Uninstall Audacity

[Phoenix_]

Hello,

 

The popular audio software Audacity has updated their privacy policy to be extremely invasive. Audacity is open source, and now it's apparent it has become less of a public wonder and more of an invasion of privacy.

 

According to the new privacy policy:

Quote

"Now the privacy policy says that the new company does collect data and does so in a way that's both over-arching and vague, most likely by design. For example, it says that it collects data necessary for law enforcement but doesn't specify what kind of data is collected.".

 

The article I am sourcing for this post goes on to say:

Quote

"There are also questions regarding the storage of data, which is located in servers in the USA, Russia, and the European Economic Area. IP addresses, for example, are stored in an identifiable way for a day before being hashed and then stored in servers for a year. The new policy also disallows people under the age of 13 from using the software, which, as FOSS Post points out, is a violation of the GPL license that Audacity uses."

 

With all this in mind, it's clear there's some potentially shady shit going on with Audacity. If you care about the privacy of your data, I recommend uninstalling this software whether you use it or not. 

[Easterpink]

Audacity will probably make some lame excuse for collecting data such as, "We want to combat music piracy" or something along those lines. 

[Kieran]

Thanks for bringing this up, I made sure to uninstall it on my PC. It's really important to keep an eye on all the applications and software on your computer, a lot of scummy people are exploiting our privacies.

 

On a side, I literally just had to take a midterm using proctorio (fml). If you have proctorio as an extension, make sure to get that off your computer as soon as possible as it is literally the spawn of satan and can basically access and do just about anything. Ironically it was a midterm for a security class.

[20 scrolls]

someone fill me in on what the actual dangers are

[Phoenix_]

11 hours ago, 20 scrolls said:

someone fill me in on what the actual dangers are

Since their data collection policy is vague, they could technically be collecting your data at any point, and can in theory collect any kind of data since it is not specified. Basically, if you don't want some random third-party developer knowing what you're doing on your computer and them saving that information, I would recommend you uninstall it.

 

The danger is the fact that a group of people you know nothing about (i.e. their moral standards, motives, etc) can collect data of what you do on your computer without you knowing. 

[Nishok]

If you still want/need to use it, you could always block the program from accessing the internet.

Easiest way is to do it through Windows Firewall.

 

Edit: Quick how-to for those who might not be familiar with Windows Firewall: https://www.howtogeek.com/227093/how-to-block-an-application-from-accessing-the-internet-with-windows-firewall/