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Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

journalbook.co.uk

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Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#51

Post by cmpb »

I'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly.

[1]: POST https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.sh/ {"type":"hit","url":"/2019/01/10/"}

EDIT: Looking through the src [2], it appears the site will respect the user's "do not track" browser preference [3], but that's not supported in all browsers

[2] https://github.com/trys/JournalBook/blob/master/src/utils/be...

[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/d...

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#52

Post by trys »

cmpb wrote: post #51

I'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly. [1]: POST https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.…

Fair point, this is the beginnings of a basic hit counter that I'm working on. As there's no server (it's CDN hosted on Netlify), there's no way to see if anyone's even using the site. It's waaaaay less intrusive that GA, or other tracking tools. It's simply picking up page views - ignoring IP and any identifiable information (cookies obvs. included). It also respects do not tracking indicators in your browser. Tiny Tracking will be open sourced in time.

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#53

Post by cmpb »

trys wrote: post #52
cmpb wrote: post #51

I'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly. [1]: POST https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.…

Fair point, this is the beginnings of a basic hit counter that I'm working on. As there's no server (it's CDN hosted on Netlify), there's no way to see if anyone's even using the site. It's waaaaay less intrusive that GA, or other tracking tools. It's simply picking up page views - ignoring IP and any identifiable information (cookies obvs. included). It also respects do not tracking indicators in your browser. Tiny…

Thanks for the reply. I figured it was, in reality, a pretty innocuous page view counter. But I also figured since your site is getting some attention on HN right now, it'd be best to make the finding public.

Also, thanks for actually adding a 'do not track' check! Too few sites are doing that, even new ones like yours. I updated my comment as soon as I saw that in there

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#54

Post by piffey »

cyberpip wrote: post #49

A real journaling app, for the hackernews crowd, must have syncing between any kind of device (imo), including the terminal. My solution is just nextcloud syncing text files, though that may be overkill. Anyone have a good or even elegant solution for web/phone/terminal text file syncing?

I'm assuming this does local storage through the web browser. Does Firefox Sync or Chrome's Sync move that between devices for you? I don't do much web work so am unawares.

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#55

Post by rzzzt »

jug wrote: post #17

One thing about this browser storage.. How do you migrate if/when you change computer? Is the procedure browser-dependent? I always saw those storages as a bit more troublesome than a flat CSV or something.

The remoteStorage protocol attempts to resolve this problem:

https://remotestorage.io/

https://unhosted.org/adventures/7/Adding-remote-storage-to-u...

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#56

Post by vorpalhex »

trys wrote: post #52
cmpb wrote: post #51

I'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly. [1]: POST https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.…

Fair point, this is the beginnings of a basic hit counter that I'm working on. As there's no server (it's CDN hosted on Netlify), there's no way to see if anyone's even using the site. It's waaaaay less intrusive that GA, or other tracking tools. It's simply picking up page views - ignoring IP and any identifiable information (cookies obvs. included). It also respects do not tracking indicators in your browser. Tiny…

Unfortunately you're still sending a lot of data across the wire, so even though your intentions are pure, you've still opened a door to immense data collection for an app that bills itself as "privacy centric". If you passed your data to a third party for storage (Netlify for instance), they could glean an immense amount of information.

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#58

Post by cloverich »

unicornporn wrote: post #40

From time to time I try these fancy journaling apps. A few weeks later I have to go through the hassle of converting the data to my good old plain text file journaling format.

There are some journaling apps that target this mindset. This one[1] was posted a few days ago (in comments) and stores your notes as markdown in plain text. There are others (I am working on one as well, but its not ready). If the app forced a particular naming convention (e.g. 2018-05-10.md) would that be too restrictive?

[1]: (https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable).

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#59

Post by unicornporn »

cloverich wrote: post #58
unicornporn wrote: post #40

From time to time I try these fancy journaling apps. A few weeks later I have to go through the hassle of converting the data to my good old plain text file journaling format.

There are some journaling apps that target this mindset. This one[1] was posted a few days ago (in comments) and stores your notes as markdown in plain text. There are others (I am working on one as well, but its not ready). If the app forced a particular naming convention (e.g. 2018-05-10.md) would that be too restrictive? [1]: ( https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable ).

No. Not really. http://jrnl.sh/ looks good too if you're starting from scratch.

Re: Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app

#60

Post by IloveHN84 »

cyberpip wrote: post #49

A real journaling app, for the hackernews crowd, must have syncing between any kind of device (imo), including the terminal. My solution is just nextcloud syncing text files, though that may be overkill. Anyone have a good or even elegant solution for web/phone/terminal text file syncing?

Checkout rclone Project then
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