I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes (2014)

Re:I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any documen... by jariel on Saturday December 26, 2020 @02:40PM (#25545855)

You definitely don't need that level of granular detail from 10 years ago. There is no use-case for reproducing every keystroke. Major edits would be fine after literally only after a major save, or a day has passed.

FYI - this is a kind of 'biometric' leakage eh.

Your typing style is probably as unique as your finger print.

It's not shockingly bad, but probably something, under thoughtful review, they should take care of.

Edit: by 'no use case' I mean, no use case for long term history. Obviously there's a good use case for 'very short term' individual keystrokes.

Also Edit: the answer to this issue is not 'Don't worry about it, it's a low risk problem'. This is the 'slow boil' SV way of thinking that is seemingly benign, but not acceptable in the long run. The answer is: don't store personal data that is unnecessary. It's that simple. It doesn't diminish the product a single bit.

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Re:I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any documen... by asdfasgasdgasdg on Saturday December 26, 2020 @02:41PM (#25545865)

Considering Google doesn't really support anonymous accounts very well, and anyway only the owner and at most collaborators can see version history, the idea that there's a practical attack here seems pretty far-fetched.

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Re:I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any documen... by jariel on Saturday December 26, 2020 @06:05PM (#25547171)

I don't think that's the right way to look at it. If there is no reason to store specific information - then don't.

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Re:I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any documen... by wizzwizz4 on Sunday December 27, 2020 @11:26AM (#25552055)

This is the stance that GDPR takes.

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