Re:Ask HN: How do you deal with software tracking your data?
by JohnFen on Friday February 06, 2026 @08:52AM
(#46912827)
> how do you stay informed about what software is problematic?
It's a loose heuristic. Primarily, I base it on word-of-mouth, whether or not the publisher/dev is known to have used tracking/telemetry in their other products, whether it contains ads, whether it in some way requires an external server, that sort of thing.
> what would be an example of "an extremely good reason"?
The last time, it was to install an authenticator app that I needed in order to authenticate for my work accounts.
It's a loose heuristic. Primarily, I base it on word-of-mouth, whether or not the publisher/dev is known to have used tracking/telemetry in their other products, whether it contains ads, whether it in some way requires an external server, that sort of thing.
> what would be an example of "an extremely good reason"?
The last time, it was to install an authenticator app that I needed in order to authenticate for my work accounts.
> what VPN solution do you have?
I use OpenVPN for this.