[edude03]

I don't understand the privacy concerns the author is trying to highlight. Granted, doing anything "sneaky" will always raise suspicious once caught, but on the other hand, there would be no point in implementing these "security features" if they were upfront about how they work.

And no, IMO stenography isn't security by obscurity, in the same that using RSA and keeping the private key private isn't security by obscurity - keeping the private thing private is part of the security model.

[civet_java]

Anthopic choosing to delay their models' invevitable distillation by competitors is their prerogative.

That they choose to implement it by fingerprinting my access patterns without first disclosing is where they shit the bed. It isn't "sneaky" it's straight up sneaky (and dishonest and unscrupulous while we're at it). That this particular instance is harmless doesn't give me much comfort. Who's to say they aren't harvesting PII?

That their actions make sense for their business isn't any reason for people to accept their deceitful, customer-hostile decisions.

[scottyah]

Would a filter like this make it seem less likely that they're harvesting PII? Why would they need this if they were tracking all user queries with a finer-toothed comb?

[civet_java]

If by a "finer-toothed comb" you mean telemetry then I don't quite see it as comparable to this situation.

Telemetry is disclosed in privacy policies, it can usually be opted out of and if not that, then it can be blocked by a firewall. Steganographically fingerprinting customer's network routing when they consented to your tool reading a txt file is a different problem. Anthropic has demonstrated capability and willingness to embed arbitrary obfuscated data in their comms streams and that's a dangerous precedent to set.

[edude03]

I'm using "sneaky" here to refer to anything that's not very obviously stated but anyway

> That their actions make sense for their business isn't any reason for people to accept their deceitful, customer-hostile decisions.

While I agree it's a dangerous precedence to set, I think this is a "vote with your wallet" sort of situation. They shouldn't do it, but from their POV this is what they need to do to offer the product they do at the price they do. If the product wasn't compelling people wouldn't accept that they do this. However they've decided if you want their product you have to use their interface and whatever spyware it comes with, so it comes down to, is the value proposition good enough that people will put up with it? As of today, the answer is unfortunately yes

[civet_java]

Thanks for the considered response.

> I think this is a "vote with your wallet" sort of situation.

I agree a 100%.

> is the value proposition good enough that people will put up with it? As of today, the answer is unfortunately yes

I don't fully agree with you here and I think the jury is still out on that.

In any case, I look forward to seeing international markets responding to the current situation.

[hnfong]

If the countries were reversed, and some Chinese software implemented an equivalent "security feature" to track US users, it would be all over the news about how China is conducting spying and espionage on America.

Or maybe you don't understand this hypothetical situation either, but I'm suspecting you just don't care about other people's privacy.

[edude03]

> maybe you don't understand this hypothetical situation

> I'm suspecting you just don't care about other people's privacy.

Quite a leap to assume I have neither basic reading comprehension skills nor care for privacy, but assuming I'm just misunderstanding you - I think this is the fundamental disconnect between security and privacy.

For one, most of this data is already collected openly by most apps and sites on the internet in countries all over the world, they just call it "analytics" and preventing tools like ublock from blocking them is an ongoing cat and mouse game.

Secondly - as someone who buys a bunch of electronics from companies headquartered in china (DJI, Insta360, Roborock immediately come to mind) they already have both normal analytics like in point one, and anti tampering/ anti forfeiting / anti reverse engineering features that are at least as, but often more, invasive than this.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly - as the author states, you're using a tool that by design and to be effective, uploads your private data to a third party for processing. You use it knowing that once the API request is made you have no idea what's going to happen to that data and this again is just fundamental to how (cloud hosted) LLMs work - the only privacy preserving option is to run your own LLMs at home or remotely on hardware you control