Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Customer Service Agents Can See What You're Typing in Real Time

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–174 of 174 posts

Re: Customer Service Agents Can See What You're Typing in Real Time

#171

Post by tombert »

copperx wrote: post #137
tombert wrote: post #59

I can finally think of a practical reason to tell people to install Vim Anywhere! https://github.com/cknadler/vim-anywhere I don't actually use that plugin but I have gotten the Vim keystrokes so ingrained in my brain that I've gotten in the habit of having a terminal open whenever I need to type into web forms...Now I finally have an excuse to not feel silly doing it.

How does this avoid the problem in the first place?

Because you write the message in Vim and it adds to the paste buffer, so you paste it in. Since the agents on the other end are only seeing what's in the text box they don't see the preview.

Re: Customer Service Agents Can See What You're Typing in Real Time

#172

Post by lucb1e »

bradknowles wrote: post #115
lucb1e wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLS has very little to do with it. Some intermediary parties may be able to read the plaintext, but that's different from putting it on pastebin for everyone to see. I've never heard of ISPs or transit providers publishing privacy-sensitive data or otherwise snooping on it. (Assuming non-business / non-VPN / non-proxy connections. Just an ordinary internet connection.) The author probably meant if the site gets/is ha…

Many high-profile commercial carriers will do deep packet inspection of the traffic from their end users, so that they can do insertion of their own ads into whatever content you may be surfing. Including on your webmail pages. And their ad networks might well be infected with malware. But because of deep packet inspection and editing, you can't tell that the malvertising in question actually came from AT&T or Spectr…

I heard of one USA mobile carrier doing that at some point, but is it actually common anywhere on the planet? Even in the USA it seems to have been a one-off.

Re: Customer Service Agents Can See What You're Typing in Real Time

#173

Post by lolc »

powercf wrote: post #167
lolc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It highlights a lack of user education Education in what? That they shouldn't trust companies because they eavesdrop on them? Please don't blame deceitful practices on the victims. > if they expect their typed input to a website to be private. Most chat apps work that way. Others only see what you typed once you send it. Just because the now obscure `talk` worked differently is no excuse. The deception starts where…

> Education in what? Education in how the web works. That typing something into a text field, or moving the mouse, or any interactions with a website can be read on the other side. Many users expect this behaviour when they use, for example, Google search or Google Translate. If users expect their text to be private in one context, but shared in another, then there is clearly a lack of understanding of how the web wo…

Just because something's technically feasible does not mean we should expect it's being done by a shop we're doing business with!

Apparently we don't have the same standards as to what constitutes deceit. To me it's enough when the chat is asymmetric in that the agent's typing is not visible until they send it but the visitor's is relayed immediately to the agent. If visitors could watch the agents type they would understand that their typing is visible on the other end.

> Presumably some of the motivation is to enable faster responses to client queries.

Sure. Then why not offer the same privilege to the client? If it's so beneficial?

Post reply on HN