41–50 of 120 posts
On the topic of tracking, you might want to check your browser extensions as well. I discovered tracking codes inside a browser extension back in 2013, and I doubt that it would be the last one: https://paradite.com/2013/12/07/solved-issue-with-vglnk-all-... (Ironically by visiting my blog post you are contributing to tracking by Google Analytics)
/u/michael0x2a on Reddit put together a nice tl;dr[1] of the story arc for those that don't want to dig through the thread. tl;dr for that is basically: Kite has been collecting "anonymous" data from sublime users with the SideBarEnhancements plugin installed. This has been happening for atleast a year and the data collected included activeNonBundledPackageNames which is basically a list of packages installed via Pac…
What precisely is Kite collecting in this case? Ideally backed by a link to a github repo proving that they're collecting whatever people are saying they're collecting. I've been reading for about 10 minutes and can't find any references. The closest I found was https://twitter.com/gerardroche/status/891802572373319680 which links to https://github.com/kiteco/kite-installer/blob/master/ext/tel... but that doesn't act…
> Post #27 (wbond):
> > adam314: Hi everyone, member of Kite here. The SideBarEnhancements telemetry was
> > originally added to gather data around what programming languages we should support next.
>
> [wbond:] The question is, why did you try to hide who the data was being sent to? And why did you ask
> to capture activeNonBundledPackageNames? That bit of data seems like a very non-anonymous
> collection of information. You could be capturing internal package names and consequently
> exfiltrating the existence of development of competitors products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first day of using Little Snitch may drive you insane. It gets better rapidly after.
How does it work with browsers? You have to allow all outgoing traffic to port 80/443 regardless of host/ip? Or be asked every time you visit a different website if you want to allow it or not?
There are probably browser extensions better suited to restricting browser connections. Maybe run LS on top of one of those so the browser can catch most of them witout making a ton of popups.
So this is something I'm not sure I've ever said before, but if you work for Kite, you need to quit. Like, I get working for even exploitative companies (though I won't)--economic insecurity is definitely a thing and we all gotta eat. But you can find a job that doesn't involve literally spying on the down-low. I promise you, you can. Abandon these jerks before they bring you down with them. They've demonstrated a wi…
https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen...
They're trying to figure out what languages people are actually editing on a day-to-day basis, and people here are calling for them to leave the company? Like, really?
People have been whipped up into a frenzy for data that a webapp wouldn't blink twice at collecting. But when it's installed locally it's somehow different than if we load a webapp in a browser?
I agree with you in principle, but it seems like people here didn't actually look at what was being collected. They just saw "data collection" and went absolutely nuts.
Yeah, collecting installed package names isn't really great, but it's pretty harmless, right? It's a stupid decision, but people seem to be looking for reasons to get upset.
They're not collecting filenames, and they take the sha1 hash of whatever could be personally identifiable. Why is any of this bad, or a violation of trust? They even say right in the readme that they're doing it and how to opt out: https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen...
If they made it opt-in, no one would opt-in. I understand it's a slippery slope, but is this reaction appropriate?
/u/michael0x2a on Reddit put together a nice tl;dr[1] of the story arc for those that don't want to dig through the thread. tl;dr for that is basically: Kite has been collecting "anonymous" data from sublime users with the SideBarEnhancements plugin installed. This has been happening for atleast a year and the data collected included activeNonBundledPackageNames which is basically a list of packages installed via Pac…
For what it's worth, we didn't remember. There was no upside to keeping it there.
So this is something I'm not sure I've ever said before, but if you work for Kite, you need to quit. Like, I get working for even exploitative companies (though I won't)--economic insecurity is definitely a thing and we all gotta eat. But you can find a job that doesn't involve literally spying on the down-low. I promise you, you can. Abandon these jerks before they bring you down with them. They've demonstrated a wi…
This seems incredibly overblown. According to the diff, all they were collecting is time spent editing certain file extensions, along with a list of installed packages: https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen... They're trying to figure out what languages people are actually editing on a day-to-day basis, and people here are calling for them to leave the company? Like, really? People have been wh…
2) Collecting non-bundled package names is another way to phrase "exfiltrating competitors' upcoming products." That by itself is sufficient evidence for me to want some heads.
So this is something I'm not sure I've ever said before, but if you work for Kite, you need to quit. Like, I get working for even exploitative companies (though I won't)--economic insecurity is definitely a thing and we all gotta eat. But you can find a job that doesn't involve literally spying on the down-low. I promise you, you can. Abandon these jerks before they bring you down with them. They've demonstrated a wi…
So this is something I'm not sure I've ever said before, but if you work for Kite, you need to quit. Like, I get working for even exploitative companies (though I won't)--economic insecurity is definitely a thing and we all gotta eat. But you can find a job that doesn't involve literally spying on the down-low. I promise you, you can. Abandon these jerks before they bring you down with them. They've demonstrated a wi…
This seems incredibly overblown. According to the diff, all they were collecting is time spent editing certain file extensions, along with a list of installed packages: https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen... They're trying to figure out what languages people are actually editing on a day-to-day basis, and people here are calling for them to leave the company? Like, really? People have been wh…
In fact, it might violate more than a dozen of laws in the EU.
This is a general matter of principle. You do not get to access anything that is mine without approval.
If no one opts in, that's your problem, and you need to rethink your business model - and not break into users systems and steal their data. This is malware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems incredibly overblown. According to the diff, all they were collecting is time spent editing certain file extensions, along with a list of installed packages: https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen... They're trying to figure out what languages people are actually editing on a day-to-day basis, and people here are calling for them to leave the company? Like, really? People have been wh…
1) Principle is what matters. This behavior is utterly and completely indefensible; screwing with people's private code for your whatever-nobody-cares startup is absolutely unacceptable at any level. I don't care how big your Series A round was or who your investors are, you just don't do it and you don't hide it and you don't lie about "forgetting" about it (and it should be considered a lie until proven otherwise b…
I doubt they even thought of the competitor angle. I wouldn't have. Startups don't win by worrying what every new company is doing.
It wasn't a smart decision, but you're acting like they are uploading your entire source code tree. (I think someone even claimed that they were doing this at one point but was later shown to be mistaken.)
So this is something I'm not sure I've ever said before, but if you work for Kite, you need to quit. Like, I get working for even exploitative companies (though I won't)--economic insecurity is definitely a thing and we all gotta eat. But you can find a job that doesn't involve literally spying on the down-low. I promise you, you can. Abandon these jerks before they bring you down with them. They've demonstrated a wi…
This seems incredibly overblown. According to the diff, all they were collecting is time spent editing certain file extensions, along with a list of installed packages: https://github.com/SideBarEnhancements-org/SideBarEnhancemen... They're trying to figure out what languages people are actually editing on a day-to-day basis, and people here are calling for them to leave the company? Like, really? People have been wh…
I think developers are (rightly) afraid this trend now hits their editors.