This was brought to my attention in 2012 when Ubuntu 12.10 was released. Many people were complaining about the unity lenses and their far reaching affects(the inclusion of online shopping results in searches and online search “feature”). Since then we have had the PRISM debacle as well as many other highly publicized stories regarding our privacy and freedom. Recently a friend turned me on to a website that simply provided a script that would disable the “Big Brother” portions of Ubuntu. Pretty nifty idea if I say so myself. The website by Micah Lee is called “Fix Ubuntu” and is available here. If you are to lazy to click the link provided, below is a copy of the bash script. Enjoy!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 | #!/bin/bash GS="/usr/bin/gsettings" CCUL="com.canonical.Unity.lenses" # Figure out the version of Ubuntu that you're running V=`/usr/bin/lsb_release -rs` # The privacy problems started with 12.10, so earlier versions should do nothing if awk "BEGIN {exit !($V < 12.10 || $V >= 14.10)}"; then echo "Good news! This version of Ubuntu is not known to invade your privacy." else # Check Canonical schema is present. Take first match, ignoring case. SCHEMA="`$GS list-schemas | grep -i $CCUL | head -1`" if [ -z "$SCHEMA" ] then printf "Error: could not find Canonical schema %s.\n" "$CCUL" 1>&2 exit 1 else CCUL="$SCHEMA" fi # Turn off "Remote Search", so search terms in Dash don't get sent to the internet $GS set $CCUL remote-content-search none # If you're using earlier than 13.10, uninstall unity-lens-shopping if [ $V \< 13.10 ]; then sudo apt-get remove -y unity-lens-shopping # If you're using a later version, disable remote scopes else $GS set $CCUL disabled-scopes \ "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']" fi; # Block connections to Ubuntu's ad server, just in case if ! grep -q "127.0.0.1 productsearch.ubuntu.com" /etc/hosts; then echo -e "\n127.0.0.1 productsearch.ubuntu.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts >/dev/null fi echo "All done. Enjoy your privacy." fi |