It seems you missed an opportunity (BTW, is that what they call "content marketing"?).
Had you left your VM running a little while longer, you might've noticed something else in your Netflow data: yet another service calling home to Canonical twice a day.
I wish I were joking about this but... the (likely) "primary" reason for this is so that they can show ads to users when they log in -- ads for things like TV shows or software for other operating systems or, sometimes, just a "fun fact".
I can't really say it's the only reason, however. With all of the system information they're getting off of each host, there's now several different things they can use it for and, of course, that provides them with even more motivation to keep doing it!
This isn't a new thing, though. In fact, people have been expressing their "unhappiness" about it to Canonical for a few years now [0,1,2].
Unfortunately:
- it's still installed by default
- it's still enabled by default
- they've actually increased the amount of system info that they're collecting [3]
- it's installed as part of the "base-files" package -- an "essential" package which cannot be removed!
- "it's a 'feature', not a bug" (so we absolutely should not expect it to get removed)
- apparently, a 42 line MOTD [4] is perfectly acceptable
I suppose there's one "positive" thing I can say about it: at least they're using TLS to encrypt the data over the wire. :/
--
If you want to disable this spyware on your Ubuntu hosts, change "ENABLED" to "0" in /etc/default/motd-news:
$ sudo sed -i -e '/^ENABLED=1$/s/1/0/' /etc/default/motd-news
When executed, /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news checks if "ENABLED" is set to "1". If not, it exits without calling home.
50-motd-news gets launched by motd-news.service which itself is activated -- twice per day -- by motd-news.timer. Since I like to be thorough, I recommend running a few more commands (as it's impossible to know that Canonical won't change any of this in the future!):
That should do it. If you're rather not have to worry about something like this in the future, you may want to consider replacing Ubuntu Linux with Debian GNU/Linux.
Thanks for the thorough post! I'm currently switching to debian but I have a few long-running cloud VMs still on Ubuntu. I'm finally gonna neuter the MOTD ads.
Had you left your VM running a little while longer, you might've noticed something else in your Netflow data: yet another service calling home to Canonical twice a day.
I wish I were joking about this but... the (likely) "primary" reason for this is so that they can show ads to users when they log in -- ads for things like TV shows or software for other operating systems or, sometimes, just a "fun fact".
I can't really say it's the only reason, however. With all of the system information they're getting off of each host, there's now several different things they can use it for and, of course, that provides them with even more motivation to keep doing it!
This isn't a new thing, though. In fact, people have been expressing their "unhappiness" about it to Canonical for a few years now [0,1,2].
Unfortunately:
- it's still installed by default
- it's still enabled by default
- they've actually increased the amount of system info that they're collecting [3]
- it's installed as part of the "base-files" package -- an "essential" package which cannot be removed!
- "it's a 'feature', not a bug" (so we absolutely should not expect it to get removed)
- apparently, a 42 line MOTD [4] is perfectly acceptable
I suppose there's one "positive" thing I can say about it: at least they're using TLS to encrypt the data over the wire. :/
--
If you want to disable this spyware on your Ubuntu hosts, change "ENABLED" to "0" in /etc/default/motd-news:
When executed, /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news checks if "ENABLED" is set to "1". If not, it exits without calling home.50-motd-news gets launched by motd-news.service which itself is activated -- twice per day -- by motd-news.timer. Since I like to be thorough, I recommend running a few more commands (as it's impossible to know that Canonical won't change any of this in the future!):
That should do it. If you're rather not have to worry about something like this in the future, you may want to consider replacing Ubuntu Linux with Debian GNU/Linux.--
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14662088
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/98ctgu/ubuntu_server...
[2]: https://dev.to/fivnex/open-letter-to-canonical-ltd-a1k
[3]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/18...
[4]: https://joe.schafer.dev/chatty-ubuntu-motd/