, 2021, 12:00:46 PM: I was just reading the site story that one linked to and the bit about law enforcement, litigation and authorities bit is explained in a graph.

It says legal grounds for processing; Legitimate interest of WSM to defend its legal rights and interests.

https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/ (https://fosspost.org/audacity-is-now-a-spyware/)

So does this mean if someone uses certain music and are mixing it via audacity, that the program will just hand over all the data to the music company?
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: burakkucat on July 06, 2021, 04:49:29 PM: Surely no data can be transferred if Audacity is used on a system that is not connected to the Internet? Or am I misunderstanding something? :-\
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: banger on July 06, 2021, 05:49:04 PM: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/06/audacity_fork/

There's a new fork with all the badness removed. Just needs a name.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Alex Atkin UK on July 06, 2021, 09:59:39 PM: Quote from: burakkucat on July 06, 2021, 04:49:29 PM
Surely no data can be transferred if Audacity is used on a system that is not connected to the Internet? Or am I misunderstanding something? :-\

No data should ever leave your PC anyway, Audacity AFAIK is a purely offline application, thus why its so baffling they are doing this.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Chrysalis on July 06, 2021, 10:57:14 PM: Data collection is a huge market, whats effectively happened is the program got purchased just for the intention of harvesting data.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Alex Atkin UK on July 07, 2021, 01:38:08 AM: But what sort of data is a program like Audacity going to even give?
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: roseway on July 07, 2021, 07:33:45 AM: Breaches of copyright by the user?
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: broadstairs on July 07, 2021, 10:11:40 AM: Because Audacity is open source openSUSE have been disabling these features in Audacity which is available on their repositories!

Stuart
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Bowdon on July 07, 2021, 12:12:32 PM: I found the site I mentioned earlier; http://www.oldversion.com (http://www.oldversion.com)

Audacity is on there.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Chrysalis on July 07, 2021, 03:36:07 PM: I will just be keeping the older version I have, I have no reason to update it, and its things like this which make me disable any auto update features.
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: snadge on October 28, 2021, 06:24:26 PM: Quote from: banger on July 06, 2021, 05:49:04 PM
https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/06/audacity_fork/

There's a new fork with all the badness removed. Just needs a name.
cheers buddy
Title: Re: Audacity - looking to grab lots of data
Post by: Alex Atkin UK on August 30, 2022, 11:47:33 PM: I'm still failing to understand how anything you use Audacity for could be needed for law enforcement.