Did you know that out-of-the-box, Edge will transmit the content of
your text boxes on web pages to the Microsoft Editor service for the
purpose of grammatical suggestions? I have no idea how this concept
got past legal but hey, it’s on by default now.
At what point are some of the major government legal departments actually going to step up and sort this shit out?
It is so, so, so, so, so far past overdue. Yet nothing. :(
EDIT 1: I just checked and, fucking hell, it's grammarly! Samsung sneaked in an update that was silently leaking everything I wrote to fucking grammarly. This can be disabled by pressing the gear button and accessing the hidden writing assistant menu.
Good hardware is not worth risking my private information. Samsung, this will be the last time I buy a phone from you.
EDIT 2: Couldn't find anything about this on Samsung's website. Found more information on grammarly: https://support.grammarly.com/hc/en-us/articles/440798862017...
It's not leaking if it's intentional. Leaking makes it sound like it was mistake.
>Enhanced spell check Uses the same spell checker that’s used in Google search. Text you type in the browser is sent to Google.
Is it worth using these services given the privacy implications? Only you can answer that. I personally wish we had better local offerings, but I just don't think anyone wants to fund it when there's almost no revenue to be made.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram
[1] https://dev.languagetool.org/http-server.html
[2] https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat...
your browser probably updates itself every week or so.
there is absolutely nothing about these kinds of services that require running them on someone else's computer, save for conspiratorial reasons.
see also: machine translation (apple offline translate, firefox translations et al work just fine on your machine).
When I entered that same string into iOS Safari in a text box replying to your comment, deliberately bypassing the keyboard's auto-complete, it had no suggestions.
Maybe there's a blackmail and bribery department looking at what those people have been writing? (/s)
Lets see if that "backlash against big tech" thing actually goes anyone. One can hope. :)
Why would they? It's cheap intelligence on their opponents. Bypasses those pesky constitution laws. Win-win.
> By default, Microsoft Edge provides spelling and grammar checking using Microsoft Editor. When using Microsoft Editor, Microsoft Edge sends your typed text and a service token to a Microsoft cloud service over a secure HTTPS connection. The service token doesn't contain any user-identifiable information. A Microsoft cloud service then processes the text to detect spelling and grammar errors in your text. All your typed text that's sent to Microsoft is deleted immediately after processing occurs. No data is stored for any period of time.
So, they don't keep any data using this.
But it's unclear since they also do text prediction; which can be toggled separately in Edge.
> If the Use text prediction toggle is turned on, Microsoft Edge sends the text in the text box, your top language from the browser setting, and a text box identifier to a Microsoft cloud service over a secure HTTPS connection. The text box identifier is not associated with your account. The Microsoft cloud service processes the text to generate a relevant text prediction. Typed characters and text predictions are cached for up to 30 days, for service quality and performance improvement purposes only.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/privacy-whi...
Interestingly, if they also share the text with third parties, then every one of those statements could still be completely true.
But, it's the kind of hole in their wording they could drive a truck though. ;)
Personally, I'd be very surprised if they're not using people's written text as training data for various "AI" efforts. Let alone sharing the data with other parties.
Watching MS operate for a couple of decades has shown that if they see an opportunity to do something shitty, they'll probably take it. o_O
Apple has shown that they'd willingly help themselves to your data, while protecting you from others accessing it. Who knows what Apple will do with it? For all we know, iCloud Drive is now E2EE because they've figured out a way to ingest metadata and other information about your file as they store them. I mean, we don't know for sure if it's encrypted before being stored or not. All we know is it is now encrypted if you turn it on and Apple has no access to it. But to say nothing of it before or after. (/tinfoil on)
I'm not a Microsoft apologist, but I don't think they'd need to lie: "No data is stored for any period of time."
Anytime they've done shitty things, they have more or less been caught.
> if they also share the text with third parties
Legally, they have to share whether this data is being shared with third parties. It's about all we can do these days - for all you know, HN is collecting data on your activity and selling it to third parties for extra $. (Unlikely, but if we're gonna put our tinfoil hats on... no one is beyond suspicion! /s)
In any event, I know what it's doing and I'm not under any illusions that this is a privacy issue. I only use it to write things that will end up in public spaces anyways (such as HN, or Reddit). Any of my more private type of writing is done with offline tools.
At the point when their love relationship with US will end up in divorce. So not in the near future.
https://www.techdirt.com/2012/04/23/to-read-all-privacy-poli...
The about page says it started in June 2012, shortly after that techdirt article.
By "force" I mean "giving no other options". No "skip", "do it later" (or similar), and no way to quit.
Had to outright kill the task in the windows process manager, as there's zero chance I want anything to do with Edge.
So "don't use the software" is workable for people who know how to kill tasks.
But MS will be pulling that shit on average consumers too.