Rapidweaver Phoning Home

1

Why is Rapidweaver phoning home?

And why is Chillidog implicated in the process?

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Why RW? Cus that’s the software you’re using?

Why Chilli? Cus you’ve got a Chilli stack installed?

3

Does all installed software phone home? Each and every app on my system? Even an app that is not open?

How about Stacks? Does each and every RW stack phone home?

4

I believe so yes, they do it to check for updates.

Someone with more knowledge on this will along soon though I suspect.

5

Could be checking for updates.

6

about updates:
stacks check for updates. and allows each installed stack to check for updates too if the developer has set that up. this requires network access of course. parts of the network access is secure, signed, and encrypted depending on what the developer has set up.

i considered making this optional, so that you could turn it off, but then decided that was a terrible idea. failing to update things leads to broken, insecure, incompatible things. there are very very few solid reasons to avoid updating your stacks.

but if you would like to totally shut off net access to apps, i’d recommend purchasing Little Snitch or something similar that is able to catch, filter, and/or reroute behind-the-scenes network accesses.

crash reporting:
in some versions of Stacks, when Stacks crashes or causes an exception it will try to phone that data home. this crash reporting has been made less useful by recent changes to RapidWeaver so we’re going to be removing this entirely for Stacks 4.

how 'bout analytics:
the released version of Stacks doesn’t currently collect any analytics on anything and never has and never will. i have no interest in ad-revenue based business models. so this is an easy promise for me to make.

i have, in the past, added analytics to private developer beta versions to monitor how widely those releases get leaked and pirated. answer: holy moly! A LOT – some competitors really enjoy seeing my betas. LOL. but why!?! i will never understand this. but whatever. if you’re a competitor, just ask, i’ll send you a copy. no need for cloak and dagger. jeez.

we do have basic google analytics on the yourhead.com website. but honestly, i don’t use it unless something crashes and then just to see if there was a weird traffic spike.

spam:
we have a mailing list. when you buy something from us you get the option to sign up for it. we send an email once every other year or so. really not very often. and even then it’s to give you a deal on the upgrade. we try to make it worth reading.
if you’re not on the mailing list and want to get on, just contact support, Christi will add you to the list.
if you’re on the list but don’t want to be, you can also contact support or just click unsubscribe on the email. we won’t contact you again.

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It’s the Wild and Wooly West. Fascinating.

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24 posts were split to a new topic: Pricing Models: Subscribition vs. One Time Purchase

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“Wild and Wooly West”

curious what you mean. it sounds like you weren’t pleased. i’m sorry if that’s the case. i’ve made every decision here very intentionally for the benefit of my users.
and i’m absolutely open to suggestions for improvements.

10

Au contraire. It wasn’t a criticism. Not at all. Just my sardonic take on what you revealed about the hairy goings-on behind the scenes.

You’re one of the last of the good guys, @isaiah. I have always been impressed by your talent, your honesty, your generosity and commitment to the community.

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i’m going to frame that one. thank you so much. you can’t imagine how much those little comments mean to me. 🙏☺️

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“Original poster” here. I apologize for returning to such a prosaic subject, but I do have a couple of questions. If I block Rapidweaver from phoning home, which I am inclined to do:

  1. Will it disable Sparkle stack updates?
  2. Will it disable Waterfall stack capability?

Thanks.

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I tried to give it a bit Hamlet style…

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35

If you disable it completely, yes.

You could also disable only special target hosts, enabling only updates from developer domains you are sure you want to get updates from.

36

“Always be a poet, even in prose”
–Charles Baudelaire

Thanks for the info.

37

it depends on how you block it.

if you just uncheck the preference, then no. it won’t disable stacks or waterfall.

if you use a firewall or packet filter like Little Snitch then you can disable anything and everything.

39

I wasn’t aware there was a preference for phoning home. Can’t seem to find it.

I am using an Ăźber simple firewall app called Radio Silence. While it does list the various components of any connection, it does not seem able to block them individually.

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Yes, please, split it up.
Signed, The Original Poster

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Split done. See new topic Pricing Models: Subscription vs. One Time Purchase

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“send anonymous…” means “phone home”
update checks are also phoning home

i am not certain how these options affect plugin updating. the entire app and plugin updater is run by realmac and is a black box to me. if you have questions you’ll have to direct them at their customer service folks.

there is no similar option for disabling individual stack updating. and i’d strongly recommend against blocking it. so much so, that wouldn’t offer support of someone to do that blocking (without a solid reason) as it’s more likely to cause harm than good.

Isaiah