{"id":28074,"date":"2020-02-06T15:55:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T20:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=28074"},"modified":"2020-02-14T11:44:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T16:44:30","slug":"wacom-tablets-track-every-app-you-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/06\/wacom-tablets-track-every-app-you-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Wacom Tablets Track Every App You Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Heaton<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

But Wacom’s request made me pause. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? I wondered. Sensing skullduggery, I decided to make an exception to my anti-privacy-policy-policy and give this one a read.<\/p>\n

In Wacom’s defense (that’s the only time you’re going to see that phrase today), the document was short and clear, although as we’ll see it wasn’t entirely open about its more dubious intentions (here’s the full text<\/a>). In addition, despite its attempts to look like the kind of compulsory agreement that must be accepted in order to unlock the product behind it, as far as I can tell anyone with the presence of mind to decline it could do so with no adverse consequences.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Some of the events that Wacom were recording were arguably within their purview, such as “driver started” and “driver shutdown”. I still don’t want them to take this information because there’s nothing in it for me, but their attempt to do so feels broadly justifiable. What requires more explanation is why Wacom think it’s acceptable to record every time I open a new application, including the time, a string that presumably uniquely identifies me, and the application’s name.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2020-02-14): Malcolm Owen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Wacom has responded to allegations drivers for its tablet line are collecting data on its users and passing it on to Google, including the names of macOS applications being used, by claiming it has no access to personal data and what data it collects is anonymized before it is seen by the company.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Heaton (tweet, Hacker News): But Wacom’s request made me pause. Why does a device that is essentially a mouse need a privacy policy? I wondered. Sensing skullduggery, I decided to make an exception to my anti-privacy-policy-policy and give this one a read. In Wacom’s defense (that’s the only time you’re going to see that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-02-06T20:55:18Z","apple_news_api_id":"7313d2bf-3e78-45a3-b66c-d3e706c12022","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-02-14T16:44:33Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AcxPSvz54RaO2bNPnBsEgIg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[518,30,1666,355,1921],"class_list":["post-28074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-googleanalytics","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-15","tag-privacy","tag-wacom"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28130,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28074\/revisions\/28130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}