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admin-tomatoanon

TomatoAnon

This menu allows you to enable or disable collection of certain anonymous installation data for the TomatoAnon project. It also contains a setting to enable or disable FreshTomato's Update Notification System. For details about the anonymity of the data, see the “Security/Privacy Details” section below.

TomatoAnon Settings

Do you know what TomatoAnon does? :

  • No I don't. (I) Have to read all information before I make a choice.
    Acknowledges the user needs information before making a choice.
    Selecting this greys out the Do you want to enable TomatoAnon options.
  • Yes I do, and I want to make a choice: Acknowledges the user
    understands what TomatoAnon does and is ready to choose.
    This enables the Do you want to enable TomatoAnon menu.


The TomatoAnon project is a system that collects and reports on Tomato installations worldwide. If enabled, a Tomato script is run which collects data. The following anonymized data are then submitted to the database:

  • Country name
  • Hardware model
  • Tomato version
  • Build type (or “edition” in FreshTomato terms)
  • Wireless driver version
  • Uptime
  • Tomato Mod
  • The date/time the above data were collected


tomatoanon_web_interface.jpg


Do you want to enable TomatoAnon:

  • I'm not sure right now: Choosing this disables the TomatoAnon.
  • Yes, I'm sure I do: This enables TomatoAnon, and enables the
    checkbox for the Update Notification System.
  • No, I definitely won't enable it: This disables TomatoAnon.

The ability to view and sort these data allows users to see which firmware runs successfully on which hardware, which hardware models are popular and more. This may help the user choose an appropriate build for their hardware. Anyone at all can view data in the TomatoAnon database at its webpage:

TomatoAnon webpage


On this webpage, users may view Tomato installations using flags as a metaphor for each country:

tomatoanon_flags_sort_options.jpg

You can also sort/search data via pulldown menus, by hardware model, Tomato version, or buildtype.



The resulting report is displayed in table format.

tomatoanon_report.jpg


Update Notification System

Options:

  1. Enabled *
  2. Disabled

By default, this checkbox is enabled and the feature enabled if Yes I'm sure I do is selected above. However, you can can also uncheck it while Yes I'm sure I do is selected. When the option is checked, Tomato will check online to see if there are appropriate firmware updates for your hardware. If this feature is unchecked, Tomato will not check online for firmware updates.

If either I'm not sure right now, or No, I definitely won't enable it is selected, the checkbox will be greyed out. It will also be disabled if the No I don't. (I) Have to read all information before I will make a choice option is enabled. In both cases, Tomato will not check online for firmware updates.


tomatoanon_update_notification_system.jpg

Security/Privacy details

TomatoAnon provides priceless data to help FreshTomato developers troubleshoot, baseline, and identify issues. It was designed with security in mind. You can easily review its cleartext ASCII shebang script yourself. It can be found in: /usr/sbin/tomatoanon . It is clear from the commands used that absolutely no personal or sensitive information is collected.
Here's a sample of that script:

root@freshtomato:/root# cat /usr/sbin/tomatoanon | grep "nvram get"
ANON_ENABLED=$(nvram get tomatoanon_enable)
ANON_ANSWER=$(nvram get tomatoanon_answer)
ANON_NOTIFY=$(nvram get tomatoanon_notify)
                IS_USB=$(nvram get os_version | grep USB | wc -l)
                        VER=$(nvram get os_version | awk '{ print $1" "$(NF-1) }')
                        VER=$(nvram get os_version | awk '{ print $1" "$(NF-2)" "$(NF-1) }')
                BUILDTYPE=$(nvram get os_version | awk '{ print $NF }')
                        WANMAC=$(nvram get wan_hwaddr)
                        LANMAC=$(nvram get lan_hwaddr)
                        MODEL=$(nvram get t_model_name)
                        ROUTERID=$(nvram get tomatoanon_id)



The only “external” reference is the WAN MAC address used to form the user's unique TomatoAnon ID. MAC addresses are only significant on the local LAN. The only other information collected consists of data found in the columns visible on the TomatoAnon reporting webpage. This includes things like Wireless driver version, Uptime, and so on. It's impossible for anyone to identify, trace or access the endpoint devices.

admin-tomatoanon.txt · Last modified: 2022/01/05 13:09 by rs232