[HN Gopher] Is Grammarly a keylogger? What can you do about it? ___________________________________________________________________ Is Grammarly a keylogger? What can you do about it? Author : terracatta Score : 236 points Date : 2022-02-25 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.kolide.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.kolide.com) | mastermojo wrote: | I'm on the team at Sapling Intelligence, a deep-learning AI | Writing Assistant. A lot of privacy and security conscious folks | don't like the idea of a keylogger, so we have self-hosted/on- | premise/cloud-premise options for businesses. We have a list of | available offerings here: https://sapling.ai/comparison/onprem. | Sapling deployments can also be configured for no data retention, | sacrificing some model customization. | | Cost-wise, it doesn't make sense for individuals to host a | neural-network based grammar checker, though some of the rule- | based options may work. There's a future where if we can maintain | some sort of Moore's law scaling we will be able to run these | language models on individual computers as opposed to the cloud. | wodenokoto wrote: | The Japanese government did disallow an IME from Baidu (a | software that converts typed keys-strokes to Japanese kana and | kanji), because it ran inference on a server. | | - https://web.archive.org/web/20140119231002/http://www.techre... | staplung wrote: | I feel like their slogan should be lifted from Mr Lee's Greater | Hong Kong: | | "Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make | yourself totally homely in this meager environment. If any aspect | is not utterly harmonious, gratefully bring it to my notice and I | shall strive to earn your satisfaction." | paulpauper wrote: | It is the biggest botnet ever. How do you think they are paying | for ads everywhere. The money have to come from somewhere. | copperx wrote: | The subscription price is high ($30/month, last time I | checked). If that isn't turning a profit, I don't know what | will. | Graffur wrote: | Why would anyone pay for that? | geoelectric wrote: | They have annual subscriptions that get sharply discounted | on a regular basis, where it comes out closer to $70 a | year. I pay for that, since I usually do need the editing | help, but the linked article certainly gives me pause. | rubidium wrote: | Enterprise. That's a cost that just doesn't matter. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | Turn employees from noticeably not able to pull off the job | to sort of pulling it off. | ramesh31 wrote: | I have long suspected Grammarly as a massive undercover FSB | operation to monitor the west. The amount of marketing push | behind the product never made sense otherwise, and their | corporate HQ is in Ukraine. | | Even if you don't buy the conspiracy theory, the cold hard truth | now is that those servers will be under Russian jurisdiction | within a month. | andrewl-hn wrote: | Their corporate HQ is in the US, and they are hosted on AWS. | | They have a development office in Ukraine, too, but they have | evacuated. Even if Russia takes over they won't get access to | your writing. | lbriner wrote: | I have thought that one of the most effective spyware tools | would be a really good open source library that most people | will use without really knowing what it does and it sends your | secrets to some bad government somewhere or at least gives them | a master kill switch if they want to DDoS everyone. | autoexec wrote: | The more people there are using an open source library the | more likely it is that someone is going to take the time to | see exactly what it does and any unexpected network traffic | (sending data to some bad government) will sound the alarm | much faster. The most effective spyware tools are things like | cell phones, facebook, Windows, and Google. They encourage | people to spill their own secrets and make it difficult if | not impossible to use them while protecting your privacy in | any meaningful way. | belter wrote: | Previous serious security issue: | https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=15... | cosmiccatnap wrote: | anonymouse008 wrote: | Second question: Is TextExpander a key logger as well? | corobo wrote: | Does it send the data anywhere? | SllX wrote: | There is a cloud component, but in this case it's syncing | text expansions you saved to it making it more like 1Password | than Grammarly. | anonymouse008 wrote: | I guess I try to follow least permissions principle | everywhere; no matter what it gets and where it sends - but | good point. | corobo wrote: | Not a point, honest query. | | My personal rule would be if it sends data anywhere yes, if | it logs the key press data locally yes too (also why) | otherwise probably not but never say never | taviso wrote: | Hah, I use an old DOS grammar checker called Grammatik. | | It works well enough for me, I use it with mutt instead of | ispell. Naturally, it's 100% offline. | | I made a (terrible?) unboxing video a while ago: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DMlaJ-ROXc | pjot wrote: | I like to use write-good[0] - it takes a glob and prints | suggestions to stdout. | | [0]: https://github.com/btford/write-good | riedel wrote: | One can run language tool [1] also on premise (or directly on | one's machine). | | [1] https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool | rpdillon wrote: | Grammarly seems insidious to me. Not only does it intercept the | final versions, but all drafts of what users write. I know they | sell a plagiarism product to schools[0]: | | > Grammarly's integrated plagiarism checker instantly catches | plagiarism from over 16 billion websites and ProQuest's | proprietary databases. | | So it's pretty clear that collecting and processing lots of semi- | private writing is part