gnome-about-me has no documentation
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| control-center (Ubuntu) |
Incomplete
|
Undecided
|
Pascal De Vuyst | ||
Bug Description
Binary package hint: gnome-control-
Currently there is no easily-accessible information about what exactly the gnome-about-me applet does with the information it is supplied with.
There is a Help button that is unimplemented (it prints "Help goes here" on the console). I searched for 15 minutes on Google and I still couldn't find anything about it, except some bug reports that mention it.
Especially in this age of social engineering, spam & spyware -- though Linux is not yet much affected by the latter -- and all sorts of privacy abuse I think we should be very careful to train our users to be security conscious.
Right now the applet is just an invitation for users to give away a lot of private information, without any explanation as to what that information is used to and what applications have access to it.
As I assume the applet isn't doing anything much for now, there should be at least a help window telling people that. If there is any support for an application to retrieve the information there (e.g. DBUS) I think it is a priority that work should be done on basic privacy measures.
(e.g., the user should be able to choose what info is public (thus easily accessible for every program, for instance Gaim) and what info is not (thus programs may request it, and the user is asked to confirm). The private part, at least, should be encrypted in some way.)
I really look up to just entering my photo once and having it available on any chat/phone/etc application that I may install, without having to remember where I put it.
Come to think of it, one could make an entire program only for the photo thing. (Multiple photos, per-program attribution, friends have free access to all of them (or at least some) so they can tag me which whatever they choose, perhaps seasonal changes, automatic capture/change of the portrait when a video camera is available (in concert with the preferred snapshot application), temporary picture analogue to the status-text in IM programs, blah, blah...) And some network-of-trust thing would be very useful (and a nice excuse for more GPG), for things like "allow these persons to see where I am" using the laptop's GPS----
OK, I'll stop day-dreaming now. This bug report is just about knowing that I can enter my info there and trust it won't be beamed to every site I access, etc.
| Áron Sisak (asisak) wrote | #1 |
| Changed in control-center: | |
| status: | Unconfirmed → Confirmed |
| Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in control-center: | |
| assignee: | nobody → pascal-devuyst |
| status: | Confirmed → Needs Info |
| Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb) wrote | #3 |
| Áron Sisak (asisak) wrote | #4 |
I guess this is a wonderful idea. However, maybe a Feature should be filed, instead of a bug report.
First check whether the idea is already registered https:/