Score:0

GitLab self-hosted instances data sharing

in flag

I'm working on a personal project with some friends and it is becoming quite large, so I'm considering to self-host a GitLab instance to help preventing the development to go to complete chaos. However, I discovered that GitLab's privacy policy allows GitLab to gather some data from its users and share them with third parties and I'm not OK with that, but it isn't clear if that applies to "Self-managed" instances with Usage Ping disabled (1, 2). Some weeks ago I wrote to the developers asking for more information, but I'm still waiting for an answer.

Normally I would just discard the option, but I found that some free (libre) software projects, e.g. The Tor Project and GNOME, use self-hosted GitLab instances. Especially the former is (should be?) extra careful about users' privacy, so I'm not sure about what to suppose.

So, the question is: do GitLab self-hosted instances send any data (personal or not) to GitLab or other third parties when the Usage Ping is disabled? If so, how can I prevent that?

Rubén avatar
br flag
The problems is that the question is focused on asking for external resources.
Ntakwetet avatar
in flag
@Rubén Thanks for the feedback; I tried to improve the question.
Score:1
cz flag

Self-hosted GitLab has exactly two features which send data to GitLab:

  • Usage ping, which you have already discovered, which collects a variety of anonymized statistics about how users use GitLab, and
  • Version check, which checks to see if an update is available.

GitLab Inc. collects your instance’s version and hostname (through the HTTP referer) as part of the version check. No other information is collected.

Both can be enabled or disabled at will.

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.