and parcel to their business, which seems | like a recipe for trouble sooner or later. To be clear, I have | similar reservations about grammar check in e.g. Google Docs, so | this is not limited to just Grammarly at all. | | [0]: https://www.grammarly.com/edu | taftster wrote: | Right, imagine in the context of education, that a student is | drafting some essay or whatever. In the process, that student | might copy/paste some text from another article and then will | go on to rewrite the text into their own language. | | By normal definition, this wouldn't be plagiarism, so long as | the student extrapolates and restates the original text. And | ideally, the student would cite that source, but it probably | doesn't happen. | | Grammarly might be able to catch this "mistake" - because it | would see the copy/pasted text in the first revision and then | potentially flag the final outcome. | | I'm not saying that plagiarism detection is all that bad of a | thing. Teachers need some level of support to help keep their | students honest. But there's too much information, in my | opinion, being sent when you use any sort of keylogger tool or | online editor. | oh_sigh wrote: | By the normal definition, that is plagiarism. It is even | plagiarism if the person was the original author of the | pasted paragraph and it came from another work. | umanwizard wrote: | I disagree about your example not counting as plagiarism if | the original source is not cited. | JoeJonathan wrote: | Agreed--if that paraphrased or rewritten text isn't cited, | it's absolutely plagiarism, by any academic standard. | luckydata wrote: | what's wrong with the grammar check in google docs? | _jal wrote: | I believe they're referring to the part where they send all | your writing to a HugeCo with a voracious appetite for | information about its users and a weaselly, mutable privacy | policy. | | (Anyone remember when FB was caught sending itself | unsubmitted data from web forms? Seems almost quaint now.) | dathinab wrote: | For German I want the Duden spell checker tool back. | | German has more strict rules for a lot of it's grammar, which can | be checked rather well without needing any AI. | | It ran local. | | Or maybe I'm just nostalgic. | | But as far as I remember it was the best spell checker I ever had | (for any Language). | | But then I'm hardly writing German now-days. | latchkey wrote: | Not saying good or bad, but they do have a page on their "trust": | | https://www.grammarly.com/trust | 1over137 wrote: | Is there a list of Grammarly servers, so it can be blocked, for | example, at a corporate firewall? | oxff wrote: | It absolutely is an intelligence carve out. | verdverm wrote: | I think worse than keyloggers is that people are learning how to | make the yellow lines in Grammarly go away rather than learning | to write better. The training of humans on AI which was trained | to be a (dull) average of prior humans has unforeseen | consequences. I've seen Google grammar suggestions getting worse | with time. | Arubis wrote: | This may be the case, but "this tool is a potentially massive | privacy and security intrusion" is a drastically different | conversation than "calculators mean students can't do | arithmetic anymore". | mattnewton wrote: | I think "calculators mean students can't do arithmetic | anymore" is perhaps an uncharitable take because it ignores | that calculators aren't also trying to learn arithmetic from | examples of people using them. Eventually grammar correction | algorithms will injest text written with them or other | grammar correction algorithms as ground truth in their | efforts to improve and adapt to new idioms- this may already | be the case. | uoaei wrote: | NLP researchers are tearing their hair out about this right | now, since people are posting mountains of | GPT/etc.-generated text online with no easy way to | distinguish whether it's of human or other origin. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | Reminds me of a scifi book where the Internet-analogue is | so corrupted with junk deliberately injected by filtering | services so that they can sell you the filters that it's | impossible to use "naked". | | I think it's either Neal Stephenson or maybe Stephen | Baxter, but I'm not sure which book it was an aside in | (it's not Fall, I haven't read that yet, though that | appears to have a similar idea). | Kim_Bruning wrote: | I guess we're entering a new phase of language evolution, | then; whether we want it or not. | wyldfire wrote: | Maybe we should create a neural network model that could | label arbitrary text as -- nah! | Tyr42 wrote: | That's a Gan but with more steps right? | NateEag wrote: | Well... you can read it. | | I might be wrong, but so far I think it's been pretty | easy to tell if text came from a human or a deep-learning | system. | | Granted, that probably doesn't scale well. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | Most, not all. | [deleted] | terracatta wrote: | Totally agree, we already have a generation of folks who don't | know how to spell without the crutch of a spell-checker (I | include myself as a victim), does Grammarly produce even worse | outcomes? | | The one caveat here (which I try to cover in this post) is | there are definitely people who suffer from things like | dyslexia who heavily rely on these types of tools to be able to | communicate confidently. In that way, they are very useful. | rhino369 wrote: | I use it, but only as a suggestion. | leetcrew wrote: | does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar | rules or how to spell things? an english sentence contains a | lot of parity data. when you do know all the rules, it can be | painful to see the mistakes people make, but confusing | "principle" with "principal" or using "who" when you should | have used "whom" doesn't really obscure the meaning of the | sentence. | | when it comes to formal correspondence, spellcheck is always | there to help. or better yet, get a copywriter or technical | writer to help you and go back to your main responsibilities. | Teever wrote: | > does it actually matter that people don't all the grammar | rules or how to spell things? | | It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to speak | and write is teaching them them think. | | If that is correct than if someone does not know how to | speak and write in a grammatically correct fashion then the | implication is that they do not know how to think properly. | | Even if there isn't a perfect 1to1 mapping between | grammatically correct writing and thinking skills, I still | think it's a good proxy for measuring a persons ability to | think because in general the more you read, the better you | get at writing, and the more you read, the more you know.* | | * the traditional caveats apply with garbage in, garbage | out. | diputsmonro wrote: | > It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to | speak and write is teaching them *them think*. | | > If that is correct *than* if someone does not know how | to speak and write in a grammatically correct fashion | then the implication is that they do not know how to | think properly. | | And you immediately defeat yourself with your own | argument. | | Nobody ever has, nor should strive to, follow every | grammatical rule perfectly. Errors only matter if they | create actual ambiguity; if you understand my intent, | then I have used language effectively. | | As human thought evolves, language should too. Poets are | always breaking rules in the name of art, and many of | those changes get codified as new rules. Shakespeare | simply made up dozens of words that we use today without | a second thought. Over the last decade, modern poets | steeped in the culture of sarcasm have given the word | "literally" a new meaning. Those deviations and | inventions made sense, both to the speakers and | listeners, so new words, rules, and understandings were | created. The only people left confused are the | prescriptionists who cling to outdated rules that | describe how people _used to_ talk. | | As long as humans can turn these AI assistants off and | share their imperfect creativity, I'm not too concerned. | nescioquid wrote: | > if you understand my intent, then I have used language | effectively. | | I'll agree as far as it goes, but it ignores the burden | of understanding on the the part of your interlocutor. | | Have you ever been in a conversation where either you or | the other party didn't speak the language well? It is a | strain on all parties, even if sufficient information was | transmitted and understood. I might consider this merely | sufficient or barely "effective". I'd hope we aim for | clearly expressing oneself without causing strain on your | conversation partner or reader. | | A good deal of what people quibble over regarding | "grammar" has more to do with good style (whatever that | means to you -- proper use of less/fewer, who/whom, | capitalization and punctuation, etc) and achieving a | certain verbal register. | [deleted] | Teever wrote: | You're not even wrong. | leetcrew wrote: | > It does if you hold the view that teaching someone to | speak and write is teaching them them think. | | I don't hold that view. at least, I don't think effective | communication requires mastering the formal rules of a | natural language. I'm not even sure communication itself | is that closely tied to complex thought. I've known a few | brilliant engineers whose english was barely sufficient | for work. perhaps they were quite elegant in their native | tongues; I wouldn't be able to say. | exikyut wrote: | > _does it actually matter that people don 't all the | grammar rules_ | | No. | | * _ducks_ * | leetcrew wrote: | ironic, but it actually supports my point so I'll leave | it that way :) | Silhouette wrote: | _does it actually matter that people don 't all the grammar | rules or how to spell things?_ | | Does it matter if someone does not write with perfect | grammar and spelling? Probably not. | | However at some point you have drifted so far from normal | conventions that you are no longer communicating | effectively. You can make reasonable arguments about both | prescriptivism and descriptivism but if your spelling and | grammar are so bad that someone can't understand you then | you're not a descriptivist, you're just wrong. | | I have encountered this more often than I'd like in | professional settings. I work in software development, a | field where precision is important, so if I'm looking at | your job application and it's full of basic language errors | then I absolutely will judge you for that. | apazzolini wrote: | Yes, clarity and grammar matter. For example, with your | lack of capitalization, I wouldn't know if you were trying | to help your Uncle Jack off a horse or your uncle jack off | a horse. | NateEag wrote: | Though no one has ever written either of those sentences | for any reason other than to put up a strawman to tear | down in their defense of grammar. | | I'm a fan of learning grammar well, to be clear, and wish | mine were better, but this is not a good argument for | grammar mattering. | leetcrew wrote: | okay, you can also come up with plenty of examples of | ambiguous parses that don't require violating any grammar | rules. fortunately humans are a bit more intelligent than | compilers and can use their knowledge of context to | settle on the more reasonable interpretation. | not1ofU wrote: | I for one blame the Grammar-Nazis and their anti-semantic | ways | | ok, i'll let myself out. | beambot wrote: | Even worse: entirely new language primitives based on 10wpm | mobile keyboards. | Spivak wrote: | I mean "txt" speak is something only my parents still use. | There are some shortenings like omw, ngl, ikr but they're | not inventing new words. | | I mean hell if this is the straw than the internet ruined | that before I was born -- tldr, imho, afaik, mfw, /s. