The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a solid critique is given on the implementation of Amazon search results in Ubuntu 12.10. The burgerrechtenorganisatie talks about a potential privacylek and perplexed by the general terms and conditions that Canonical uses.
Even before the official release of Ubuntu 12.10 came the necessary commotion about the show Amazon products in the Dash when entering a keyword. Canonical responded quite late to the riot, that Amazongate was called, and decided in the privacy options of Ubuntu 12.10 has the option to offer to the so-called Shopping Lens off, and the general terms and conditions for the search to bring to the surface.
For the EFF, this is not enough. The organization states that by entering a search term had over a secure https connection to productsearch.ubuntu.com but that data from Amazon via a non-secure http connection to be retrieved. This allows a third party, for example, someone who is on the same wi-fi network operates, which search results are an Ubuntu user to return. According to the EFF runs the privacy this danger.
The EFF also states that in the general conditions is to read that Canonical zoekdata can share with more companies than Amazon only. The burgerrechtenorganisatie is of the opinion that Canonical to do this, an opt-in mechanism should offer instead of an opt-out option. In addition, the organization that Canonical more insight to give in what the company does with the collected search data and ip addresses, and that the option “include online search results’ by default, must be turned off.
Or Canonical, the EFF-proposals still in Ubuntu 12.10 will make, is the question. In the meantime, the work started on Ubuntu 13.04 and it would be the link with commercial search services further refined.