Ask HN: Is Grammerly a Keylogger as a Service?

49 points by buildmystartup 8 years ago | 26 comments

They've been advertising to me hardcore and it is completely free. It makes me wonder what data they are selling.

I have no issue with them advertising to me based on what I've typed but if they put me in audiences based on it and sell those I get uncomfortable.

fusiongyro 8 years ago | |

It's not completely free. Their free version is a limited-feature advertisement for the premium version, which is between $12 and $30 a month depending on billing frequency.

https://www.grammarly.com/premium

johnnyfaehell 8 years ago | | |

I use the free version. I would use the premium version if it was like 5-10 a month. But if I want to pay monthly it's 30 and that's a bit too expensive for my liking.

oplav 8 years ago | |

Their privacy policy says they aren't in the business of selling user information. They also say they do not share information with third parties for the purpose of enabling them to deliver their advertisements to you.

https://www.grammarly.com/privacy-policy

EGreg 8 years ago |

I have always wondered why spelling and grammar checkers - which could easily fit on your computer back in the 90s - needed a cloud-based provider.

One could easily build chrome extensions that DIDN'T phone home.

Today deep learning data can be downloaded to each computer. They are doing it with small IOT!!

vbezhenar 8 years ago | |

Because their algorithms are their valuable intellectual property and hiding them behind server is the only real way to protect. Of course it has nothing to do with performance.

May be they use some statistics over uploaded texts to improve algorithms.

tokyoSurfer 8 years ago |

While we are focusing on Facebook, Google etc. for breaking our privacy to extract data and pass it to third parties, we are willing to use Grammarly, CloudFlare and CrashPlan, pay for it and use it while hoping they will not work with security services. We need much more transparency it seems.

EGreg 8 years ago | |

There is this idea floating around that the corollary to "if you aren't paying, you're the product" to "if you are paying, you're not."

I wonder why so many people tacitly assume that paying for a service will make them forego mining your data and monetizing it. Very few people read the terms of service in its entirety regardless of whether they pay or not.

What we SHOULD do is standardize privacy policy clauses already.

reustle 8 years ago |

For those interested, here's the site: https://www.grammarly.com/

pvg 8 years ago |

If you think that, you can write about it and make your case instead of abusing 'Ask HN'. You're not asking anything, just insinuating.

kawsper 8 years ago |

I don't know, but I did think the same thing, and that is why I uninstalled it.

buildmystartup 8 years ago |

They send a weekly emails with chunks of text they corrected so that means my data is being transferred somewhere. I would stay away from this service.

fredley 8 years ago |

What's one more keylogger?

Your OS is already logging your keystrokes, your browser is already logging your keystrokes, who even knows what else is already logging your keystrokes.

Obviously I speak here for the majority of computer users, I imagine many (most?) in the HN readership have taken steps to reduce the amount of keylogging they are exposed to as much as possible already.

wx2018 8 years ago |

I can totally see this being the case. They do have paid versions, I think only the browser extension is "free"?