[R] Questions about R

[Ebert,Timothy Aaron]

When I installed R no personally identifiable information was given, none was requested. There is no login, so no password or user name. R resides on the host computer, so security is the responsibility of the owner(s) of that computer. There are packages and other third party programs, but these are installed separately and are not part of the initial installation. Generally packages do not collect PII, but I know a very small fraction of all packages. Individual packages are updated with new R updates if the people who wrote the package maintain the package. Users are responsible for updating to the new version on their system. There are third party programs like RStudio that can be helpful. I do not remember entering PII when loading RStudio, but it has been some time since I went through that process. A great deal of time can be saved by appropriate use of third party software, but I am not an expert in base R coding.

I work at a large university. R and RStudio are approved software. However, the university wants us to download the software from their website. This is to avoid non-university fourth party software. This is more a risk with novice users who may not know if they are downloading software directly from the appropriate website or indirectly through another website.

Malevolent Agent,
Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: R-help <r-help-bounces using r-project.org> On Behalf Of Bert Gunter
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2023 12:18 PM
To: Shaun Parr <portvale_fc using hotmail.com>
Cc: r-help using r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Questions about R

[External Email]

This is a volunteer Help list for users of R, which is open source, so you can see all its code. I can answer no to your questions, unless you are using one of R's innumerable packages that interacts with the internet and to which the user may give personal information to enable the desired functionality (logins, etc.).  But of course how do you know that I am not some malevolent agent or organization wishing to mislead you for my own nefarious purposes?

Cheers,
Bert

On Thu, Aug 17, 2023 at 8:37 AM Shaun Parr <portvale_fc using hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
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>
>
> Hi there,
>
> My name is Shaun and I work in an organisation where one of our users
> wishes to install the R software and our process is to assess the
> safety of anyone software prior to authorisation. I can’t seem to
> locate all the information that we require on the webpage, so could
> someone kindly advise me of the following information please?
>
> 1. Please can you confirm what user information the software collects
> (E.g. Name, password, e-mail address, any Personally Identifiable
> Information etc)?
> 2. If any is collected, please can you confirm if the information
> collected by the software stays locally on the device or if it is
> transferred anywhere. If it is transferred, could you please advise
> where it is transferred to (E.g. your own servers, or a third party
> data centre such as Amazon Web Services or Azure)?
> 3. Are there any third-party components installed within the software
> and, if so, are these also kept up-to-date?
>
> If you could kindly advise this information, it would be really
> appreciated, thank you 😊
>
>
> Shaun
>
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>
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.r/
> -project.org%2Fposting-guide.html&data=05%7C01%7Ctebert%40ufl.edu%7C2d
> 345ea4a3ac40f9dd7f08db9f3e701a%7C0d4da0f84a314d76ace60a62331e1b84%7C0%
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>

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