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Comment by orangepanda | Hacker News Reader

Yes, other files open in your IDE may also be scanned.

From terms of service [1] (Which I'm sure everyone reads)

> when you edit files with the GitHub Copilot extension/plugin enabled, file content snippets [...] will be shared with GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI, and used for diagnostic purposes to improve suggestions and related products. GitHub Copilot relies on file content for context, both in the file you are editing and potentially other files open in the same IDE instance.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/github-copilot-tel...

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Thanks for the pointer but I don't think this is what happened in my case. I never opened the marketing assets in VSCode. They reside in completely separate folders.

Are you using Windows? IIRC Microsoft collects a hefty amount of data from your filesystem.

The telemetry data does not (and should not) contain the file contents.

IIRC that collection is optional

According to microsoft's documentation[1] it's unintentional. Presumably because it's picked up from whatever's in memory, rather than being collected intentionally.

>which may unintentionally contain user content, such as parts of a file you were using when the problem occurred

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/configure-w...

Another reason why turning off automatic bug reporting is a good idea.

Good point again, but no. MacOS.

If VSCode scanned your files to feed Copilot, it's not just Microsoft who can access that, but anyone using copilot. Every single file in every single machine that ever ran VSCode would potentially be at anyone's grasp.

Allowing this to happen would've been incredibly stupid. But it's worth investigating further.

> Every single file in every single machine that ever ran VSCode would potentially be at anyone's grasp.

Even if they were scanning all the files, Copilot's terms [1] explicitly says they do not use the data to provide suggestions for other users.

> GitHub Copilot does not use these URLs, file paths, or snippets collected in your telemetry as suggestions for other users of GitHub Copilot. This information is treated as confidential information and accessed on a need-to-know basis.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/github-copilot-tel...

Last time I checked it was not implemented yet though. Maybe they are starting to deploy a version that use the other open files for context, but mine is obviously not doing that yet.

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