[🐛 Bug]: Cannot opt out of telemetry, please don't enable it by default without user consent

[alithechemist]

What happened?

I can't find a way of avoiding sending telemetry.

export SE_AVOID_STATS just does not work.

I also believe that it is not the best to enable telemetry by default and then let users disable as long as they find out...

It should be the other way around: If the user wants, they can opt-in.

I'm not entirely sure this is ok in EU.

How can we reproduce the issue?

## Testcase

export SE_AVOID_STATS; python main.py
trying proxy:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:4145

Error sending stats to Plausible: error sending request for url (https://plausible.io/api/event)

Relevant log output

Error sending stats to Plausible: error sending request for url (https://plausible.io/api/event)

Operating System

Debian

Selenium version

python 4.25.0

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Firefox 115.16.1esr

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

geckodriver0.35.0

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No response

[github-actions]

@alithechemist, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[alithechemist]

I just saw my mistake: it should be:

export SE_AVOID_STATS=true; python main.py

and not

export SE_AVOID_STATS; python main.py

My request about requiring user consent in order to collect data remains anyway.

[joerg1985]

@diemol why not changing the --selenium-manager=true CLI switch to e.g. --selenium-manager analytics_agreed and --selenium-manager no_analytics? The same logic could be used for the RemoteWebdriverBuilder, this will ensure a user does explicit give his consent or not to analytics. I know it should default to true in Selenium 5, this can not be done in this case.
I think adding propper documentation and a hint inside the exceptions should lead people to use the selenium-manager.

Another option might be to change the client API to enforce in setting the (dis)agreement and send it to the server inside a se:manager capability, defaulting to no_analytics (in case someone is using outdated client libs). The --selenium-manager flag could still be used to enable / disable the selenium manager feature on the server in general. In this case the --selenium-manager flag could default to true in Selenium 5.

[alithechemist]

Honestly:

1. It happened that i saw the error about not being able to reach plausible.io DESPITE i set the environmental variable SE_AVOID_STATS=true;
2. It is faster to put plausible in the hosts file with 0.0.0.0 ... honestly...