With perseverance and a lot of fiddling, Heaton was eventually able to proxy the driver’s traffic to Google Analytics to take a more detailed look at the data being collected.
#WACOM TABLET DRIVER VS INTUOS DRIVERS#
The earliest mentions of Wacom integrating Google Analytics with tablet Windows and macOS drivers for the Intuos range appear to date back to version 6.3.27 released for Windows and macOS in late 2017. The privacy policy for US-based users is a lot more permissive, although not all sections of this would apply when simply installing a driver. This data should not reveal real identities:Īs the IP anonymize function is activated in the Tablet Driver, your IP address will, within Member States of the European Union or other contracting states of the Agreement on the European Economic Area, first be shortened by Google
The Privacy Notice posted to GitHub by Heaton relates to users in the EU and is upfront about this when it explains in a succinct 770 words what data Google Analytics collects, including things like when during the day tablets are used, and which functions are popular. The official answer is for the same reason many other companies’ applications do the same thing – to analyse how customers are using a product to see whether it can be improved. This struck him as intrusive for a drawing tablet which is “essentially a mouse.” Why would such a thing need a privacy policy anyway? In section 3.1 of their privacy policy, Wacom wondered if it would be OK if they sent a few bits and bobs of data from my computer to Google Analytics, aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about hardware device. In a blog, software developer Robert Heaton said he was first alerted to the behaviour when he read the company’s Experience Program Privacy Policy while installing some Wacom drivers on his computer.
An engineer has detailed how graphics tablet company Wacom’s privacy policy allows it to collect data unconnected to its products, such as which applications users open on their computers.
0 kommentar(er)
