Is Local collecting telemetry even though I've opted out?

[southsummit]

I’ve disabled “Usage Reporting” and “Error Reporting” in the settings. However, xdebug (via PHPStorm) keeps intercepting the requests shown in the screenshots. I understand those are known analytics domains.

What’s going on here? Am I being tracked without consent?

[nickc]

Thank you for the question and helpful screenshots, @southsummit.

Is this a fresh WordPress site with no active plugins? I can not reproduce this in PhpStorm with a fresh site.

Could your site be using a theme or plugin that make use of Segment or Mixpanel? You could check by either:

1. Disabling all plugins and switching to the default theme to see if the Incoming Connection requests still appear.
2. Using Local’s “open site shell”, then running these in turn:
   • grep --recursive --line-number "mixpanel" wp-content
   • grep --recursive --line-number "segment" wp-content

Local uses Segment but the key from the URL in your screenshot seems different. The only time Local ignores the “usage reporting” preference is if you’re testing one of the Local Beta releases, which it looks like you’re not here, since your app path includes Local.app and not Local Beta.app. At all other times Local should respect your wish to disable usage reporting.

Local does not use Mixpanel, which suggests something else may be initiating those requests. The reason you see local-bootstrap.php in the server path is that Local prepends that to PHP’s loaded files via auto_prepend_file in php.ini. This causes PhpStorm to see that file as the entry point for your application — it does not necessarily mean that the requests are coming from Local’s code. Anything in the WordPress site could be triggering them.

I hope this helps to uncover the cause, but if anything’s still unclear please let us know. It’s important to the Local team that the reporting settings work as we designed: they’re off by default, and you should not see requests relating to Segment (usage reporting) or Sentry (error reporting) unless you opt in or use a Beta version of Local.

[southsummit]

Thanks for this very thorough and prompt reply. You are correct - another plugin was causing this. I should have investigated further but the fact a Local file was involved raised some suspicion. The auto_prepend_file explanation is particularly helpful to understanding why that is.

I appreciate your time and apologize for my tone. Cheers!

Mark

[sambrockway]

Hello @southsummit -

Thank you for taking the time to follow up with us on this, we appreciate it + we are so happy you’re a part of the Local community!

Happy building!

Sam