[cronix]

> It’s an entirely different thing if it delegates its privileges to a web service that could do anything and that nobody can inspect.

Would it be more accurate then to say it potentially lets Amazon track you? Without the word "potentially," or similar, it makes it sound like they are in fact doing it when you just said it "could."

[ziddoap]

To be clear, I'm not the author so I cannot answer on their behalf.

In my opinion though, "could" is so close to "potentially" in definition that it seems rather pedantic to hinge the entire article and its conclusions on that single choice of word.

[cronix]

The title of the article on HN does not contain any such qualifiers.

Actual Title: How Amazon Assistant lets Amazon track your every move on the web

HN Title: Amazon Assistant lets Amazon track your every move on the web

I should have been more specific.

[palant]

If Amazon does track some users of their extension right now, we wouldn’t know. It’s a web service, nobody can tell whether it behaves the same for everyone. It has all the privileges, and I can look into what it does with these privileges in my case, but I cannot tell whether it works the same for you.

Note: I am the author of this article.