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Comment by gruturo | Hacker News Reader

I understand the SaaS model (after all, if my house burns down, I don't want the inventory to burn down with it), but this is an advertiser's (and a burglar's !!) wet dream. Any current commitments to safeguarding my privacy could be reversed in your future T&C, or you may be acquired (User data included) by a company with wildly different priorities.

How could you convince me that the data will always be properly safeguarded?

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That's a potential objection that didn't occur to me. I think the reason why is that the vast majority of home break-ins and burglaries aren't premeditated. They are addicts seeking stuff they can quickly sell for cash or random crimes of opportunity. Not criminal masterminds or international jewel thieves.

If it is a common concern I imagine the company could offer an encrypted option where the cloud data is never plaintext.

I believe it's the availability of the information (or lack thereof) that contributes to the low rate of intentional burglary. Addicts and opportunists don't generally know ahead of time which place has what stuff worth stealing, for now. If that data was available to them somehow, they might be more choosy, and you'd also increase the type of premeditated burglary that is currently kept low by the risk/reward balance leaning strongly towards risk.

correct. all it takes is one meth head telling buddies that it's the google for free electronics -- a perfect pivot for when they go public and sell the data further down the line, might as well just SaaS that part now.

I don't think meth heads will be buying obscure datasets and sifting through them to find the optimal houses to burglarize.

Not yet, at least. Meth heads of the future? Quite possibly.

Where did the data underlying that point come from?

There are organized rings of burglary and they come and go over time. Off the top of my head I can think of three or four that I personally have been exposed to including of course the one that had its own netflix special, the bling ring.

Yeah I think for non-HN crowd this will hopefully save people time/money with insurance claims.

But for privacy conscious people, I don’t see anything they could say to have me trust them. Nothing against HomeSheet in particular, but we don’t have any assurances that the data will not be sold (acquisition style).

I haven’t gotten around to adding the ability to store pictures yet or some other features. But this extensions is slightly similar if you use standard notes already for encrypted notes, this extension I created awhile ago might help from a privacy standpoint for those concerned. Also those who are concerned about a product going away/longevity, everything is plain JSON formatted text. (I.e why I created it).

https://github.com/tryonlinux/Home-Inventory-sn

disclaimer: Not trying to take away from this product, as I feel it definitely serves a purpose and market that my extension doesn’t cover and vice versa.

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