Privacy risk - Plasma notifications, Systemd

Newbie Corner
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#1

Hi fellow Manjaro users

So I've been rummaging through my journalctl logs lately, and recently I noticed that journalctl keeps a log of every single notification plasmashell prints out. And these logs date way back too, so my question is - how much of a privacy risk is this, because it seems to me that anyone with access to the drive can just copy the logs from /var/log/journal and print out every single notification from journalctl, including all of my private messages, basic file operations (copy, move, delete), music etc.

Do you guys see this as a problem?
Who's at fault here, plasmashell for logging everything, or systemd for not being careful about privacy? Or the applications themselves for letting on too much?

#2

Will do more things and access directly information about you, not just the log files. You can reduce the log by following this:

and you can also exclude the Qt logging by adding this to .bash_profile

QT_LOGGING_RULES='*=false'
export QT_LOGGING_RULES
8 Likes
#3

I have a diary where I wrote every intimate detail and my unvarnished opinion of everybody I dislike.

Do you guys see this as a problem?
So my question is - how much of a privacy risk is this, because it seems to me that anyone with access to the dairy can just ....Who’s at fault here...

Either I lock up my dairy or burn it . My fault, right?
So...sudo journalctl --vacuum-size=500M && sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=2d
Or if paranoid, vacuum-size=10M or vacuum-time=0.22d :laughing:

Looks like the politics is getting to you.

7 Likes
#4

Dairy? Not helping

#5

Nah it's fair enough, cows are people too.

2 Likes
#6

Thanks, that helps, but it still means that the journal contains things it shouldn't, by design, much like GNOME's privacy fiasco (vte 0.21.6). It may also be due to KDE's overzealous developers. I just don't know if I should make it a feature request.

#7

Neither funny nor helpful. Either be useful or crack better jokes.

#8

Look alike but mean totally different things.

#9

Such a sour-puss, aren't you? Sorry to interrupt your stream-of-paranoia.

#10

...do anything the hell they want. Get a sense of proportion & perspective.

#11

Actually it displays the right things, that are helpful to trace issues. For developers is the right place to look for problems, for some users also to report what is not working so things get fixed with the next update. Without logs it would be almost impossible, and we would start making descriptions that might get lost in translations from diary, to dairy or even diarrhea :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue:
It would be a real concern if those logs would be dropped in some unknown remote server ...

Off-topic: The joke from @Kadee was actually spot on :smiley: because @gohlip in one place used diary and in another he wrote dairy ... and was funny because it also made sense in bot cases:

Now imagine those cows at the sight of fire ... :rofl:

2 Likes
#12

I would expect that it would delete all logs older than 2 days, however it did not work and I still see logs 12 days olde even. It did deleted something.

Aaaghghhgrhr, I hate when things are broken for no obvious reason :smiley:

#13

I'm not paranoid lol
Not really - what if the drive's encrypted? What if it has TRIM turned on (and GC actually works)? What they can do with the drive provided they take possession of it varies... greatly.

But also, consider this - this isn't something systemd should be doing regardless of privacy, is it?

#14

You guys have a weird sense of humor but hey I suppose it's an acquired taste LOL

Hmm sure, but storing the content of my text messages should surely be beyond the purview of systemd. They're really not helpful in debugging problems. Then again, it's Plasma that's providing this information to systemd so... maybe Plasma should stop being a loudmouth :smiley:

#15

Maybe you need to go off to join the small band of Nixers still waging the Systemd Wars, & change to a non-systemd distro?

Btw, not only are you evidently a sour-puss, you appear also to be sexist. Don't write posts soliciting forum assistance wherein you alienate those not possessing dangly-bits.

1 Like
#16

Change your journald logging preferences, then it won't.

1 Like
#17

Yeah, no, my argument was - should it refrain from doing this by design?

#18

Sexist how?

#19

I hear that all the time, especially from clients that love my caricatures but then when i draw them is not so funny anymore :stuck_out_tongue:

now is called journal ... if it stops journal-ing would be called ??? :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#20

Hey! All your English are belong to us. Now give us all the milk too. We're lactose intolerant. :stuck_out_tongue:

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