Canonical

❗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 company's conduct regarding (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, a Linux security system that proactively manages threats, Snap, a Linux appstore with sandbox support, and Livepatch, 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, which is shipped by default in Ubuntu.

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

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

Running apt update in the terminal shows an ad for Ubuntu Pro

Running apt update in the terminal shows an ad for Ubuntu Pro

Ad for Ubuntu Pro when using APT (2022.09 - Present)

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

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.