Telemetry (software)

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The term Telemetry refers in software engineering collecting raw data by automatic data transfer by a running background service to the developer to be transferred.

If this is not done transparently for the user, then one also speaks of English phoning home or calling home (or phone home or call home ), telephoning home , since the software is “at home” without easily accessible influence by the user “Reports to the manufacturer.

Use

The developer of software and the company behind it hope to gain by using an analysis of the collected data to improve their products and developments.

Examples of operating systems that collect telemetry data are Windows 10 from Microsoft and Ubuntu Linux from Canonical . They do this by declaring that they want to “improve development”, because the programmers know better about the actual use of the systems with the help of the data collected.

Demarcation

The term telemetry data is ambiguous. It denotes several different types of data:

  • In the client-server model , connection data between a server and at least one client are also telemetry data.
  • In network technology , the term refers to the continuous range measurement to check whether a signal is present.
  • The acquisition of raw data such as usage and diagnostic data of software.

Telemetry data often contain metrics , English metrics , which corresponds to statistical data. However, usage data is also included.

Programs whose function is limited to collecting and transmitting data are spyware . Since the user is deliberately left in the dark or effort has been made to hide the data collection function as well as possible, it is malware .

privacy

Since conclusions can be drawn about the user based on the usage data, telemetry data are problematic in the context of data protection. Because a user is often unable to influence the telemetry function or can only influence it too little, there are some parallels to the term spyware , but in contrast to this, the data acquisition in the context of telemetry data takes place with the knowledge of the user and at least partly transparently.

"to call home"

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Cartoon Windows 10 logo on the occasion of the Big Brother Award 2018 category technology to Microsoft Germany for the telemetry data transmission with Windows 10 that can hardly be deactivated
CC-BY-SA / Logo: Microsoft Corporation; Assembly : digital courage

The English terms Call Home or Calling Home , also called Phone Home or Phoning Home , for “calling home” or “calling home” denote the action of a computer program to contact the manufacturer's server via the Internet . The term originated after the saying of the alien in the movie ET

Some Microsoft programs, e.g. B. Windows Media Player in Windows XP , but also many other programs, especially large providers, are known for the said Call Home. Usually the term has a negative connotation and describes the establishment of contact and data transfer to the manufacturer without the knowledge of the user. A connection to the manufacturer server consciously initiated by the user, e.g. B. for version comparison or for automatic program updates, the term Call Home is not usually meant.

A known face-up by users for example Call Home were the network printers from Hewlett-Packard . When the company was reprimanded by the data supervisory authority, they quickly promised to turn this off. Printers purchased after 2003 should no longer have this feature. There is no guarantee for this, however.

Some programs with a call-home function provide for deactivating them by means of certain settings in or changes to the values ​​in the system registry . Programs such as xp-AntiSpy are available for convenient management of these registry entries , which can change some undocumented Windows settings and deactivate the call-home functions of various Windows standard programs . However, such tools can only prevent known call-home actions and only if the manufacturer has provided for a shutdown in principle. If this is not the case, contact with the manufacturer's server can also be prevented by entering its IP address in an operating system-internal blacklist. Programs such as Spybot - Search & Destroy offer this function, but can also only block servers that are already known to be contacted by some programs for the purpose of unwanted data transmission. In order to prevent any uncontrolled connection establishment, the use of a firewall is therefore recommended.

Examples

An example of metrics is the popularity contest of Debian GNU / Linux . The installed packages and their usage are recorded, statistically evaluated and presented on a public homepage . The anonymous evaluation should help the developers with some decisions.

