Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Unity Dash Searches Will Be Encrypted in Ubuntu 12.10


A lot of people expressed security concerns about the integration of an Amazon lens into the Home lens in Ubuntu 12.10, but Canonical is making sure that users’ privacy will be respected.

Mark Shuttleworh, founder of Canonical, tried to address some of the problems that were mentioned by users, but the backlash of this new feature in Ubuntu 12.10 has caused quite a stir in the community.

So far, the traffic made through the Unity Dash, towards Amazon and through Canonical's servers, has not been encrypted, but Canonical assured us that this would change with the final version of Ubuntu 12.10.

Jono Bacon, community manager at Ubuntu, posted on his blog a response from John Lenton, the senior engineering manager in the Online Services team at Canonical.

We appreciate some of the community concerns about these searches operating unencrypted and we are currently working to encrypt these dash searches ready for the release of this feature in Ubuntu 12.10. This should resolve most of the concerns shared about unencrypted traffic.


This is certainly good news and the protests will get quiet for a while, at least until Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) is officially released.

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