Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

Re:Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and a... by kelnos on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @06:23PM (#28215501)

> I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner.

That's definitely not a cross-platform way of doing it (and I doubt there is one, even).

On Linux you'd use libX11 and just enumerate all windows (using XQueryTree()). Walking the contents of /proc is not only unnecessary, but is more difficult to do, as looking at executable names won't tell you if a program has a GUI, or if it has any open windows. It won't give you window titles, or how many windows are open, or how to grab their contents.

Pretty sure Zoom is snooping on us and is gathering telemetry.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and a... by user5994461 on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:24PM (#28216742)

Windows has a function EnumWindows() to do just that.

If you say that there's an similar API on Linux for X11, then that's the same methodology across platforms.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and a... by dathinab on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:34PM (#28216815)

I'm not sure there is such a API on wayland,

BUT there are standardized protocols/APIs for screen sharing including screen sharing of just a window. And you won't get far without using them so also no reason to scan processes.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and a... by mwcampbell on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @06:33PM (#28215555)

> Pretty sure Zoom is snooping on us and is gathering telemetry.

Don't forget Hanlon's razor, as someone else in the thread pointed out.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and a... by dathinab on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:36PM (#28216829)

But I can't come up with a "stupidity" which would explain this behaviour...

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