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I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying

52 points - today at 7:47 PM

Source
  • gmuslera

    today at 8:31 PM

    Using canary URLs in these and other sites may be interesting too.

    • hohithere

      today at 9:18 PM

      > Free Dev Tools

      And test only online websites (」°ロ°)」

      • beart

        today at 8:45 PM

        I love regex101.com, so really happy to see it breaks the mold here.

        • speedyapoc

          today at 8:44 PM

          Comment is a bit of an aside, but it's a shame what happened to JSONFormatter.org. The UI was preferable to alternatives for me, it ranked highly in Google so I could just search "JSON formatter" and access it, etc.

          Now the site freezes 50% of the time when loading it on my Mac and when it doesn't freeze, there's a 5 second period of waiting before I can paste any input. Not to mention ads taking up 40% of the screen. The classic tech cycle of life.

          • bmenrigh

            today at 8:29 PM

            Can we stop it with "and the results are terrifying", "and you won't believe what I found", "the <x> situation is insane", etc.? The over-hyping of low quality, low effort content is making it hard to find actually interesting or informative things.

              • SunshineTheCat

                today at 8:44 PM

                Yea I was thinking the same thing.

                When you reach for the most exaggerated, over-the-top word possible when describing something relatively mundane, what will you use when you talk about something that actually is "terrifying?"

                  • thfuran

                    today at 8:58 PM

                    “The most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard”. You can even stick with that one as long as your subjects are monotonically scary.

                • cheschire

                  today at 8:40 PM

                  Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.

                  Please, do it.

                    • arcfour

                      today at 8:41 PM

                      "Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.

                        • cheschire

                          today at 10:17 PM

                          Yes this one time. I’m speaking generally in response to the general plea.

                      • bmenrigh

                        today at 8:49 PM

                        "better", "more accessible"? What the hell are you talking about? Clickbait doesn't make anything better or more accessible.

                        Instead, it makes it impossible to pre-select for interesting information. Instead of telling you what something is about, it tells you how you should feel about it. That's not improving accessibility.

                          • cheschire

                            today at 10:16 PM

                            I meant from the author’s perspective. Clickbait is too easy, which is probably why it’s so popular.

                              • bmenrigh

                                today at 10:31 PM

                                Oh completely. But my perspective is that we all should individually punish clickbait by not clicking. More broadly, we should strive to keep HN full of quality tech content rather than clickbait.

                • dbacar

                  today at 9:16 PM

                  Glad that I am using Firefox with:

                  - uBlock Origin

                  - cookieAutodelete

                  - privacy badger

                  Any additions to my arsenal welcome!

                    • ozlikethewizard

                      today at 9:47 PM

                      Ironfox/Librewolf with just uBlock. The more extensions you have the way easier you are to fingerprint.

                  • iberator

                    today at 8:20 PM

                    That's why real programmers are those who can work offline without the Internet. (just the repositories)

                    :)

                    local first.

                    • deafpolygon

                      today at 9:26 PM

                      what dev uses public websites to do any kind of work?

                      • ramoz

                        today at 8:31 PM

                        [flagged]

                        • OsrsNeedsf2P

                          today at 8:43 PM

                          Decent article. Painful to read the LLM output.