Re: KDE phoning home

Nicholas D Steeves <[email protected]> Sun, 07 Sep 2025 16:40:01 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.user.kde
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Martin Steigerwald <[email protected]> writes:

> I am pretty sure no one replicated this setup for Runit based systems, so… 
> unless KDE starts it by some other means, like for example with "kded", 
> then it might just not run here. At least by looking at the package 
> drkonqi – see below – it does not seem to be auto started by DBUS in case 
> Systemd is not available.
>
> I think in case it is triggered by a timer then you can disable or mask 
> the timer. Like
>
> systemctl --user disable drkonqi-sentry-postman.timer
> systemctl --user mask drkonqi-sentry-postman.timer

+1

> Those service and timer files are in package "drkonqi". So I bet that is 
> the package to report a bug for.

+1  This kind of phone home behaviour is substantially more serious
than lintian's privacy-breach-generic warning, and it needs to be fixed.

It seems like there are several bugs here:

  1. Enabling drkonqi doesn't disclose that it will enable
  pseudopermanent user tracking.  This is a consent issue.
  2. Upgrades from bookworm to trixie silently enable the user-tracker.
  This violates Debian user expectations of privacy and consent and imho
  is a significant regression.
  3. Is drkonqi-sentry-postman.timer installed, by default, in a
  disabled state for new trixie installations?  If not, that's another bug.

Cheers,
Nicholas

P.S. Please feel free to quote me on this

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