HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why do Atom.io and Sublimetext include spyware?

12 points by cyphunk ↗ HN
When your application calls home constantly, inadvertently tracking me, or calls back to some analytics server effectively allowing third parties to track me, this is spyware. Most half decent applications have two off-by-default options for this type of tracking:

* Check for updates on startup?

* Allow us to send anonymous statistics to help improve product?

Both Atom.io and Sublimetext do call home and Atom also calls out to some Google services. And yet they are missing configuration options to disable this tracking. Is this the result of developers whose education comes from the walled garden environments of mobile where you don't give 2cents about privacy anyway?

10 comments

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jsnk
Most developers don't care as long as it's not intrusively impeding on them. And only google services at least Atom uses I think is Google analytics. It's not like it's snooping on your member details. I think these editors should give the user ability to opt out from getting tracked though.
cyphunk
I would like my location and IP to be private. It just be that developers were aware of this possible want and would ask if it is okay to turn ON these features. Now it's changed to where these features are impossible or difficult to turn off.
pizza
You could try using a firewall to block the calls
damm
Let's not forget Atom also sends usage metrics.

Turns out it's the same thing as Google Analytics; I did not think of it as the same at first.

austinhyde
I just looked, and unless you're talking about something different, Sublime Text 3 allows disabling telemetry by way of the "enable_telemetry" setting.

See http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev under build 3023. It was turned on by default on build 3030.

0942v8653
I don't think that disables checking for updates.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
NeutronBoy
Are local firewalls not cool anymore or something?