[CrystalLangUser]

> not to be burned and buried in a waste disposal field (where they'd be in their most secure state)

This is just a simple strawman.

It's not that hard to have a middle ground, just disallow apps from using things like your webcam or screen without your explicit permission. Just because 1 program uses that functionality doesn't necessitate it to be common to every single program you ever run.

iOS already manages this. Just have a notification pop up when you use the program to allow X access from system settings. Certain programs already do something similar by requesting access from Accessibility, like window managers (albeit that's to get around certain limitations).

[badsectoracula]

If someone figures out a way for this sort of thing to be unintrusive while still being effective, i wouldn't mind it but i haven't seen anything like that. The notification popups you suggest are both intrusive and ineffective because, honestly, if i want to do some task anything that tries to alert me about something unrelated to that task ("hey, this needs net access" - sure, ok whatever... i cannot think about that right now, i need to actually do what i want to do) is something i am very unlikely to put any thought over so i'll just accept. I mean, i used to check the permissions on my Android mobile but after a year or so i stopped because at the end of the day the question is "do you want to run this program or not"? And considering i already downloaded the program to run it, the answer is obvious.

This stuff is really barely a notch above expecting people to read EULAs.

[jurip]

How often do you think most users read the screen, especially using something other than the screenshot tool of the operating system?

As an iOS developer I run Xscope to check details of designs, I don't know, maybe once every two weeks? And I guess I've probably used Acorn's color picker outside its own window during the last year, but I'm not sure about that.

I'd imagine that most users need apps reading arbitrary pixels off their screen less often than I do. I'd appreciate a warning from the operating system when an app tries to do that.

[badsectoracula]

> How often

I do not think the frequency of needing that functionality is really relevant when you need to use it - you can either do it or you cannot.

But there are users who do need to use applications that capture the screen way more often than once every two weeks. One example would be Twitch and YouTube streamers (not necessarily about games - many stream other things, like creating art, programming, composing music, etc) who do that for several hours every day.

> do you think most users

There is no point talking about "most users" because really anything can be attributed to what "most users" do or do not - "most users" is not something that is well defined. We can only talk about specific use cases.

After all, all users (which by definition include most users) start as not being able to do anything, that doesn't mean the OS should not be able to do anything.

> As an iOS developer I run Xscope to check details of designs, I don't know, maybe once every two weeks? And I guess I've probably used Acorn's color picker outside its own window during the last year, but I'm not sure about that.

These are also useful examples for cases where you need screen reading, but these are really niche. The most common is probably streaming, as i mentioned above, but there are also other cases where you need frequent screen reading capabilities - for example documentation writers will often need to capture parts of the OS, either as screenshots or as short video segments (for interactive docs) to use as part of the documentation. It is also very helpful for customer support - in both sides of the equation (in a company i worked many years ago, the employee responsible for tech support had SnagIt open all the time).

> I'd appreciate a warning from the operating system when an app tries to do that.

I suspect that if that warning comes as part of your screenshot or video capture you wont appreciate it that much :-P

[jurip]

But this is not about removing the ability to read screen content. It's about removing the ability to read screen content without telling the user.

That's why I think questions about frequency and "most users" (nebulous term, I admit) come into play: yes/no permission dialogs aren't the best and many users do just click through them without thinking, but there's a world of difference between asking several times a day and asking a couple of times a month.

If my usage is far below average, then I agree that it's probably better not try to restrict it. If, as I would guess, I use it more than most, then it feels exceptional enough that letting the user know when it's happening would be fine.

If you could give a permanent permission to a given app, I'd imagine even the daily streamers wouldn't be too badly inconvenienced.