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A "free" product (Chrome plugin). The checks for grammar aren't transient, per the privacy policy: >User Content you transmit will be stored on our servers, wh

A "free" product (Chrome plugin). The checks for grammar aren't transient, per the privacy policy: >User Content you transmit will be stored on our servers, which are located in the United States. When you use the Software on your computing device, User Content you save will be stored locally on that device and sync with our servers. How well would adoption would be if more users realized (most) everything they type in a web browser is stored on a remote server? I also wonder how often employees have violated HIPAA or something similar via a careless Chrome extension installation like this one. Maybe they have a solid security policy and won't use "User Content" for nefarious reasons, but this is one free product I'll avoid.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I also wonder how often employees have violated HIPAA or something similar via a careless Chrome extension installation like this one. If you are a HIPAA covered entity, you probably shouldn't be allowing anyone to have the ability to install any software, including browser extensions, on any workstation they can use to access PHI, and any centrally installed software should have a privacy and security review before being permitted. Of course, I know that's often not true, but that's a high-level organizational failure.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  I'm not versed in HIPAA or PII but I wonder if grammarly is stashing text typed into emails? How many business strategies, private conversations, and other such things, are they holding (and likely plan to parse with machine learning somewhere in their pitch deck... if they aren't doing it already)? EDIT: apparently it's used with Gmail, so the answer is yes they are parsing business strategies, private conversations, and other personal things in their data pipeline with, quoted from a comment further down, "presumably a future play in adtech or AI".
  - yellow_postit 9y ago
    I'd like to see data scrubbing/anonymisation disclosures become standard for services like this. Knowing there's a robust email or SSN scrubber would increase confidence, though for unstructured PII you have somewhat of a chicken and egg problem where you need training samples to build the robust anonymiser.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  > If you are a HIPAA covered entity, you probably shouldn't be allowing anyone to have the ability to install any software As a physician trying to do research, this stunted my work for years. It is a minor miracle we got off the ground at all.
syrrim 9y ago
Grammarly advertises quite agressively, at least to my demographic. I pointed out to my brother, who installed the addon, that they necesarily must be making money off him, probably by selling his data. He said he didn't care. Taking a step back, why should he care? His data is completely free for him to hand out. If he gets an effective product in exchange, why shouldn't he take advantage of it?
wodenokoto 9y ago
This is already a problem in other parts of the world. The Japanese government has rules on which IME (The software that sits between the alphabetical keyboard and the thousands of Japanese characters that are needed in normal text) public employees can use, since some of them draw on remote data and ML algorithms. Baidu has a really good and popular Japanese IME which uses a large server side dataset and is problematic in official use for obvious reasons.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> I also wonder how often employees have violated HIPAA or something similar via a careless Chrome extension installation like this one. If you are a HIPAA covered entity, you probably shouldn't be allowing anyone to have the ability to install any software, including browser extensions, on any workstation they can use to access PHI, and any centrally installed software should have a privacy and security review before being permitted. Of course, I know that's often not true, but that's a high-level organizational failure.

ben_jones 9y ago
I'm not versed in HIPAA or PII but I wonder if grammarly is stashing text typed into emails? How many business strategies, private conversations, and other such things, are they holding (and likely plan to parse with machine learning somewhere in their pitch deck... if they aren't doing it already)? EDIT: apparently it's used with Gmail, so the answer is yes they are parsing business strategies, private conversations, and other personal things in their data pipeline with, quoted from a comment further down, "presumably a future play in adtech or AI".
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  I'd like to see data scrubbing/anonymisation disclosures become standard for services like this. Knowing there's a robust email or SSN scrubber would increase confidence, though for unstructured PII you have somewhat of a chicken and egg problem where you need training samples to build the robust anonymiser.
killjoywashere 9y ago
> If you are a HIPAA covered entity, you probably shouldn't be allowing anyone to have the ability to install any software As a physician trying to do research, this stunted my work for years. It is a minor miracle we got off the ground at all.

syrrim 9y ago

Grammarly advertises quite agressively, at least to my demographic. I pointed out to my brother, who installed the addon, that they necesarily must be making money off him, probably by selling his data. He said he didn't care. Taking a step back, why should he care? His data is completely free for him to hand out. If he gets an effective product in exchange, why shouldn't he take advantage of it?

wodenokoto 9y ago

This is already a problem in other parts of the world. The Japanese government has rules on which IME (The software that sits between the alphabetical keyboard and the thousands of Japanese characters that are needed in normal text) public employees can use, since some of them draw on remote data and ML algorithms. Baidu has a really good and popular Japanese IME which uses a large server side dataset and is problematic in official use for obvious reasons.