[wp-hackers] Plugin usage info

[Mark E]

On 02/27/2011 11:22 PM, William P. Davis wrote:
> I can definitely see why WP wants all that info, and I hardly think any of it is proprietary, but it should be noted somewhere, and I could see someone writing a plugin to disable the sending of that info.

I wrote such a plugin. It's the first thing that gets installed on a 
site. It blocks the built-in WP update checks completely, and/or it can 
also override the checks to let them run using new functions, but 
without disclosing unnecessary info, such as what I describe in the 
following:

My particular point in the second reply from me was about the sending 
info about MySQL, PHP, whether the site is running multinetwork, how 
many users there are, how many blogs there are, what language the site 
runs, and so on. None of that is required to determine if there's an 
update for a plugin. That far beyond necessity.

I can understand how a company might want to track that sort of info for 
it's own purposes. However, I was flat out shocked to find out that it 
was being sent out. I had no idea. And I recall loads of rather harsh 
press that several well-known companies have received for not disclosing 
that sort of thing.

Anyway I can make the plugin available if people are interested in 
having it.

Mark