I audited the privacy of popular free dev tools, the results are terrifying (toolbox-kit.com)

52 points by WaitWaitWha 4 hours ago

gmuslera 3 hours ago

Using canary URLs in these and other sites may be interesting too.

hohithere 2 hours ago

> Free Dev Tools

And test only online websites (」°ロ°)」

beart 3 hours ago

I love regex101.com, so really happy to see it breaks the mold here.

speedyapoc 3 hours ago

Comment is a bit of an aside, but it's a shame what happened to JSONFormatter.org. The UI was preferable to alternatives for me, it ranked highly in Google so I could just search "JSON formatter" and access it, etc.

Now the site freezes 50% of the time when loading it on my Mac and when it doesn't freeze, there's a 5 second period of waiting before I can paste any input. Not to mention ads taking up 40% of the screen. The classic tech cycle of life.

bmenrigh 3 hours ago

Can we stop it with "and the results are terrifying", "and you won't believe what I found", "the <x> situation is insane", etc.? The over-hyping of low quality, low effort content is making it hard to find actually interesting or informative things.

SunshineTheCat 3 hours ago

Yea I was thinking the same thing.

When you reach for the most exaggerated, over-the-top word possible when describing something relatively mundane, what will you use when you talk about something that actually is "terrifying?"

thfuran 2 hours ago

“The most terrifying thing you’ve ever heard”. You can even stick with that one as long as your subjects are monotonically scary.

cheschire 3 hours ago

Find a better and more accessible solution than clickbait.

Please, do it.

arcfour 3 hours ago

"Privacy concerns found in audit of popular dev tools" (or something along those lines) would work without feeling sensationalized.

cheschire an hour ago

bmenrigh 3 hours ago

"better", "more accessible"? What the hell are you talking about? Clickbait doesn't make anything better or more accessible.

Instead, it makes it impossible to pre-select for interesting information. Instead of telling you what something is about, it tells you how you should feel about it. That's not improving accessibility.

cheschire an hour ago

dbacar 2 hours ago

Glad that I am using Firefox with:

- uBlock Origin

- cookieAutodelete

- privacy badger

Any additions to my arsenal welcome!

ozlikethewizard 2 hours ago

Ironfox/Librewolf with just uBlock. The more extensions you have the way easier you are to fingerprint.

iberator 3 hours ago

That's why real programmers are those who can work offline without the Internet. (just the repositories)

:)

local first.

LoganDark a minute ago

Yeah, I run all my LLMs offline. That way I don't need documentation at all!

(I jest of course.)

deafpolygon 2 hours ago

what dev uses public websites to do any kind of work?

ramoz 3 hours ago

[flagged]

OsrsNeedsf2P 3 hours ago

Decent article. Painful to read the LLM output.