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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 2 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.529s | source
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cheschire ◴[29 Mar 25 23:43 UTC] No.43519772[source]▶
Can windows apps (not installed from the MS store) enumerate through the window titles of all open windows? How hard would it be for an app to monitor all of your web traffic based on the title alone?

Legit question. ChatGPT isn't super helpful here since it agrees with everything when I'm really looking for someone to say why this isn't really feasible in the real world.

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1. myself248 ◴[30 Mar 25 00:01 UTC] No.43519871[source]▶
Oh yeah, AutoHotKey's ability to do this actually underlies a lot of useful AHK scripts.
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2. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[30 Mar 25 02:03 UTC] No.43520585[source]▶
Right; I think having the API exist is a good thing, it's just a question of making sure that it's only used in ways that the user allows. Your own scripts inspecting and controlling arbitrary windows on your own machine => great, third party programs doing the same thing without your informed consent => bad. (In practice, this means I'm a big fan of extensive permission systems that have the ability to deny or fake responses at the user's direction)