0020489: Option to disable online accesses - MantisBT

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0020489	MMW 5	General	public	2023-12-19 05:25	2024-07-24 20:44

Reporter	zvezdan	Assigned To
Priority	urgent	Severity	minor	Reproducibility	always
Status	feedback	Resolution	open
Product Version	5.0
Target Version	5.2

Summary	0020489: Option to disable online accesses
Description	I though this is already reported in Mantis, but I cannot find it, not even in MM4 projects. There are many users concerned about their privacy and they don't like MM accessing Internet without their will. I reported this 10 years ago in MM4 forum with the subject "How to stop Connections to the Internet" and didn't get any response: "Why MM4 is accessing Internet when I have disabled all options for such thing (auto-check for updates, Podcast, FreeDB, Media Sharing, Web, Internet radio, ...)? MM3 didn't have any opened connection with the same settings." There is the same problem with MM5. I have blocked MM in the Windows Firewall rules since my post in Forum, but it is really annoying to add/change those rules whenever I want to add a new portable installation or to change its location on disk.
Additional Information	http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=105472 http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=98563 https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=76866
Tags	No tags attached.

Fixed in build

jiri 2023-12-20 01:50 administrator ~0073912	Michal, which actions can trigger unwanted Internet access (wrt metadata search, etc)? Can we avoid them, or is possibly another option needed?

michal 2023-12-20 09:27 developer ~0073913 Last edited: 2023-12-20 09:32	@jiri: it was decided in the past, that specific view will always do online search, like for image to artist/album view header. See issue 0019253. View header control is for displaying image and description from our MusicBrainz server, it would have often nearly nothing to display without this. Connection to our MB server is part of the main functionality of these views, it also fetches alternative albums, similar artists, Wikipedia links. Youtube/Online mode would not make sense at all then. Playing view fetches images to the background, this is again part of the functionality, to display playing track with images. I did not see many complains about this for years, it does not seem to be big problem for most of the users, but in case we decide to do some "paranoid mode", it would affect part of the functionalities, I would not do it to 5.1. Also what to do in case user presses "artwork search" in this paranoid mode, should we do online search? Or should we also hide all functionalities, which can cause some online request... or for all removed functionalities in paranoid mode give ability to run them manually anyway. And should we also block all attempts to play online radio and access any online links... Some external scripts can go to Internet anyway and bypass this setting. I think it is complex issue affecting behavior in more ways and places. Solution cannot be done with a snap of the fingers and should be clearly specified, if we decide to do it some way.

zvezdan 2023-12-20 10:37 updater ~0073916 Last edited: 2023-12-20 10:37	There was complains for years, you could see them if you open links that I provided, and these are just ones that I remember. This program is not only for those users that want to have access to the Internet all the time. It could be used with local media files just fine. There are many users that don't need YouTube, Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, artwork/lyrics searches, online radio or whatever. They just want to be able to listen their locally stored music without thinking what the program is doing in background with their data without their knowledge. There are many media players that also have implemented similar things that require access to the Internet, but they do that only on explicit request. Your program is sitting in the background and has the access to the Internet all the time. You could see on my screenshot, I started the same playlist in MM5, VLC, foobar, PotPlayer and Winamp and only your program can be seen in the Network monitor. Every decent program has Privacy settings taken very seriously. There are pages and pages of different settings in such programs where you could set what could be accessed on-line. This is not included only for paranoid people. It is only your program that don't care about that for years.

zvezdan 2023-12-20 10:40 updater ~0073918	I have problem uploading the screenshot: Access to Internet.png (1,395,017 bytes)

rusty 2024-04-02 14:53 administrator ~0074921	Short/medium term: we'll try to tackle 0017638 Future: let's review whether this is still a requirement.