CRW

Home Wiki

Canonical

View on consumerrights.wiki ↗

Work in progress
This article has been flagged for additional work. Treat its claims as provisional.
Stub
This article is a stub. The wiki community is still building it out.
Verification concerns
Editors have raised concerns about the verifiability of one or more claims.
Contents9
  1. Consumer impact summary
  2. Positives
  3. Upstreaming in the Linux ecosystem
  4. Incidents
  5. Tracking
  6. Ad for Ubuntu Pro when using APT (2022—)
  7. Products
  8. See also
  9. References

❗Article Status Notice: This Article is a stub

This article is underdeveloped, and needs additional work to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues. Learn more ▼

Issues may include:

  • This article needs to be expanded to provide meaningful information
  • This article requires additional verifiable evidence to demonstrate systemic impact
  • More documentation is needed to establish how this reflects broader consumer protection concerns
  • The connection between individual incidents and company-wide practices needs to be better established
  • The article is simply too short, and lacks sufficient content

How you can help:

  • Add documented examples with verifiable sources
  • Provide evidence of similar incidents affecting other consumers
  • Include relevant company policies or communications that demonstrate systemic practices
  • Link to credible reporting that covers these issues
  • Flesh out the article with relevant information

This notice will be removed once the article is sufficiently developed. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the Discord (join here) and post to the #appeals channel, or mention its status on the article's talk page.

Canonical
Basic information
Founded 2004
Legal Structure Private
Industry Computing
Also known as
Official website https://www.canonical.com/

Canonical is a software company best known for creating Ubuntu, an operating system based on Linux. It is largely funded by South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

  • User Freedom
  • User Privacy
  • Business Model
  • Market Control

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.


Positives

Upstreaming in the Linux ecosystem

Alongside Red Hat and Google, Canonical makes up a substantial portion of upstream security patches in the Linux ecosystem. They maintain AppArmor,[1] a Linux security system that proactively manages threats, Snap,[2] a Linux appstore with sandbox support, and Livepatch,[3] a system to patch the Linux kernel without needing to reboot.

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Canonical category.

Tracking

Canonical collects user telemetry from Snap,[4] which is shipped by default in Ubuntu.[5]

Previously, Canonical sent local file search queries to their own servers, which were used to recommend ads on Amazon.[6] In 2014, this feature was removed.[7]

In 2018, telemetry tracking for hardware components, software configuration, and crashes were added in an opt-out model.[8]

Ad for Ubuntu Pro when using APT (2022—)

Running APT update in the terminal shows an ad for Ubuntu Pro.
Running APT update in the terminal shows an ad for Ubuntu Pro.

In September 2022, Canonical started adding opt-out[9] ads for their Ubuntu Pro service when using APT.[10]

Products

  • Ubuntu

See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.


References

  1. ↑ "AppArmor". AppArmor. Archived from the original on 16 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  2. ↑ "The app store for Linux". Snapcraft. Archived from the original on 16 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  3. ↑ "Livepatch". Livepatch. Archived from the original on 3 Apr 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  4. ↑ "Snap Store metrics". Snapcraft. Archived from the original on 5 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  5. ↑ "Installing snap on Ubuntu". Snapcraft. Archived from the original on 3 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  6. ↑ Stallman, Richard (12 Jul 2012). "Ubuntu Spyware: What to do?". Free Software Foundation. Archived from the original on 17 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  7. ↑ Hoffman, Chris (29 Oct 2014). "Ubuntu's Unity 8 desktop will remove the Amazon search 'spyware'". PCWorld. Archived from the original on 11 Mar 2025. Retrieved 16 Mar 2025.
  8. ↑ allo (6 Apr 2018). "How to opt-out usage data collection in Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic)?". superuser. Archived from the original on 6 Apr 2018. Retrieved 24 Mar 2026.
  9. ↑ Scotty_Trees (9 Oct 2022). "How to get rid of Ubuntu Pro advertisement when updating apt?". Ask Ubuntu. Archived from the original on 9 Oct 2022. Retrieved 24 Mar 2026.
  10. ↑ Sneddon, Joey (26 Jan 2023). "Ubuntu's New Terminal 'Ad' is Angering Users". OMG! Ubuntu. Archived from the original on 13 Oct 2022. Retrieved 24 Mar 2026.
Filed under