Metrics and your privacy

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 02:13:02 +0530,
  "Vivek J. Patankar" <list307 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/23/06, Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:
> >I like the approach you suggest below, but I have comments on the UUID
> >mentioned in the example. Unless there is going to be some followup later
> >I don't see how it would be useful. If it is being sent, then it should be
> >displayed with the other information being sent.
> 
> The UUID will serve as a unique install identifier. A count of the
> number of UUIDs would give an accurate figure of the total number of
> installs that have opted to report in.

That's what doesn't make sense. If the UUID is unique to the install, then
it doesn't tell you anything. If it is somehow unique to the hardware,
then that mapping needs to be made transparent as that reveals other
information (probably cpu and disk serial numbers and nic mac addresses)
about the users hardware.

If you are really worried about duplicate installs on essentially the
same machine, then perhaps a check box indicating that would be a better
way to provide that information.