The very act of making a network connection (data points: network address + time of use) makes it impossible to be truly anonymous https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
> You can collect telemetry completely anonymized.
You can't.
You can decide to discard identifying information (although only if you aggregate and don't insert some sort of "anonymous" identifier), sure. But you're still going to collect it.
So it all boils down to trusting not only the developer, but any company or interest that might acquire the developer or product in the future. And I think it has been repeatedly demonstrated that this trust is not well-placed.
Re:Telemetry in Front-End Tools
by notpushkin on Thursday April 06, 2023 @06:49AM
(#35466630)
> You can't.
Of course you can! Just route telemetry through Tor.
Is it though? Putting aside the issue of whether you trust the person collecting telemetry for a second. You can collect telemetry completely anonymized. You don't have store IPs or any sort of personal identifier. I know a certain crowd still won't like it but in practice how does that harm the privacy of the user?