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | Despite the moral panic over the OG mobile keyboards in the | noughties (remember the breathless "kids these days write | _txt spk, m8_ in their English exams " headlines every | year?), the pandemic of inability to "write good" never | actually materialised among Millenials. | | Indeed, it has been suggested that reductions like "wait" | to "w8" even represent the same kind of phonological | awareness of language that's correlated with _better_ | spelling. | syshum wrote: | I know, we should also get rid of Calculators because people | should just do all math in there head | | Hell let get rid of computers as well, people should just do | everything manually, if you need to communicate drive to the | person an talk to them, if you need to write something get | out the hammer, chisel and rock... | | </endsarcasm> | | No Computers, Spell Check, nor grammar check has not ruined | civilization or made people stop learning things... | Barrin92 wrote: | we use calculators because you can't do the kind of | arithmetic in your head that calculators are made to | perform, and because random arithmetic isn't conducive to | understanding math. If you can't add two single digit | numbers any more I'd start to be concerned. | | Having a proper understanding of grammar and spelling is | relevant even in verbal communication. Tools should be used | to augment human capacity, not used as an excuse to justify | atrophy of basic skills. | bananamerica wrote: | English is not my first language. Grammarly greatly improved my | English, even when I'm not using it. | lbriner wrote: | You might be worrying a bit too much about what others think. | I am English and if someone is, say, Russian, and writes to | me in English, I don't care if their grammar is a little | poor. The great thing about English is you can understand | even when most of the words are in the wrong order :-) | | Also, most English people don't know much about grammar | anyway and lots of people still confuse things like | there/their/they're; are/our; its/it's etc. | jazzyjackson wrote: | Also if you're not native speaker how do you know if the | computer's suggestion is an improvement or a regression? | witrak wrote: | I think you skip the case when both communicating parties | are not native speakers which is probably much more often | case than when at least one side knows English well. And | risk related to a misunderstanding caused by breaking | grammar rules is much higher. | hef19898 wrote: | One of the beat ways to tell _really_ peoficient foreign | speaker of, in my case, German isn 't the accent (as some | people don't have one anymore) but a too perfect Grammar | usage, either in writing (less obvious) or speaking (clear as | day). I yried one of the German grammar tests of my son, and | failed miserable, despite being a native speaker. My wife | isn't, and she's so much better in German grammar then I am. | | The gist: Don't worry too mich, just use the language. Most | people are than delighted to meet a foreigner trying to speak | their language. | colejohnson66 wrote: | It's the same with English. Maybe it's confirmation bias, | but I've noticed many non-native speakers either write too | formally, or choose the wrong synonym for the context. | Everything is grammatically correct, but it just _feels_ | wrong. | a_e_k wrote: | My wife told me that when she was studying Russian in | college, some of the professors in the advanced courses | would refer to certain phrasings as the "spy's variant." | kohllision wrote: | This is comparable to the argument that programmers are | learning how to eliminate compiler/linter warnings rather than | learning how to program better. Immediate feedback is the best | learning tool and one leads to the other. Of course, natural | languages are far more complex and have no universal standard. | While it is true that no easy way to check for style, be it in | programming or writing, we should encourage the use of such | tools (once they are secure and privacy-friendly) as writing | assistants. | tasn wrote: | I couldn't agree more. Every now and then I let gmail auto | complete for me, but it feels like my writing is just becoming | generic. | ocdtrekkie wrote: | Yeah, it still absolutely blows my mind folks allow Grammarly | anywhere. It's _horrifying_ from a privacy and security | standpoint. I get requests to install it at work from time to | time, and then have to basically explain that it would be illegal | for me to allow it. | | I would argue if you're subject to _any_ sort of data security | compliance policies, you can 't allow Grammarly on your systems. | [deleted] | bjt2n3904 wrote: | What can you do about it? | | Learn to write. Don't use Grammerly. That's the article. Instead, | we keep trying to find little tricks to keep the utility without | surrendering privacy. | | High school and college essays are already full of enough | mindless fluff and tropes. Why put everything you write into | something that then makes you sound like a bot? Your essays will | all end up with YouTube Face. | orhmeh09 wrote: | > Learn to write. Don't use Grammerly. | | *Grammarly. | bjt2n3904 wrote: | Oh dear! I walked right into that one didn't I? :'D | dymk wrote: | Well, it's Grammarly, not Vocabarly or Spellarly | toomanydoubts wrote: | How about non-native English speakers that are using it as an | way to take tips and improve their English writing? | lbriner wrote: | There are plenty of ways to improve your English without | grammarly. | Spivak