The officially official Devuan Forum!

fw190

Member

Registered: 2020-06-14

Posts: 2  

Devuan and privacy

Hi!

I'm considering using Devuan on my laptop but was wondering what is your stand towards privacy?

Is the system calling home?

Are there any parts of the system that use third party tools/services that call home - like google or other to check connectivity etc?

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,172  

Re: Devuan and privacy

Devuan is Debian minus systemd. The "system" will not call home except for if you configure it accordingly, e.g. for auto-update. Debian/Devuan is not like Windows 10.

Applications will call home. Firefox will call home to check for updates if configured this way, it will approach Amazon server for DNS lookup, Libreoffice the same .......

Inform yourself about privacy in browers, they are the big hole.

rolfie

Marjorie

Member

From: Teignmouth, UK

Registered: 2019-06-09

Posts: 221  

Re: Devuan and privacy

There is an /etc/cron.daily program 'popularity contest' that logs and reports weekly which packages you have/use.

It is optional (you can turn it off) and anonymous in intent.

Firefox can be configured to provide telemetry (but you can turn it off) and it can check for updates to add-ons you have installed (also optional). You can install  other browsers that promise more.

To can install programs or configure your browser to encrypt DNS queries, so you only share them with your chosen DNS provider (but you still have to trust them not to log, etc). I use dnscrypt-proxy.

Last edited by Marjorie (2020-06-14 09:39:14)

fw190

Member

Registered: 2020-06-14

Posts: 2  

Re: Devuan and privacy

I think that I have the browser well covered - uBlock in hard mode, Decentraleyes plus firefox in strict privacy and cleaning all of the data after closing it. Plus the tabs run in container tabs.

The router is configured to use cloud flare so that covers the dns for me.

For daily operations I only need KeePassXC libreoffice, Thunderbird and Gimp and I'm golden. I'm also considering antiX Linux as a no systemD alternative to Devuan.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: Devuan and privacy

There is an /etc/cron.daily program 'popularity contest' that logs and reports weekly which packages you have/use.

It is optional (you can turn it off) and anonymous in intent.

Popcon is opt-in — the installer asks the user but the default reply is "no".

Firefox can be configured to provide telemetry (but you can turn it off) and it can check for updates to add-ons you have installed (also optional).

Mozilla's guide to enabling better privacy is here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ho … onnections

They're a bunch of deceptive bastards though because that page makes no mention of their Beacon API, disable that in about:config.

The router is configured to use cloud flare so that covers the dns for me.

Not necessarily, Firefox are moving towards enabling DoH by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fi … over-https

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

HevyDevy

Member

Registered: 2019-09-06

Posts: 358  

Re: Devuan and privacy

I use ghacks user.js for Firefox, makes it a bit more private along with some addons like canvas blocker, localcdn, privacy-orientated origin policy or POOP for short, ublock origin, site-bleacher,clearurls. And searx for the search engine as it is open source and no info is given over to the goog or any search engine!

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks- … aintenance

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-06-14 12:28:21)