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Comment by jakobegger | Hacker News Reader

If the plugin author was really honest, he'd mention the fact that this spell checker is web based in the title or at the top of the description, where people actually read it.

Nobody would complain if this was called the "Web Based Spell Checker" or "After The Deadline Spell Checker".

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Ahem.

From the article: "But then, at the top of the description, I found this message greeting me: [...]"

It's this way on the linked extension's page as well: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=seanmcbr...

I think that's fairly prominent place and the only explanation for installing this extension could be either that it's acceptable - for example if one's using MSVSC to edit Wikipedia articles or something like that - or negligence to read anything but the title (which can't be helped).

(Well, author could've put "[INSECURE!!!! WILL STEAL YOUR CODEZ!!!!1one]" in the title... but should he?)

Apparently asking people to read the descriptions of plugins they are installing is too much effort

Look at the package file: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-spell-check/blob/master/...

The description, which is the only part visible in the search interface, contains no mention that this uses a web service.

See this comment how it should be done correctly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805189

Interestingly it's just had a version bump which makes the description a lot more obvious:

"Uses a web service to detect mistakes and suggest fixes - great for Markdown or any text file."

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-spell-check/commit/70847...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com