wrote: | Yes but if people are gravitating towards Grammerly it's | because it's offering something those other ways aren't. | | I mean I guess you _can_ learn an instrument by reading | sheet music and sheer force of will but I think most people | prefer lessons. | bjt2n3904 wrote: | I'd argue that's even worse for non native speakers. It's | alluring, really I see it. This would be massive amounts of | utility if I were trying to learn French. | | But the cost is it's not actually natural, it's what the AI | says is natural. | bananamerica wrote: | Yeah. Grammarly greatly improved my English. | geocrasher wrote: | Years ago I worked at a company where many people were using | Grammarly. One of the top devs took a look at it, and saw that | the text was sent to Grammarly's server unencrypted and warned | everyone not to use it. Some still did. | | At my previous engagement, a large number of staff spoke English | as a second or third language, and Grammarly was prevalent. Even | as a native English speaker, they wanted me to use it as a sort | of proof reader. I'll admit that it caught some of my dumber | mistakes, but I never felt comfortable using it. I could have | proof-read my work better is all. Perhaps if I wasn't given mind- | numbing work, the quality would have been better. | HPsquared wrote: | What does it even offer that MS Word doesn't? Word has all | sorts of grammar and style checking. | gnicholas wrote: | For all the years that I used Word, its grammar checker used | incorrect rules for when to use "which" and "that". | | This issue may be fixed now, but I would never trust a | grammar checker with such a lousy track record for basic | issues like which/that. | CGamesPlay wrote: | The obvious one: integration with every text box on your | system. | [deleted] | dylan604 wrote: | Which is exactly the very very scary prospect of the thing. | Giving Word this ability while using Word makes sense. | Giving some other software access to 100% of everything | that occurs on the system is very unnerving. <shudder> | registeredcorn wrote: | So, both of my phones have the following keyboard option: | | "Suggest text corrections | | Tap words or phrases underlined in green or tap the more menu | icon when you see a green dot, to review grammar and writing | suggestions. | | Powered by Grammarly" | | Does this mean that if I have text correction turned on while | using the keyboard on my phone, because it is "powered by | grammarly", it will be sending unencrypted information to | Grammarly? | | Personally, I couldn't care less if some giant company is | reading my information, but I don't want that transmission | being sent unencrypted. | | Edit: I should mention that this is not an app that I have | installed on my phone. This is literally just the text | prediction for my keyboard by default. | fbrchps wrote: | Looks like Samsung is adding the Grammarly functionality to | their built-in (still an app, technically) keyboard in an | upcoming update, or they already have. | | So now, very likely, both Samsung and Grammarly have access | to everything you type on your phone. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Do you know that grammarly keeps this information and | doesn't toss it after it's AI looks for patterns for | training? | andrewl-hn wrote: | Yes, all your text is being sent to Grammarly servers. It's | done over HTTPS, so no third party can see what you type in, | only you and Grammarly see your texts. | stjohnswarts wrote: | That's really bad actually. Especially if they are storing | it away in a database associated with your unique ID for | surveillance for 3rd party companies and the government. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | ...until there is a security breach at grammarly | pedrovhb wrote: | > the text was sent to Grammarly's server unencrypted | | What does this mean exactly? That they were using HTTP instead | of HTTPS, or some custom unencrypted format? | bdcravens wrote: | It may have nothing to do with the protocol. It can mean that | everything Grammarly receives, no matter how transmitted, is | unencrypted, in the same sense that this comment I sent to HN | is. Of course this makes sense, but I think the difference is | in the expectation of what is and isn't sent. | boppo1 wrote: | > wanted me to use it as a sort of proof reader. | | I can't imagine working in a place like this. I often write | with some unusual but perfectly valid grammar constructions | that are a result of being well read. Running what I've | written, the codification of my thoughts, through a statistical | homogenization machine is dystopian in a way I had never | imagined. What kind of business was it? | | Imagine running famous writers through this thing, even if | they're just journalists. Gross. I'm gonna run Moby Dick | through Grammarly later and see what it has to say. | MattGaiser wrote: | The goal is not to make famous writers write like | journalists. It is to make people who struggle with writing | write at the level of journalists. | geocrasher wrote: | I can't imagine working in a place like this. | | I couldn't either. I don't work there anymore. | iak8god wrote: | > I often write with some unusual but perfectly valid grammar | constructions that are a result of being well read. | | That's lovely for you. It sounds like you're very clever. | However, most writing in the workplace is intended to | communicate concrete ideas, and benefits more from clarity | than cleverness. | ubermonkey wrote: | That doesn't have to mean, and in fact should NOT mean, | bland. | Spivak wrote: | You're missing the value-prop of Grammarly -- to help someone | _who doesn 't know_ write more like a fluent native English | speaker. Helping someone write "more average" is exactly the | point until they're fluent enough to know