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    PfSense Data Collection

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • F
      Funkenstein
      last edited by

      Hi All,

      I'm new and I've just got my pfSense box working.  I'm pretty excited in that it seems to be running pretty well but I had a basic question regarding data collection.

      Is there a way to find out what statistics/data (if any) pfSense and it's packages collect and send back to their respective development teams?

      If there is any sort of collection of data.  I would expect that there is a privacy policy associated with it?

      Thanks!
      -F

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        If your box crashes you have the option of sending a crash report back to the team. The box checks for updates and downloads them if necessary and the developers log individual IPs to get an idea of how many live installs there are. That's it as far as I know.

        Steve

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        • F
          Funkenstein
          last edited by

          Thanks Steve.

          I think I'll also try contacting the developers of the individual packages I use as well: snort, ntop, bandwidthd.

          If anyone has any other info, I'd love to hear it.

          -F

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          • P
            phil.davis
            last edited by

            There are common things on pfsense site/s that all/most installs access regularly, like:
            a) Check for updates
            b) Actually do a firmware update
            c) Monthly download of latest bogons/bogonsv6 files
            I believe that stats are collected like how many unique public IPs get the bogons update each month. That gives a reasonable measure of how many real running installs there are "in the wild", a figure which gets publicized every now and then.
            This is not really "statistics that are sent back", it is just site usage statistics gathered by the download server/s.

            As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
            If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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            • F
              Funkenstein
              last edited by

              Thanks Phil.  That all makes sense.

              I do notice something going to a site in Italy, I think it's possibly from Ntop.  I'd like to check into that.

              It's not a terribly urgent concern, but I do think we should know these things.

              -F

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