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February 6, 2021 10:34 pm

Raspberry Pi OS Accused of 'Phoning Home' To Microsoft

Slashdot reader rushtobugment quotes a story from Hot Hardware:One of the software options for running a Raspberry Pi module is Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian), the officially supported Debian-based operating system put out by The Raspberry Pi Foundation. It has been around since 2015 without too much complaint. However, a recent update has some Raspberry Pi OS users up in arms over a key change involving Microsoft. The latest update installs a Microsoft apt respository on all any machine running Raspberry Pi OS, and does it without any admin consent. As discovered by Reddit user fortysix_n_2, the official reason is an endorsement of Microsoft's integrated development environment, Visual Studio Code, which is fine and dandy. However, it's claimed this even gets installed on headless devices that used a light image without a GUI. As a result, every time you do an "apt update" on your Pi device, the OS pings Microsoft. "By having this repo, every time an install of Raspberry Pi OS is updated it will ping a Microsoft server. Microsoft will know you're using Raspberry Pi OS/likely Raspberry Pi owner and your IP address...." fortysix_n_2 explains. Or, as a headline explains on the Windows Central blog, "Microsoft repo silently added to Raspberry Pi OS, folks begin the freak out..." "As one particularly vocal commenter pointed out, modifying the sources.list in Linux without consent just doesn't happen. It also doesn't just apply to new images, it has been built out to be added to existing machines, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/GQ9387JA3jA/raspberry-pi-os-accused-of-phoning-home-to-microsoft

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