Zorin OS 15 and Privacy Concerns

[wizardfromoz]

Take the trouble to view the whole video, before you install Zorin

This vid is about 5 days old at time of writing, making it around 6 - 7 December 2019.

The content may or may not impact on your decision to install Zorin, or else wait until version 15.1 due this month, which is said to allow an "opt out" escape hatch on the information being sent.

RULES OF PARTICIPATION IN THIS THREAD

Nothing defamatory may be mentioned against the Zorin Developers - we do not need a law suit.

You may express your honest concerns, and if you have allegations to make, cite a reliable source.

Do not print the entire content of a reliable source as it may infringe on copyright . A paragraph or two, and a link, is acceptable.

If these conditions are not met, I will have to lock the Thread, and perhaps remove it.

This is purely an FYI Announcement, and I make no comment on it.

I will report further, when possible.

If our erstwhile Administrator @Rob has other plans, he will make them known and I defer in all areas to his judgement

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[JulienCC]

Hi,

Thanks for the info. This is also why you want some network monitoring when concerned about privacy.
This kind of monitoring is obvious at least. Imagine if they hide it in the repo updates or anything more "legit"...

Keeping privacy is like fighting crime, we wish we could enforce it but in the end the only solution is to have people with higher ethical standards.

 

[atanere]

Zorin 15.1 just arrived. I installed it, and the "census" question appears on the same screen with "install 3rd party software." The 3rd party software is ticked by default, so that it is installed. But the census question is NOT ticked by default, so you must tick the box yourself to disable the app (which I did). After installation, I have no cronjobs scheduled for either root or my created user.

Nice catch on this Chris. Thanks!

Cheers

 

[wizardfromoz]

Just a bump-like update to this Thread, particularly to do with the "Zorin phone home" aspect.

Zorin have addressed this with their releases from 15.1, and that is reflected in their updated Privacy Policy here

https://zorinos.com/legal/privacy/

which says, in part

• Census. When using Zorin OS, your computer may send us a ping which only includes the number of users, an anonymous identifier for the installation, Zorin OEM partner batch (if applicable), and your OS version on an hourly basis. We use this information to count the number of active users of Zorin OS. The identifier is only used for the census (to prevent double-counting) and does not personally identify you unless you (or someone acting on your behalf) discloses it separately. Below is a sample of the contents of the ping:
  {id:"68f2d95b-f51f-4a5d-9b48-a99c28691b89", usercount:"1", oembatch:"", version:"15"}
  You may choose to disable these pings by selecting the "Don't participate in the census" option in the Zorin OS installer or entering this Terminal command after installing Zorin OS: sudo apt remove zorin-os-census

Click to expand...

Cheers and Avagudweegend

Wizard