[Popcon-developers] Drop atime and ctime for privacy reasons possible?

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 09:39:44AM +0000, adrelanos wrote:
> Bill Allombert:
> > On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 10:37:00AM +0000, adrelanos wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> why <atime> <ctime> <package-name> <mru-program> <tag> is transmitted?
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be enough to transmit <package-name> <mru-program> <tag>?
> >>
> >> Since the tag with RECENT-CTIME, OLD, or NOFILES can be calculated
> >> locally, why there is need to transmit atime and ctime? I'd like to see
> >> it dropped for privacy reasons.
> > 
> > Hello Adrelanos,
> > 
> > I do not know the design decision about sending atime and ctime. I will review
> > the server side code to see whether it use the data (and how).
> 
> Hi,
> 
> can you share the results please?

The <tag> is purely for documentation, the server does not use it. 
This allow to change the policy on the server side. This is important
since it is not practical to upgrade the clients, given lots of user
use outdated versions.

On the other hand it is useless for atime and ctime to be accurate to
the second. It would be sufficient to report them rounded to 24h.
But then we would need to be careful not to create artficial gap between
the report time, the atime and the ctime. But this is possible.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.