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I found out I had the zeitgeist daemon on my computer, I noticed its been collecting info on me for years. How do I remove it, and its database. because I have uninstalled it, then I reinstalled it once I found out there was a viewer, and its database that it has collected on me.

I am really upset, as this could have been one of my sources of privacy compromise. I got rid of windows because of the malware, but it seems that I got security at the price of someone collecting info on me.

How do I remove the zeitgeist daemon database? Because removing the program doesn't delete the database.

drtechno
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    Possible duplicate of Disabling Zeitgeist – WinEunuuchs2Unix Oct 20 '19 at 12:46
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    Zeitgeist is a big asset. It makes usage of a local database. The data that are collected remain local. As a professional software dev have you an idea how many files (documentation) I access a day? A month? A lot! I repeat Zeitgeist is big asset because I type the super key and a few characters of the file/picture/Libre office document/... and Ubuntu displays the files that were accessed recently like by magic. Without Zeitgeist it is extremely difficult to do my job because it is imp. to remember all these files. You can even conf Zeitgeist. to make it work the way you want. – Rudy Vissers Dec 21 '19 at 10:41

2 Answers2

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To disable it (run as normal user not root):

  1. See if it's running with:

    ps -ef |grep zeit
linuxaria  2085     1  0 16:31 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/zeitgeist-daemon
linuxaria  2093     1  0 16:31 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/zeitgeist/zeitgeist-fts
root      8372  8300  0 18:48 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto zeit

  2. Disable the ability to read and write to the database file:

    chmod -rw ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite

  3. Try to restart the daemon to be sure it out of commission:

    ~/.local/share/zeitgeist$ zeitgeist-daemon --replace

    • You should see this output if it's disabled:

      [16:53:46.292663 WARNING] Could not access the database file.
Please check the permissions of file /home/linuxaria/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite.

  4. Need to reactivate it use these commands:

    chmod +rw ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite
 ~/.local/share/zeitgeist$ zeitgeist-daemon --replace

To tally remove it completely:

  1. Check which zeist pacakges are installed:

    dpkg -l |grep zeit

    • Result:

      ii  gir1.2-zeitgeist-2.0        0.9.16-0ubuntu4  amd64  library    to       access     Zeitgeist  -        GObject   introspection  data
ii  libzeitgeist-1.0-1:amd64    0.3.18-1ubuntu3  amd64  library    to       access     Zeitgeist  -        shared    library
ii  libzeitgeist-2.0-0:amd64    0.9.16-0ubuntu4  amd64  library    to       access     Zeitgeist  -        shared    library
ii  python-zeitgeist            0.9.16-0ubuntu4  all    event      logging  framework  -          Python   bindings
ii  rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist  3.3-1ubuntu7     all    zeitgeist  plugin   for        rhythmbox  music    player
ii  zeitgeist                   0.9.16-0ubuntu4  all    event      logging  framework
ii  zeitgeist-core              0.9.16-0ubuntu4  amd64  event      logging  framework  -          engine
ii  zeitgeist-datahub           0.9.16-0ubuntu4  amd64  event      logging  framework  -          passive  logging   daemon

    • Taking values from the second column remove the pacakages:

      sudo apt-get purge gir1.2-zeitgeist-2.0  libzeitgeist-1.0-1:amd64 libzeitgeist-2.0-0:amd64 python-zeitgeist  rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub

Further reading:

https://linuxaria.com/howto/how-to-remove-zeitgeist-in-ubuntu-and-why

George Udosen
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  • I've voted to close the question as a duplicate. I think your answer is a good one that can be added to the duplicate candidate though. Perhaps include the other answer intended to be appended to your answer here? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Oct 20 '19 at 12:48
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Thanks @George Udosen . I did that, plus:

  sudo apt-get --purge autoremove activity-log-manager-common activity-log-manager-control-center zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub
  sudo rm -fr {/root,/home/*}/.local/share/zeitgeist

Hopefully I got rid of it entirely

drtechno
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    sudo touch {/root,/home/}/.local/share/zeitgeist ; sudo chmod 000 {/root,/home/}/.local/share/zeitgeist ------------- might help interfere with reinstallation upon a future upgrade – Craig Hicks Jan 04 '19 at 22:52