when and how to | break the rules. | | Wait until you find out about the 5 paragraph essay that's | taught in HS that follows this model. | dathinab wrote: | > who doesn't know write | | In my experience it doesn't. | | It helps people who are already reasonable good at writing | English to write slightly better. Through only if their | writing is limited to "business" English. | | For e.g. papers it's in my experience a catastrophe. | | There are also multiple categories of errors it can't cope | with and does bad recommendation for. It's the kinda of | errors I'm doing a lot. Maybe due to having some dyslexia, | maybe because it's my second language, or maybe because my | brain thinks slightly different (not joking; Luckily it's | just different, not worse.). | badrabbit wrote: | I feel like I can't function without it. Grammar mistakes can | be seen very badly by others. If only being able to understand | the other person was sufficient. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | I have a relative with severe dyslexia who is a native | English speaker. I wonder if grammarly could help him, even | with things like spelling, too. | ctennis1 wrote: | My previous role was at a public facing ecommerce site. One day | I started noticing a lot of public traffic to internal | administrative endpoints that were failing - likely bots, but | also to URLs that bots would have never known existed. Urls | that only someone internal to the company would even know | existed, due to the complex way they were crafted. It was very | concerning. | | We spent a LOT of time tracking down, and finally realized that | the "bot" traffic was coming about 30 minutes after one of our | employees legitimated visited the site. We found that user was | using grammarly. Once we deactivated grammarly, all of the bot | traffic stopped. | | As best as I could tell, every URL that particular person went | to in their browsers, grammarly had a service about 30 minutes | later that would try and hit the url directly and ascertain | what was there. | | Haven't been on the crusade against it ever since. | dylan604 wrote: | Did something like grammarly attempt to correct your post | here? | | >Haven't been on the crusade against it ever since. | | You have been or you haven't been? It sounds like a | contradictory statement from the rest of your comment. | bqmjjx0kac wrote: | Perhaps another site that person visited frequently was | stealing their Grammarly auth token with this bug? | https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project- | zero/issues/detail?id=15... | altdataseller wrote: | Why is Grammarly keeping track of the urls you visit when it | has nothing to do with checking your grammar? | lozenge wrote: | Are you writing blog posts or message board comments? Are | you on social media? Writing to one person or many? Are you | writing for financial, health, tourist industries, or for | your academic qualifications? To entertain, persuade or | inform? A screenshot of the page can be reviewed and | classified later. | | All to improve the service, of course. You know, what they | say in the privacy policy. | | (Note: I have no insider information) | BbzzbB wrote: | I mostly wonder how? Is it an extension or program? I | thought it was just a website where you can paste in a | text-box for proof reading, and that sort of website | shouldn't be able to track you everywhere afterwards, | right? | skellera wrote: | It's also a browser extension and extension for things | like Microsoft Word. | | I think it's fine if you use the website with information | you don't mind sharing but their extensions are reading | everything you write. | [deleted] | Spooky23 wrote: | Yes. Don't use it, and require that contractors not use it | either. | | I've found attorneys using it - automatic dq for me. | copperx wrote: | Does dq mean dequeue? Ironically, Grammarly would automatically | expand your in-house abbreviations to make your writing more | clear. | SaltySolomon wrote: | DQ = Disqualification, a no go. | Spooky23 wrote: | Sweet. | | I'm sure the subject of a confidential investigation that | could result in losing custody of their children would | appreciate that Grammarly simplified that jargon in some | attorney's report. No problem at all that it's stored in the | cloud somewhere, monetized, or reviewed by some contractor | somewhere. | lifthrasiir wrote: | The article explicitly calls out that kind of behavior under | the subtitle "Don't Just Ban Grammarly and Expect Folks To | Listen". I know, the whole article is sort of promotional, but | the point still stands. | Spooky23 wrote: | People say stuff like this all of the time. It's just noise | unless your relationship with the provider addresses whatever | risks you have. | | You don't just ban it, you attach sanctions to it. Third | party disclosure of legal work product is not so good for | your legal career. | | Would you be happy if the people administrating your health | benefits, medical records or taxes were using some random | free SaaS that accessed and processed your data without | accountability? | | How about your attorney? If you were facing criminal | prosecution, would you want the information and metadata (how | documents were revised) about your case to be subpoenaed and | available ton the prosecutors? | lifthrasiir wrote: | The whole article doesn't gloss over those points; it is | rather critical of Grammerly except for the last part. But | also it, in my opinion, correctly points out that the | security measure can't be separated from the social measure | in that last part. | parhamn wrote: | While I don't use it for the sake of privacy, folks saying "learn | to write" are missing the point of grammarly. It's an editing | tool. Editing is remarkably difficult to do on your own writing. | Ask any