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Ask HN: Is Grammerly a Keylogger as a Service?

49 points| buildmystartup | 8 years ago | reply

26 comments

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[+] canadianwriter|8 years ago|reply
They've been advertising to me hardcore and it is completely free. It makes me wonder what data they are selling.

I have no issue with them advertising to me based on what I've typed but if they put me in audiences based on it and sell those I get uncomfortable.

[+] fusiongyro|8 years ago|reply
It's not completely free. Their free version is a limited-feature advertisement for the premium version, which is between $12 and $30 a month depending on billing frequency.

https://www.grammarly.com/premium

[+] oplav|8 years ago|reply
Their privacy policy says they aren't in the business of selling user information. They also say they do not share information with third parties for the purpose of enabling them to deliver their advertisements to you.

https://www.grammarly.com/privacy-policy

[+] EGreg|8 years ago|reply
I have always wondered why spelling and grammar checkers - which could easily fit on your computer back in the 90s - needed a cloud-based provider.

One could easily build chrome extensions that DIDN'T phone home.

Today deep learning data can be downloaded to each computer. They are doing it with small IOT!!

[+] vbezhenar|8 years ago|reply
Because their algorithms are their valuable intellectual property and hiding them behind server is the only real way to protect. Of course it has nothing to do with performance.

May be they use some statistics over uploaded texts to improve algorithms.

[+] tokyoSurfer|8 years ago|reply
While we are focusing on Facebook, Google etc. for breaking our privacy to extract data and pass it to third parties, we are willing to use Grammarly, CloudFlare and CrashPlan, pay for it and use it while hoping they will not work with security services. We need much more transparency it seems.
[+] EGreg|8 years ago|reply
There is this idea floating around that the corollary to "if you aren't paying, you're the product" to "if you are paying, you're not."

I wonder why so many people tacitly assume that paying for a service will make them forego mining your data and monetizing it. Very few people read the terms of service in its entirety regardless of whether they pay or not.

What we SHOULD do is standardize privacy policy clauses already.

[+] pvg|8 years ago|reply
If you think that, you can write about it and make your case instead of abusing 'Ask HN'. You're not asking anything, just insinuating.
[+] kawsper|8 years ago|reply
I don't know, but I did think the same thing, and that is why I uninstalled it.
[+] buildmystartup|8 years ago|reply
They send a weekly emails with chunks of text they corrected so that means my data is being transferred somewhere. I would stay away from this service.
[+] fredley|8 years ago|reply
What's one more keylogger?

Your OS is already logging your keystrokes, your browser is already logging your keystrokes, who even knows what else is already logging your keystrokes.

Obviously I speak here for the majority of computer users, I imagine many (most?) in the HN readership have taken steps to reduce the amount of keylogging they are exposed to as much as possible already.

[+] microcolonel|8 years ago|reply
Whose browser and OS is logging keystrokes? OSX/Windows users with IE/Edge/Safari? Are you insinuating that Google has a patch which integrates keylogging in their Chrome builds of Chromium?

I typically use Chromium on OpenBSD, am I being keylogged. I'm pretty sure we all have a choice, and many of us choose convenience over privacy.

[+] wx2018|8 years ago|reply
I can totally see this being the case. They do have paid versions, I think only the browser extension is "free"?