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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but I just don't see the "bad behavior" in polling a URL you purposefully requested it to retrieve.

URLs are not secrets. Don't treat them as such.

She expected it to retrieve the URL to her own device, but it also sent it to the company that makes the app. That like if Chrome sent Google a list of all URLs you visit, people would definitely be angry about that.

> That like if Chrome sent Google a list of all URLs you visit, people would definitely be angry about that.

I have bad news for you… the general public won’t care.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/microsoft-edge-is-sending-all...

That doesn't prove that people don't care, just that Microsoft doesn't care about people.

Except Chrome indeed sends up all URLs you browse, at least by default/outside of incognito mode.

Are you talking about encrypted sync data or something else?

Both autosuggest[1] and Safe Browsing[2] sends URLs or "portion of" URLs home to Google.

At least Google is fairly transparent about it, if you look for it. And I'd trust them way more than a tiny company making a "dime a dozen" app.

[1]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13730681?hl=en#zipp...

[2]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/13844634?hl=en&ref_...

Doesn't safe browsing use a bloom filter to minimize those checks?

Yeah autosuggest is there and it has a toggle. But that's still far from every URL you browse.

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