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Balena

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Revision as of 13:51, 31 March 2025 by Vandetta (talk | contribs) (add a few links clarify impact of Etcher application changes)
Balena
Basic information
Founded 2013
Type Private
Industry Software Development
Official website https://www.balena.io/

Balena (formerly known as Resin.io) provides a platform focused on DevOps management for servers, clients, and local cross platform device software. It also offers tools for updating, deploying and maintaining code bases (though that is mainly targeted at Linux)

Consumer-impact summary

Recently as of late Balena has found itself in hot water over gathering specific user telemetry on their software Balena Etcher without consent.[1] Specific information includes usb device info and the filename to allegedly sell to their 3rd party AD network partners.[2] This has compromised many users privacy and trust for profit. While there are many alternatives to Balena Etcher they tend to be a bit less user friendly and likely are not cross platform. Making them the de-facto choice among non tech literate users that are being taken advantage of.

Overview of concerns that arise from the company's conduct regarding (if applicable):

  • User freedom
  • User privacy
  • Business model
  • Market control

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Incidents

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This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Balena category.

Example incident one (date)

Main article: link to the main article

Short summary of the incident (could be the same as the summary preceding the article).

Example incident two (date)

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Products

This is a list of the company's product lines with articles on this wiki.


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See also

Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.


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References

  1. "etcher spies on the user without consent · Issue #2057 · balena-io/etcher". Github Issues. 2018-02-18. Retrieved 2025-03-31. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help)
  2. "Tails - Replacing balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows". Tails. 2025-02-19. Retrieved 2025-03-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)