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1vuio0pswjnm7 12 hours ago

When viewing the "Show log" screen in Netguard, under the top right, three dot menu there are checkbox options for "Show names" and "Show organization". Netguard sends requests to ipinfo.io to get information about IP addresses. These requests to ipinfo.io do not show up in the Netguard log.

There is no cause for concern necessarily. These are design choices, nothing more.

Users have no idea what happens to the data that leaves their computers. To quote from another story currently on the HN front page: "It's incredibly easy to give information away. But once that data is out there, it's nearly impossible to take back." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44689059

Promises made by developers are reassuring to some, but rarely if ever legally enforceable in the event something goes wrong, and the harm already caused may be beyond redress. As a proactive measure users can, among other things, seek to minimise the amount of data they send. For example, some users might want the _option_ to stop their phones from constantly trying to ping or connect to remote servers _without any explicit user intent to do so_. Maybe they do not want their phone to act like a beacon to someone else's remote server.

The point of the comment is that sometimes there are remote connections being made to servers chosen by developers that are assumed to be OK with all users, e.g., connections to Graphene servers, IPinfo servers, or myriad other examples. Meanwhile there is no option for the user to disable this behaviour. There may be some users who prefer _zero_ remote connections except the ones they themselves choose to initiate or enable. The possibility of such users often seems to be overlooked or deliberately ignored.

Like Firefox constantly sending HTTP requests to remote servers to check for "connectivity". Even when the user is not trying to connect to any server. The requests are sent in the clear. This is not optional behaviour.