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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 00:21:43 JST Aral Balkan

   Dear Affinity, any thoughts why your Publisher app starts to attempting to contact every page on my reading list/bookmarks/browser history including my health insurance provider on launch?

   (You cunts.)

   (Did I mention I fucking hate capitalism?)

   PS. This is an app downloaded from the Mac App Store and it’s got a lovely, comforting, blue, Apple-approved checkmark to let you know that data is not collected. So it’s safe. *phew!*

   #surveillance #capitalism #affinity #affinityPublisher #apple #macOS #BigTech #SiliconValley

   • Embed this notice
     ThisLeeNoble (thisleenoble@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 01:08:09 JST ThisLeeNoble

     in reply to

     @aral Could this be a WebKit bug? Maybe Publisher is using a WebKit view and there’s a leaky sandbox or something.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 01:08:09 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • ThisLeeNoble

     @thisleenoble Possible. But why would even WebKit/Safari have to hit every URL unless they were crawling your links?

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 01:08:10 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Steven Op de beeck

     @stevenodb Favicons would make sense but, at least insofar as I remember from using web views for Better Blocker, I never saw such behaviour. Now have I seen it in any other apps to this point.

   • Embed this notice
     Steven Op de beeck (stevenodb@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 01:08:11 JST Steven Op de beeck

     in reply to

     @aral can you see what it’s downloading? Maybe it’s just favicons for some WebKit view.

   • Embed this notice
     Christofuzius (scolab@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 01:17:03 JST Christofuzius

     in reply to

     • Steven Op de beeck

     @aral @stevenodb I observed the same behavior for Affinity Foto and Designer. Started with the lasted update.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 07:31:23 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Me and my Arrow

     @clint Yeah, Adobe are surveillance capitalists through and through.

   • Embed this notice
     Me and my Arrow (clint@freeradical.zone)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 07:31:24 JST Me and my Arrow

     in reply to

     @aral thanks for pointing this out. I was giving affinity a pass in LitttleSnitch because I thought the traffic was benign. Guess I’ll need to change my rules in LittleSnitch. BTW, I’ll bet adobe creative cloud is doing something similar.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 07:33:37 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Der Teilweise

     @teilweise Nope, uninstalled it instead. I don’t work for free for Big Tech. That said, I also don’t work for money for Big Tech so 🤷♂️

   • Embed this notice
     Der Teilweise (teilweise@layer8.space)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 07:33:39 JST Der Teilweise

     in reply to

     @aral Doesn’t happen here. 2.5.7, non-AppStore.

     Did you write about it in their forums? Their staff actually reads reports there and they tag bug reports so a bot will add a comment when the fix is released. Quite the opposite of how Apple handles bug reporting.

     Given how serious this is, I‘m convinced they will investigate it.

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 10:25:31 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @aral >Install proprietary malware.
     >Wonder why it's malware.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 22:35:11 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Der Teilweise

     @teilweise Sure, I’m not bothered either way.

   • Embed this notice
     Der Teilweise (teilweise@layer8.space)'s status on Friday, 03-Jan-2025 22:35:12 JST Der Teilweise

     in reply to

     @aral Fair. Do you mind if I mention this thread on the forum?

     I think this needs to be fixed and since this does not happen for everyone it might be worth making sure that Serif is aware of the issue.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Jan-2025 05:22:14 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Der Teilweise

     @teilweise Thanks for checking. Good to know. Still don’t trust them though (they’re Canva now).

   • Embed this notice
     Der Teilweise (teilweise@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Jan-2025 05:22:15 JST Der Teilweise

     in reply to

     @aral I finally found the time to report it (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/226595-unexpected-network-connection-accessing-bookmarks-and-reading-list-entries/), here’s the response by a user marked as “staff”:

     “From speaking to the Dev team, this will be Apple components doing their own checks. Affinity itself can't and doesn't read you browser bookmarks or reading list. This has also been reported for other apps as well, one of those reports is here (https://community.bitwarden.com/t/little-snitch-reports-many-connections-45-on-mac-desktop-client/75054/2).”

     Of course I cannot verify this but it sounds reasonable.