published author. | slg wrote: | It is especially funny in a community with as many software | engineers as HN. Imagine saying a developer who uses a linter | or has to make changes to their code as part of a PR review | should just "learn to code". | uoaei wrote: | Isn't it plainly obvious that they take all your inputs and feed | it to their models? | | Isn't that literally the point of Grammarly? | Consultant32452 wrote: | It's not obvious (to me) that all the "thinking" is done in the | cloud. I would've assumed it was all local to your machine. | duxup wrote: | For some of us it is something we might think is likely. | | I don't think it is that obvious / people would know that | outright. | rpdillon wrote: | I think it's more a case where many users only see one side of | a dual-use technology...they don't necessarily even know how it | works, just that they can install it and it checks grammar for | them. It seems a bit like visiting the local dump for the first | time as a kid: the sheer amount of stuff being collected in one | place that came from everyone's homes can be really impressive, | even though you knew all along that it had to go somewhere | every time you took out the trash. | gxt wrote: | In Quebec we have Antidote. It's a good "old" piece of software | you install on your computer and it integrates with office and | other programs to provide _explanations_ of why what you write, | looks wrong. No keylogger, no getting dumber. It essentially | let's you either learn why you're wrong or decide the software is | wrong. It used to be French only but they added English too a | couple years back. I have no affiliation with Antidote, I just | use it everyday. | bquinn wrote: | Hmm it seems curious that this attack on a successful Ukrainian | startup is happening at this time. | | Could it be a Russian smear campaign? It seems like the sort of | thing that the St Petersburg disinformation teams would attempt, | in very subtle ways... | woadwarrior01 wrote: | Incidentally, using Grammarly is verboten, internally at a more | famous company whose name also happens to start with a G. | jjav wrote: | Yes, grammarly is an excellent data exfiltrator, don't ever use | it while typing anything you don't want published externally. | | The easiest way to do that (instead of being constantly aware) is | to just never use it (or anything like it that sends all your | private typing to somewhere else). | agrunyan wrote: | In Grammerly's Privacy Policy[0], it states as part of | information they collect: | | "User Content. This consists of all text, documents, or other | content or information uploaded, entered, or otherwise | transmitted by you in connection with your use of the Services | and/or Software." | | and yet they don't define this as a keylogger. I do understand | keyloggers record _everything_ a user types and Grammerly claims | to not read "sensitive fields". | | [0] https://www.grammarly.com/privacy-policy | nalekberov wrote: | I am very proud I have always refused to use this kind of | software, the question is "Is Grammarly a keylogger" is hard to | answer per se, but it has always potential to collect enormous | data about its users, it doesn't matter what they claim in their | T&C, Facebook also started as a "just" social network, they ended | up being one the biggest data collector of the world. | dillondoyle wrote: | It also injects html/junk into email editors. | | Our staff use it. Having typos in political emails is bad and | super duper stressful. On the whole I think worth it for our use | case. | | But when you look at the actual draft email html there is almost | always some grammarly fragment left like pseudo html elements and | stuff | bleuchase wrote: | Yes? Not use it? | morganslaw wrote: | Could you use Grammarly keylogs to train AIs? It could have | infinitely more content than the web has. | tlarkworthy wrote: | This article misses the way I use it, which is much safer. I am | security minded but also a terrible writer. | | I have Grammarly as a browser extension that is OFF BY DEFAULT, | except, when I am writing on Medium, and a few times when I click | to enable it temporarily. | | Problem solved! I feel this article is not serious about a the | "What you can do about it". I am fairly confident I have | sensitive information controlled, yet I do get the very real | benefits when I write a blog post. | | I also copy and paste markdown into the standalone web app | occasionally because it can correct markdown without getting | tripped up by syntax! I am very happy with the quality of | grammarly corrections and I do think it is possible to use it | safely, just not with its default settings. | xvolter wrote: | I used Grammarly in the past and I stopped because the privacy | issues were concerning. I switched to | https://www.antidote.info/en, which works entirely on-device, | without sending your data to a cloud service. They now do offer a | fairly minimal web application that can be used if you have their | subscription, but they offer a one-time purchase for the desktop | application. | | Similar to Grammarly, the growing use of AI-based pair | programming tools, like Github Copilot and similar, poses similar | serious privacy risks. While the intelligent autocomplete is | helpful, it uploads large parts (or all) of your source code; | which most companies should be very concerned about. | charcircuit wrote: | It would have been good if he asked how long grammar checked text | is retained to grammarly / an engineer that works on it. | [deleted] | trevcanhuman wrote: | Related blog post I made: | | http://trevcan.duckdns.org/blog/rant-writing-tools.html | | It talks more about morality and not legality. | dathinab wrote: | The main problem is that Grammarly doesn't want their | models/rules/etc. to end up out of their