Privacy & telemetry¶

OFEM collects a small amount of opt-out telemetry to understand adoption, catch crashes early, and prioritise fixes. This page describes exactly what is and isn't sent, and how to turn it off.

What is collected¶

Each event is a small JSON record with these fields:

Field	Example	Notes
`installId`	UUIDv4 generated locally on first run	Pseudonymous; removed when you `brew uninstall --zap ofem`
`appVersion`	`2026.05.1`
`platform`	`darwin`
`arch`	`arm64`
`osVersion`	`14.5.1`
`tenantId`	Microsoft Entra tenant GUID	Only sent when an event is tied to a specific OneLake operation
`accountAliasHash`	first 8 hex chars of `sha256(alias)`	So we can correlate events from the same account-context without storing the alias
`event`	`file_download`	One of a fixed catalogue (see below)
`durationMs`	`423`	For events that complete an operation
`success`	`true` / `false`
`errorCode`	`AADSTS50079`	Short error code; long strings are redacted
`bytesTransferred`	`1048576`	Where relevant

What is NOT collected¶

Your UPN, email address, or display name.
Workspace names, item names, file names, or folder paths.
File contents.
IP addresses (Application Insights logs these by default in some plans — we have it turned off).
Anything outside the OFEM process boundary.

Event catalogue¶

Currently emitted:

Event	When
`app_start` / `app_stop`	Daemon lifecycle
`account_added` / `account_removed`	After `ofem login` / `ofem account remove`
`workspace_list` / `item_list` / `folder_list`	After a discovery API call
`file_download` / `file_upload` / `file_delete`	After file I/O
`folder_create` / `folder_delete`	After folder operations
`mount_start` / `mount_stop`	File Provider domain lifecycle
`sync_pulled`	Background poller detected remote changes
`error` / `panic`	Recoverable error / Go panic recovered

Where it goes¶

To an Azure Application Insights resource in the maintainer's Azure subscription, free tier. From there it lives only for the retention period (90 days by default) and is queried via the Application Insights portal.

How to turn it off¶

Either of these disables telemetry instantly; the daemon picks up the change on its next start.

ofem config set telemetry off

or set the env var before launching the daemon:

export OFEM_TELEMETRY=0

You can verify with ofem config get telemetry.

Source-built binaries¶

If you build OFEM yourself (clone the repo and go build), the Application Insights connection string is empty by default. That means telemetry is silently off for source builds — only the official Homebrew release ships with the embedded connection string. Contributors and forks do not send data to the maintainer's telemetry endpoint.

How to inspect what's sent¶

OFEM logs every telemetry event at debug level. Tail the daemon log to see exactly what's being sent:

tail -f ~/Library/Logs/dev.debruyn.ofem/ofem.log | grep telemetry

Questions or concerns¶

Open a Discussion or file an issue. The full design rationale lives in docs/telemetry.md (the developer-facing version of this page).