[wp-hackers] Revisiting phone home and privacy

[Otto]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Doug Stewart <zamoose at gmail.com> wrote:
> Last I checked, WordPress' source shipped with citations for the GPLv2
> but no disclosure as to information submitted.  At minimum, such a
> document should exist.

The codex is a wiki. Feel free to create a document disclosing all
that info if you like. Make sure to tell everybody about it too, as
well written documents tend to get used all sorts of places.

> *But at a
> minimum there needs to be a trivial mechanism for opting out.*

There is an opt-out. There are disable plugins for update checks, and
many people know about and use them. That's sort of the main complaint
here, although I confess I don't understand how anybody thinks that you
can check for plugin updates without sending information about the plugins...

Also, there's a Settings->Privacy option, which could be extended to
also disable all update checking, for the paranoid. Make a trac ticket
about it, see if it gets any traction.

-Otto
Sent from Memphis, TN, United States