Hacker News Reader

One would think so. I'm certainly curious how much people use the tool. Wouldn't you? However in anticipation of security concerns the software doesn't gather any info, and makes no external connections. Auto-updates were implemented, but later disabled for the same reason.

OK, how do we know it doesn't install something that will phone home when nobody's using the program? A little cron job or something similar.

So now I have to keep tabs on the behavior of my tools, in addition to everything else I have to keep tabs on?

I was stating that within the crowd of people that such a tool is targeted at, someone will run a packet sniffer against it. The likelihood of this happening is high. This is a severe disincentive for someone to 'phone home' if they plan to keep making money from said group of people. As soon as someone runs a packet sniffer and finds something suspect, the whole thing falls apart.

But no, you don't have to keep tabs on it, because you don't have to use this tool. If you do choose to use this tool, you can play the probabilities and more than likely be fine.