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I’m sure there are use cases for sharing a link you wouldn’t want to visit yourself… but that seems fairly far on the paranoia spectrum to frame as a general “p

I’m sure there are use cases for sharing a link you wouldn’t want to visit yourself… but that seems fairly far on the paranoia spectrum to frame as a general “privacy” concern. Typically people are sharing stuff they have some comfort consuming themselves. Even if they haven’t opened the link yet, the same request would almost definitely be performed once they did so.

lapcat 3y ago
I think you're placing the burden of proof on the wrong side. It's up to the software vendor to explain and justify why HTTP requests that are not initiated by the user are necessary and harmless. In this case, they're definitely not necessary, as explained in the Addendum to the blog post, because the fetched info isn't even passed along to the other app when the URL is shared, and of course the share menu worked fine without them for many years before Ventura. The easiest, best, foolproof method of protecting a user's privacy is by not making any connection requests that aren't initiated by the user. That should be the default, unless there's a very good reason why it needs to be otherwise. "Typically..." is cold comfort.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  I’m not placing any burden of proof on anything? I’m saying I don’t have any problem with the privacy implications of my computer making requests to a link I explicitly take action to share with others, and I think objections to it on principle require disregarding the vast majority of legitimate use. If “share” isn’t a sufficiently explicit user interaction to perform a request to the thing being shared, I can think of very few if any reasonable justifications for going through with sharing it either. What is the legitimate use case for “I don’t want to access this network resource but I do want to distribute it to another recipient”?
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > I’m not placing any burden of proof on anything? And yet... > What is the legitimate use case for “I don’t want to access this network resource but I do want to distribute it to another recipient”? Let me ask this question: Do you want the operating system to load the URL every time you simply copy and paste a URL? If not, then how is this case any different? There's some discussion of use cases in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031177 However, in general, I consider the term "legitimate" to be user-hostile. Who decides which use cases are legitimate or not? We shouldn't need to prove that our usage is "legitimate", by your standard. Some people claim, "You don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide", and that's fundamentally wrongheaded. The right to privacy should be assumed, unless there's a serious, overriding counterpoint.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      > Do you want the operating system to load the URL every time you simply copy and paste a URL? Honestly, I wouldn't mind at all. Link previews are becoming super common everywhere in the OS and apps. If somebody texts me a URL, it shows up as a link preview. Certain websites show link previews when you hover over a link. Not to mention browsers precache tons of URLs you never explicitly visit. Visiting copied URL's to generate link previews, even if I never use the clipboard viewer to see it, seems entirely in line with expected behavior of using URLs in an OS. The last thing I need is a complicated mental model of which OS behaviors will load URL previews and which won't. Easier to just assume they all will. So yes, if I'm dealing with a URL in any GUI context, I expect it might be accessed at any time for preview/precache purposes. If it's vitally important that it not be, I'll disconnect from the internet entirely.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > Honestly, I wouldn't mind at all. That's great for you, but Apple claims that "privacy is a fundamental human right". So I'm going to hold Apple to that principle.
        crazygringo 3y ago
        Well, you're the one who asked. And reasonable people disagree as to whether practices like link previews and precaching invade privacy or not. Obviously, I'm someone who doesn't think it does.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > Well, you're the one who asked. No, I asked eyelidlessness, whose answer was the opposite of yours.
        crazygringo 3y ago
        Welcome to forums, where all questions are asked for anyone to answer! :)

lapcat 3y ago

I think you're placing the burden of proof on the wrong side. It's up to the software vendor to explain and justify why HTTP requests that are not initiated by the user are necessary and harmless. In this case, they're definitely not necessary, as explained in the Addendum to the blog post, because the fetched info isn't even passed along to the other app when the URL is shared, and of course the share menu worked fine without them for many years before Ventura. The easiest, best, foolproof method of protecting a user's privacy is by not making any connection requests that aren't initiated by the user. That should be the default, unless there's a very good reason why it needs to be otherwise. "Typically..." is cold comfort.

eyelidlessness 3y ago
I’m not placing any burden of proof on anything? I’m saying I don’t have any problem with the privacy implications of my computer making requests to a link I explicitly take action to share with others, and I think objections to it on principle require disregarding the vast majority of legitimate use. If “share” isn’t a sufficiently explicit user interaction to perform a request to the thing being shared, I can think of very few if any reasonable justifications for going through with sharing it either. What is the legitimate use case for “I don’t want to access this network resource but I do want to distribute it to another recipient”?
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I’m not placing any burden of proof on anything? And yet... > What is the legitimate use case for “I don’t want to access this network resource but I do want to distribute it to another recipient”? Let me ask this question: Do you want the operating system to load the URL every time you simply copy and paste a URL? If not, then how is this case any different? There's some discussion of use cases in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38031177 However, in general, I consider the term "legitimate" to be user-hostile. Who decides which use cases are legitimate or not? We shouldn't need to prove that our usage is "legitimate", by your standard. Some people claim, "You don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide", and that's fundamentally wrongheaded. The right to privacy should be assumed, unless there's a serious, overriding counterpoint.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    > Do you want the operating system to load the URL every time you simply copy and paste a URL? Honestly, I wouldn't mind at all. Link previews are becoming super common everywhere in the OS and apps. If somebody texts me a URL, it shows up as a link preview. Certain websites show link previews when you hover over a link. Not to mention browsers precache tons of URLs you never explicitly visit. Visiting copied URL's to generate link previews, even if I never use the clipboard viewer to see it, seems entirely in line with expected behavior of using URLs in an OS. The last thing I need is a complicated mental model of which OS behaviors will load URL previews and which won't. Easier to just assume they all will. So yes, if I'm dealing with a URL in any GUI context, I expect it might be accessed at any time for preview/precache purposes. If it's vitally important that it not be, I'll disconnect from the internet entirely.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Honestly, I wouldn't mind at all. That's great for you, but Apple claims that "privacy is a fundamental human right". So I'm going to hold Apple to that principle.
      - crazygringo 3y ago
        Well, you're the one who asked. And reasonable people disagree as to whether practices like link previews and precaching invade privacy or not. Obviously, I'm someone who doesn't think it does.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > Well, you're the one who asked. No, I asked eyelidlessness, whose answer was the opposite of yours.
        crazygringo 3y ago
        Welcome to forums, where all questions are asked for anyone to answer! :)