Sunday, September 24, 2017

Zeitgeist Official Spyware -- Should be Removed

Zeitgeist has been quasi-inexplicably bundled by Ubuntu for quite some time, what it does is track files on your computer. This is not necessary or useful to the user and is a burden to the processor. All rationales for zeitgeist smack of cover stories alá CIA duh. All the programs and software related to ZEITGEIST are highly questionable including yet not limited to: rhythmbox, GNOME (yes all of it), evince, nautilus, firefox, compiz, geany :(, gedit, gtk-recordmydesktop.

If you want to see what data is being surreptitiously collected on your Ubuntu/[other linux flavors w/gnome?] Linux box, download the sqlitebrowser:

$> sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser

Fire it up and open up the activity.sqlite database in ~/.local/share/zeitgeist.

Then execute the following query:
SELECT t.value, datetime(e.timestamp/1000, 'unixepoch') as timestamp, u.value as subj_uri FROM uri u, text t, event e WHERE t.id = e.subj_text and u.id=e.subj_id ORDER BY e.timestamp DESC

You will likely see a list of files that you accessed that zeitgeist found interesting.
...
"Security & Privacy" "2017-09-08 18:32:43" "application://unity-activity-log-manager-panel.desktop"
"Brightness & Lock" "2017-09-08 18:32:31" "application://unity-screen-panel.desktop"
"Power" "2017-09-08 18:27:55" "application://unity-power-panel.desktop"
"Power" "2017-09-08 18:27:24" "application://unity-power-panel.desktop"
"Brightness & Lock" "2017-09-08 18:26:37" "application://unity-screen-panel.desktop"
"System Settings" "2017-09-08 18:26:26" "application://unity-control-center.desktop"
"LibreOffice Calc" "2017-09-08 18:26:10" "application://libreoffice-calc.desktop"
"Displays" "2017-09-08 18:26:01" "application://unity-display-panel.desktop"
"System Settings" "2017-09-08 18:25:18" "application://unity-control-center.desktop"

ACTOR TABLE -- ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite db
"1" "application://zeitgeist-datahub.desktop"
"2" "application://compiz.desktop"
"3" "application://geany.desktop"
"4" "application://evince.desktop"
"5" "application://gtk-recordmydesktop.desktop"
"6" "application://firefox.desktop"
"7" "application://gedit.desktop"
"8" "application://nautilus.desktop"
"9" "application://eog.desktop"

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