How many Ubuntu users actually verify everything Canonical sends them?  I&#x27;d say very close to none, especially for the binaries.<p>Sure, in principle you could verify.  You could read through all the source, you could even disassemble the binaries and read through the assembly (and don&#x27;t forget to verify the hardware too).  Again, who actually does that?  Virtually no one.<p>So the two cases are a lot closer than you paint them to be.<p>Also, corporations do stupid, illegal, and unethical stuff all the time, even when it&#x27;s clearly (especially in hindsight) not in their long-term interest to do so.  Even when it will clearly destroy their reputation if the public found out they even considered it.<p>Even if you trust &quot;the system&quot; (which is more of a hope that if there&#x27;s something malicious, someone out there will detect it sooner or later), there are many cases of vulnerabilities in even open source code going undetected for years... nevermind vulnerabilities in binaries that you don&#x27;t have code for and who the authors of aren&#x27;t generous enough to clue you in on.<p>Canonical (or whatever source you actually get your OS or apps from) could also send you some specially crafted something that no one else gets.  Now who&#x27;s going to verify it for you if you don&#x27;t do it yourself?  How are you ever going to find out, if you&#x27;re not one of the ultra-paranoid and super-skilled 0.001% of Ubuntu users with infinite time and determination who actually verifies 100% of what Canonical sends them?  You just won&#x27;t.  And if you did, there&#x27;d be a hundred new Ubuntu versions out by the time you finished verifying even one of them.<p>People trust, but they very rarely verify.  The size of operating systems and applications and the skill to verify have all just grown too large to make it practical for the overwhelming majority of people.<p>I do see your point about Canonical doing whatever they want with the data they collect.  That&#x27;s certainly problematic.  But that doesn&#x27;t mean that there aren&#x27;t major privacy or security issues with trusting Ubuntu (or any other OS) not to have malware on it.