Muchas gracias.
These do not look like update checks. These look like connections to your hosting servers. Most likely trying to check to see if theyāre āaliveā. None of my Stacks will connect to ābellā for updates. Theyāre all using chillidogsoftware.com for updates :)
-Greg
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But therein lies the mystery. I am not using Chillidog as a host. Therefore why would Chillidog show up at all?
Are you hosting Realmac? Wondering if that can be the connection.
To quote Monsieur G himself:
āThese do not look like update checks. These look like connections to your hosting servers. Most likely trying to check to see if theyāre āaliveā. None of my Stacks will connect to ābellā for updates. Theyāre all using chillidogsoftware.com for updates :)ā
Sorry missed that one. Bell is one of Gregās hosting servers, so if this site isnāt hosting there, is it possible you are pulling content from another that is?
Nope.
the app, any plugin, any stack, or any theme (assuming waterfall is installed) could make those requests. chilidog is popular among our little group of developers ā so those requests donāt seem suspicious or out of the ordinary at all.
do you have the complete URL thatās being contacted? that might help identify the particular add on.
also: is there a reason youāre looking into this? is there a problem? just curiosity? privacy concerns?
Just purchased and installed Radio Silence, a kind of Firewall for Dummies, yesterday. But being a total neophyte in those areas, the information was rather a revelation. I expected a lot of Adobe bad guys, but not some of the others that reared their little heads. And so I was really curious.
But in the grand scheme of things, there is no such thing as privacy anymore. Google knows everything about me anyway, even stuff that I donāt know. And so Rapidweaver and the mysterious Chillidog are really no big deal.
But thank you, gentlemen, for all your feedback. It is greatly appreciated.
As Isaiah said, a lot of devs use Chillidog to host their sites/stack repositories, youāre seeing the ābellā server(s) in your list as they are queried for individual stack updates.
You think Google knows you?
You donāt know half of it!
- Hello! Gordonās Pizza?
-
- No sir itās Googleās Pizza.
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- So itās a wrong number?
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- No sir, Google bought Gordonās Pizza.
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- OK. Take my order please ā¦
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- Certainly Sir sir, would you like the usual?
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- The usual? You know me?
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- According to our caller ID, the last 12 times, you ordered pizza with cheeses, sausage, thick crustā¦
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- OK! Thatās it
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- May I suggest to you this time ricotta, arugula with dry tomato?
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- No, I hate vegetables
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- But your cholesterol is not good
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- How do you know?
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- Through the subscribers guide. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years
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- Okay, but I do not want this pizza, I already take medicine
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- You have not taken the medicine regularly, 4 months ago, you only purchased a box with 30 tablets at Drugsale Network
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- I bought more from another drugstore
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- Itās not showing on your credit card
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- I paid in cash
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- But you did not withdraw that much cash according to your bank statement
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- I have another source of cash
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- This is not showing as per you last Tax form unless you got it from undeclared income source
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- WHAT THE HELL? Enough! Iām sick of Google, Facebook, twitter, WhatsApp. Iām going to an Island without internet,where there is no cell phone line and no one to spy on me
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- I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport as it expired 5 weeks ago.
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Thatās good!
Should be hung everywhereā¦
I was very recently in a restaurant when a group of ten Chinese guests entered.
They ordered food and then everyone pulled out their mobiles.
Not a single word was spoken for the next twenty minutes until the food arrived.
Then, with mouths full, suddenly everyone was talking at the same time!
Hey Iām not mysterious :D Iām Chillidog Software and Chillidog Hosting. Also Iām also on the forums here, here and here. I also do a podcast so please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need any help :D
-Greg
2 Likes
You summarised my life!
First, letās break from this āphone homeā phrase. It doesnāt have a specific meaning, but implies something negative: to collect private info. Letās talk about two specific things instead: collecting private info and performing automatic updates.
Iāll do private info firstā¦
Do all apps collect private info?
No.
Does Stacks?
No.
Does every stack?
No.
Does any stack?
No. (discussion about this at the end)
Does RapidWeaver?
I donāt know. And Iām not going to try to guess. Youāll have to ask someone else to do it. š
Does any app?
Yes. Some do.
Many companies sell advertising as their primary revenue stream (Facebook, Google). Some do it to to reduce the price of their products (amazon, your internet provider, netflix, your television probably).
Figuring out which companies do this, which youāre ok with, and which youāre not is not easy. I donāt claim to know the answer myself.
4 Likes
OK, now letās talk about automatic updates.
All apps MUST update. Itās really as simple as that. An app that doesnāt update regularly will soon be inoperable after a few system updates.
Apps use the network to update. Some do it through a proxy (like an app store). Some do it through an always running faceless background app (Dropbox does this). But they all do it somehow.
And they all use the network to do it.
Does every app update?
Yes. 100% or nearly.
Does Stacks update?
Yes.
Does every stack update?
No, but many do.
Does RapidWeaver update?
Yes.
I can state plainly and with 100% certainty that Stacks collects no data, because Stacks is me and no one else. I donāt collect data. I have no use for it. In fact I try hard to avoid collecting data because I fear the liability. So done. Boom. Zero.
But how 'bout each stack?
A stack in and of itself does not have any executable code. You canāt ārunā a stack on your computer. So by itself it canāt do much of anything and certainly canāt collect any info.
So how does a stack update?
A stack contains a single piece of info, a URL to an update server (sometimes called an āappcastā). Stacks (thatās me) makes a single request to this URL when it starts up. It does this for each stack.
What info is sent during an update?
The request includes enough info so that the server can answer the question āIs there an update available?ā
- the version of Stacks
- the version of RapidWeaver
- the stackās ID
- a digital signature to let the server know that itās really Stacks sending the request.
Each stack can collect that info and also the IP address where you run RapidWeaver.
BUT NOTHING MORE.
In other words: they canāt collect anything useful or valuable. So they probably donāt bother.
ā¦BUTā¦
Once a stack is in use and placed onto a live webpage ā things get a bit more interesting. Perhaps thatās a discussion for a different day. How does malicious code affect websites, does it affect your site, how do you trust the many components you depend upon, etc. Again, there are no easy or simple answers there.
8 Likes
Great information. Thank you so much for both these posts.
So to be clear, you state that a stack can collect IP address data ā but does Stacks send that info too (not on your list)?
when computers talk to each other they trade fundamental information. an ip address is one of those pieces of information.
your ip address is never āsentā. not excplicitly. i do not collect that info.
but your computer exposes your ip to every server your computer contacts. even secure servers. even in so-called incognito mode.
but it is very difficult to use an isolated ip address without any other data.
although itās rumored that the large corporations (like Facebook) do this now. however my guess is that itās a tiny bit outseide the means of a stack developer. š¤£
1 Like