About that "Read your browsing history" warning...

[thdoan]

I didn't know this was creating such a huge scare until I went to the Autofill page on the Play Store today. For the record, let me expand on my response to one of the concerned users here:

Actually, "Read your browsing history" is not even the most evil sounding permission by a long shot; if you go to the extensions page and click on Details for Autofill, under "Permissions" you'll find a warning that sounds even more sinister: "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit". Whoa, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Well, this warning has been there since version 1.0 because it's the stock warning you're slapped with when your extension uses what is called a "content script", which is a JavaScript (*.js) file that is loaded on every page to do the extension's work (in Autofill's case, parse form fields and automatically fill them for you). I can only guess the reason many people are suddenly jumping all over this new "read your browsing history" warning is because I recently added a new webNavigation permission to fix a long-standing bug, and this particular permission gives off this warning while disabling Autofill, forcing people to read the warning and accept it before they can re-enable it again. I get that Chrome is playing the privacy & security card here, but this is a bit draconian IMHO. I've stated in the Privacy & Security section in black and white that Autofill does not transmit any data over the internet and all data remains on your local hard drive at all times, so I'm not sure why so many people think I can somehow steal their data to sell it. Maybe under the dark cloud of all the recent data breach/leak events, this sort of general paranoia cannot be too surprising.

Autofill was originally built for my classroom of disabled computer students at an NGO and I make no money off it whatsoever (apart from the kind donations people have sent in since v8), so I can care less about the one-star reviews, but please at least get the facts straight. I guess all I can do is tell people to monitor their internet traffic to see for themselves that, in fact, Autofill does not send any information anywhere (nor does it collect them, unless you count the autofill rules that the user creates). This prompted me to add another question to the FAQ to disclose all the permissions that Autofill requires:

http://www.tohodo.com/autofill/help-chrome.html#faq-q36

Here is the Privacy & Security section I hope people read and understand before they install Autofill:

Autofill does not track your browsing history in any way, nor does it transmit any data over the internet. All data remains on your local hard disk drive at all times. However, the data saved by this extension is NOT encrypted, so any data you save remains in the clear, although it will remain on your hard drive and only someone who knows where to look and has physical access to your hard drive would be able to access it. Your activities are also not monitored by Google Analytics or equivalent tracking tags.