Audacity

I will use the old version. From behind a firewall it can't send any data anyway.

Agreed, firewall should stop it. Still, it's dodgy. Would like to have time to check the source code and see how this data collection is implemented. Apparently the "Muse Group" is headquartered in Shanghai...soooooooo...........

Does anybody know if this affects "Dark Audacity" too?

According to a post on the official forum [1] the then-current version, 3.0.2, does not have the networking ability to 'phone home', but will be applied in future versions. It's still open source, so checkable, but take from this what you will. It's still a dodgy move, but version 2.x are available from FOSSHub [2]. Personally I will continue to use version 2, as it's a bit of an 'old friend', and gets a lot of jobs done quickly. Hopefully someone will fork a privacy-away version at some point.

[1] https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=119177 [2] https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity.html

So, there already exists a privacy-aware safe fork of Audacity. AlternativeTo at the rescue, as always :)

Tenacity lhttps://alternativeto.net/software/tenacity/about/ Tenacity is an easy-to-use, privacy-friendly, FLOSS, cross-platform multi-track audio editor/recorder for Windows, macOS, Linux and other operating systems.

There are two cases where Audacity may "phone home":

1. Crash reporting. This is a common and extremely useful feature in many apps, including open source apps. When a crash report is generated, you have the option to submit it or not - it's your choice, it is not sent unless you click the Send button.

2. Update checking. This was a frequently requested feature which was recently added and many users find it very convenient. As with Firefox and many other open source apps that have automatic update notifications, you can turn this feature off. In the case of Audacity, there's even a pop-up on first run telling you how to do that. It can be turned off at any time in "Preferences > Application".

Sadly there has been a lot of FUD about these features, in part because someone from Muse posted a very poor draft privacy statement on the Audacity website (probably due to poor legal advice, but that's just my conjecture). That privacy statement was taken down and replaced a couple of weeks later with the (much more reasonable) privacy statement that can be seen on the Audacity website now.

i guess they must have changed their privacy policy in the last 7 months: 4. - "Who do we share your personal information with? We do not store or share any personal information."

6.1 - "Data storage, retention and deletion For update checking, your IP address is fully anonymised before storage. For error reporting, your IP address is discarded entirely. For these reasons, it is impossible for us to identify you."

6.2 - "All data is anonymised before storage. We delete all data within 12 months of it being collected."

7.1 - "Your data protection rights Under the GDPR, individuals have certain data protection rights, including the right to access, correct, update or request deletion of their personal information, which you can exercise by emailing privacy@audacityteam.org. However, these rights only apply to the extent that the controller is able to identify the individuals whose personal information is collected. As mentioned above, the Audacity Team anonymises or discards all information that would enable us to identify you, and the processing of the information we collect does not require us to identify you. For these reasons, the exercise of your GDPR rights may be limited, or in some cases, might not apply."

correct as of 21/01/22