control, hence they do | the checking on their server. | | But this means it MUST BE a key logger, how else could it work? | | But tbh. what irritates me the most, is how bad their product is. | | At least with this type of errors I do (some dyslexia, English | being the second language, and me having some uh bad past with | English in school). | | Like the "corrections" they recommend (which go beyond what a | "dictionary" spell checker is able to do) are often wrong and | will result in another wrong text. | | It's pretty obsessed with writing in one specific style. | | It seems to have some major problems with listings. | | It also seems to want to change anything with some subtle | undertone to a version without it. | | I would say maybe for people already somewhat good at English | which do not make the kind of errors I often do, writing soulless | "business" English, it might be good. | | If it wouldn't be a major risk to confidentiality. | | I do not trust a company like Grammarly (or most companies) to be | cable of defending their IT infrastructure against professional | attackers, and subtle backdooring Grammarly seems quite useful | (for certain actors). | | Btw. same for 1Password it's a supper juicy target, especially if | it adds a crypto wallet (as they plan to do). | | Also I'm pretty sure the usage of Grammarly for writing letters | to customers is in conflict with more then just the GDPR (if they | contain sensitive information, in more then one way). | dghughes wrote: | I have disabled any auto-correct, suggest, or any so-called aid | in any app that I use. I found most often they are a hindrance | not a help. For example suggesting wont instead of won't or its | when 99.9% of the time I wanted it's. | | My spelling has become terrible and all my life I have been great | at spelling. My grammar is OK I thought it was great until I went | back to college and felt like I was illiterate. | | In college I did try Grammarly mainly for its plagiarism tool. | But Grammarly like a virus it's very difficult to uninstall. I | caught many mistakes in grammar like "for free" and "off of". And | Grammarly plan was supposed to be monthly $20/month then it | jumped to $300 US dollars one year-plan automatically charged to | my credit card. I didn't notice and after a month they said it | was impossible to refund my money. Pure greed, scam, spammy junk. | | I also realize I'm tempting Skitt's Law just by mentioning all | this. | colbyhub wrote: | I've seen people promote Language Tool as an alternative: | https://languagetool.org It appears to be open source and you can | host your own server! | shade wrote: | You can also run it in a Docker container and connect the | LanguageTool VS Code extension to it. Works great for Markdown | documents! | subpixel wrote: | How limited is the open source version? Or put another way, | what besides convenience would drive me to pay instead of | maintain an open source instance? | Someone1234 wrote: | I run the local server works well as a spelling/grammar | checking when using the ngrams. About ten gig in size total. | The browser extension is just so-so, I don't love the UI even | now but considering the privacy and quality it is hard to be | disappointed, there's nothing else out there. | | If anyone wants to get set up fast on Windows: | | - Server Doc/Download Link: https://dev.languagetool.org/http- | server | | - ngram Doc/Download Link: | https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat... | | I've had success with Amazon Corretto jre8 64x for my | Java[0][1] and I use this bat file to launch it upon reboot | (put it in the same folder as languagetool-server.jar): | SET PATH=C:\program files\Amazon Corretto\jre8\bin\ | start javaw -cp languagetool-server.jar | org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8081 --allow-origin | "\*" -l en-US --languageModel | "C:\LanguageTool\LanguageTool-5.4\ngram" | | Set path just adds jre8 to bat's path context (there are | multiple other ways to accomplish this). "start" just hides the | black cmd window while the server is running. --languageModel | must be the fully qualified path to the ngram. | | You can automate executing this script either using Windows' | scheduled tasks or just putting a shortcut to it in the Startup | Folder (Win+R enter shell:common startup). | | And don't forget to re-configure the browser extension. The | setting is in Experimental Settings -> LanguageTool API Server | URL -> Local Server | | [0] https://corretto.aws/downloads/latest/amazon- | corretto-8-x64-... [1] | https://docs.aws.amazon.com/corretto/latest/corretto-8-ug/do... | ismaildonmez wrote: | I use LanguageTool daily since some years and it's been an | absolute pleasure with both English and German. Add to that, | the bugs I reported for both language were fixed in mere hours. | rpdillon wrote: | Yes! I looked into languagetool last week to see if I could | host it locally on my Synology. They have an interesting page | about how, after setting up the initial 200MB install, one can | enable n-gram checks[0], which requires an additional 8GB of | storage and an SSD. I haven't tackled that yet, but it's on my | list! | | [0]: https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram- | dat... | deutschewelle wrote: | heiliger strohsack! this is a good suggestion but the site | itself seem to be very much like Grammarly or am I mistaken | here? | | The golden chalice appears to be a self-hosted solution! | terracatta wrote: | This is really awesome, love that they don't mystify the tech | and make it accessible to folks who want to have control of the | data. | motohagiography wrote: | There ain't no reason I wouldn't never consider using Grammarly | once, at least especially not now or whatnot. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-25 23:00 UTC)