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Privacy

Pacman & Mirrors

In the default configuration pacman will connect to "mirror.msys2.org" when updating/installing packages and transmit the IP address, the requested file, as well as a user agent in the form of "pacman/6.0.1 (MSYS_NT-10.0-19042 x86_64) libalpm/13.0.1". This means the target server will receive the following information:

  • The IP address
  • The package/database requested for download
  • The pacman version
  • The Windows version, including the Windows build number
  • The architecture of the pacman installation

"mirror.msys2.org" will then redirect the request to a tier 1 mirror which will receive the same information again. To prevent requests going to third party mirrors you can reduce the mirror list to just "repo.msys.org".

Logging

We log the above listed information for every request to "msys2.org", including a timestamp, and keep it for up to two weeks for the following reasons:

  • Debugging and abuse detection
  • Creation and publication of anonymised usage reports:
    • Overall popularity of requested packages and package types, based on the IP and request path
    • Distribution of Windows/pacman versions used, based on the IP and the user agent
    • Distribution of cloud/non-cloud users, based on the IP

For what mirrors log, store or process see their respective websites.

Packages

Software packaged in our repository might talk to third party servers for functional, analytics, or other reasons. Please see the respective upstream documentation for details.