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Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application you open (2020)

I have a Wacom drawing tablet. I use it to draw cover illustrations for my blog posts, such as this one.

I was unable to imagine the project kickoff meeting in which Wacom decided to bundle Google Analytics with their device, which - remember - is essentially a mouse, but managed to restrain themselves from also grabbing some deliciously intrusive information while they were at it. Maybe Wacom could hide in the sweet safety of murky territory if they released some sort of mobile app integration or a weekly personal usage report that required this data, but until then I’m happy to classify them as an obligingly clear case of nefariousness. I realized that the request must be some kind of pre-flight check that allowed Wacom to turn off analytics collection remotely without requiring users to install a driver update.

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