With the Windows operating systems from Microsoft, a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) was transmitted to activate Windows 98 , which contained the unique MAC address of the network card on Internet-enabled systems . This enabled clear identification, because the same GUID is also used in stored documents, e.g. B. from Microsoft Office . The Windows NT series began with Windows XP that the operating system would contact Microsoft servers under certain circumstances. This was on the one hand the search function, on the other hand the function for checking the software license , " Windows Genuine Advantage ". The latter is in daily contact with Microsoft. There was in previous versions of Windows already the possibility of a malfunction of a bug report ( english bug report ) to send with diagnostic data to Microsoft, it is from Windows 10 finally so that countless telemetry data is collected and sent. This was also heavily criticized, although the function can (still) be switched off with the appropriate know-how . In the Enterprise version of Windows 10, telemetry can also be switched off by the operating system ( opt-out ).

In the Linux or Unix desktop KDE Plasma 5 , version 5.18 and higher, the “User Feedback” function is available, which regularly sends telemetry data about usage to the developers. The function is deactivated by default ( opt-in ).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sisyphus Win10: Study on system configuration, logging, hardening and security features in Windows 10 Federal Office for Information Security , accessed on May 27, 2020 ( "Sisyphus Win10" stands for S tud i e to Sy stemintegrität, P rotokollierung, H ärtung u nd S icherheitsfunktionen in win dows 10 and is a reference to Sisyphos from Greek mythology).
  2. ↑ Alexandra Lindner: Canonical wants to collect telemetry data from Ubuntu users. In: com! Professional. Ebner Media Group GmbH & Co. KG, February 16, 2018, accessed on May 27, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Rasmus Robrahn, Dr. Martin Krämer, Dr. Christoph Lahmann, Uwe Robra: Data protection in Windows 10; - further technical aspects. (PDF; 569 KB) Conference of the independent data protection authorities of the federal and state levels, November 6, 2019, p. 9 , accessed on May 27, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Jan Mahn: Windows 10 telemetry data: Monitor information sent to Microsoft. In: Heise online . January 25, 2018 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  5. ↑ Frank Rosengart: The BigBrotherAward 2018 in the technology category goes to Microsoft Germany. In: BigBrotherAwards.de. Digitalcourage eV, April 20, 2018, accessed on December 9, 2019 .
  6. ^ Debian Popularity Contest. Retrieved May 28, 2020 (English).
  7. ↑ Christian Persson, Peter Siering: Big Brother Bill - Microsoft's secret ID numbers - allegedly a glitch. In: Heise online . March 12, 1999 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  8. ↑ Peter Siering: Search function in Windows XP contacts Microsoft. In: Heise online . April 15, 2002 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  9. ↑ Axel Vahldiek: Microsoft's WGA exam calls home [Update . ] In: Heise online . June 8, 2006 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  10. ↑ Hajo Schulz: Alleged "sniffing updates" for Windows 7 and 8.1. In: Heise online . August 27, 2015 . Retrieved May 28, 2020 .; Quotation: “This function, called“ Program for the improvement of user friendliness ”in German, is built into Windows itself as well as in a number of Microsoft applications, apps and installation routines and is used to provide Microsoft with data on how well or badly the respective application is performing the user's computer works. ".
  11. ↑ Kristina Beer: Electronic Frontier Foundation criticizes upgrade practice and data collection mania of Windows 10. In: Heise online . 18th August 2016 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  12. ↑ Stefan Krempl: Windows 10: EU inspectors complain about Microsoft's ongoing data collection. In: Heise online . February 21, 2017 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  13. ↑ Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti: Dutch data protection officer: Microsoft breaks data protection law with Windows 10. In: Heise online . October 13, 2017 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  14. ↑ Hajo Schulz: Protecting privacy in Windows 10. In: Heise online . August 24, 2018 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  15. ↑ Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti: Data Protection: Companies can use Windows 10 Enterprise in compliance with data protection regulations. In: Heise online . 19th September 2017 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  16. ↑ Günter Born: Windows 10 Enterprise Version 1909: Telemetry can be completely switched off. In: Heise online . 4th February 2020 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  17. ↑ Tim Schürmann: Linux / Unix desktop KDE Plasma 5.18 receives minor innovations and long-term support. In: Heise online . February 12, 2020 . Retrieved May 28, 2020.