3 ms·

Here is the finest example of privacy derangement syndrome that we will ever see: an open-source program implements an open standard in a way that's completely

Here is the finest example of privacy derangement syndrome that we will ever see: an open-source program implements an open standard in a way that's completely above-board and it's described as a nefarious scheme.

XCabbage 8y ago
If an open standard has features that violate user privacy and don't provide sufficient value in exchange to justify it, it's reasonable to discuss violating or reforming that standard for the sake of privacy. The existence of a standard doesn't make the privacy issue go away.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  My beef is with the adverb "secretly".
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    I don't have an issue with this feature, but to play devil's advocate: it obviously isn't being adequately advertised if it's surprising to so many people on HN. And if many among the audience of HN find it surprising, you can be certain it's even more-so to the general public.
  - stupidlogin 8y ago
    Since the behavior is unexpected and very non-obvious for the average user, I don't see any issue with calling it "secretly".
    - shereadsthenews 8y ago
      You confused secrecy with ignorance.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  Note that per the report GNU wget does this as well. So other well known, well regarded, widely used tools are following this same standard doing the same thing. That doesn't excuse the standard, but it does mean Chromium is just matching platform on this, not setting any particular policy on its own.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
endofcapital 8y ago
The web is what I know well, this may not be true in other areas, but the W3C has a long history of being hostile to end users, ignoring privacy, and pushing corporate interests over others. Following their recommendations and doing things just because they were in the spec does make those decisions ethical or even legal. Developers have an obligation to push back against standards boards and corporations that make bad decisions. Hiding behind the business rules or the standards committee is completely unacceptable anymore. Especially when it comes to bad security/privacy practices that generally favor a market over an end user.
- neilv 8y ago
  The W3C staff I've talked with seem very decent, in a public-interest kind of way. Though there's always been a tendency of Web standards (de facto, and de jure) to serve the interests of dotcoms, a bit like an industry consortium. I think that industry-savvy people used to be mainly concerned with avoiding abusive monopolies, since we had examples of that. What I think many early Internet and Web people (who tended to be altruistic) didn't anticipate was the current culture of pervasive sneaky privacy abuses and often questionable engineering.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  > Following [the W3C] recommendations and doing things just because they were in the spec does make those decisions ethical or even legal. The spec being followed here is Freedesktop's, not W3C's https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CommonExtendedAttributes/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CommonExtendedAttributes/ > user.xdg.origin.url: Set on a file downloaded from a url. Its value should equal the url it was downloaded from.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
Well I think at least that it does that in incognito mode is a somewhat valid point. I assume that most people are not aware of this feature at all, so incognito mode should just try to do the right thing.

XCabbage 8y ago

If an open standard has features that violate user privacy and don't provide sufficient value in exchange to justify it, it's reasonable to discuss violating or reforming that standard for the sake of privacy. The existence of a standard doesn't make the privacy issue go away.

shereadsthenews 8y ago
My beef is with the adverb "secretly".
- darkpuma 8y ago
  I don't have an issue with this feature, but to play devil's advocate: it obviously isn't being adequately advertised if it's surprising to so many people on HN. And if many among the audience of HN find it surprising, you can be certain it's even more-so to the general public.
- stupidlogin 8y ago
  Since the behavior is unexpected and very non-obvious for the average user, I don't see any issue with calling it "secretly".
  - shereadsthenews 8y ago
    You confused secrecy with ignorance.
kllrnohj 8y ago
Note that per the report GNU wget does this as well. So other well known, well regarded, widely used tools are following this same standard doing the same thing. That doesn't excuse the standard, but it does mean Chromium is just matching platform on this, not setting any particular policy on its own.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

endofcapital 8y ago

The web is what I know well, this may not be true in other areas, but the W3C has a long history of being hostile to end users, ignoring privacy, and pushing corporate interests over others. Following their recommendations and doing things just because they were in the spec does make those decisions ethical or even legal. Developers have an obligation to push back against standards boards and corporations that make bad decisions. Hiding behind the business rules or the standards committee is completely unacceptable anymore. Especially when it comes to bad security/privacy practices that generally favor a market over an end user.

neilv 8y ago
The W3C staff I've talked with seem very decent, in a public-interest kind of way. Though there's always been a tendency of Web standards (de facto, and de jure) to serve the interests of dotcoms, a bit like an industry consortium. I think that industry-savvy people used to be mainly concerned with avoiding abusive monopolies, since we had examples of that. What I think many early Internet and Web people (who tended to be altruistic) didn't anticipate was the current culture of pervasive sneaky privacy abuses and often questionable engineering.
kllrnohj 8y ago
> Following [the W3C] recommendations and doing things just because they were in the spec does make those decisions ethical or even legal. The spec being followed here is Freedesktop's, not W3C's https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CommonExtendedAttributes/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CommonExtendedAttributes/ > user.xdg.origin.url: Set on a file downloaded from a url. Its value should equal the url it was downloaded from.

iforgotpassword 8y ago

Well I think at least that it does that in incognito mode is a somewhat valid point. I assume that most people are not aware of this feature at all, so incognito mode should just try to do the right thing.