I posted a question back in September about the Tails Greeter. I wanted
to know if making changes to Language and Region settings in the Tails
Greeter had any negative privacy implications, like making it easier to
fingerprint users. "u" responded that it would be better to ask the
Help Desk.
The response I got from the Help Desk was vague and didn't help me
understand the issue better - they even changed their mind after their
first response and sent me a correction, but it was a bit vague too. The
truth is I don't think the person who responded seemed to know the
answer for sure, they were just going on some personal testing. I asked
some follow-up questions for clarity but that was in September and there
was no response.
I looked back at "u"'s email and noticed the full name of this group is
"Tails user experience & user interface design", and I think this query
falls strongly under "user experience" _and_ "interface design".
I checked in the Tails Greeter Help menu (clicking on the (?) in the
Tails Greeter) and there's no mention there of privacy implications. I
think this should be remedied. Users should be comfortable knowing what
impact changes to the Language and Region settings may or may not have
on user privacy. If there is no impact, users should still be informed
so that the paranoid ones (and that's why they're using Tails after all)
can be confident.
I think it's also important because there's the bug at the moment that
allows the user's IP address to be gathered by exploiting the Unsafe
Browser. This is evidence that Tails default settings should not always
be assumed to be secure. This situation raises more questions in the
user's mind, which makes clarity on other settings more a necessity than
a courtesy.
Sorry for all the posts, btw, had some time on my hands to clear up some
stuff from 2019!
Happy New Year to everyone!
