Services & Privacy Perceptions

A recent tweet called out a user's perception about Grammarly, a SaaS-based grammar and writing tool. They accused the service of being predatory (due to it's license) and a keylogger. While the points are off base (but not insanely so), they do raise a bigger issue: the user perception about a service vs the actual privacy risk.

When you use a cloud-connected service, do you truly understand the boundaries of where you data and data about you exist? Do you know what is being sent to the service's backend and how that data is being managed?

In my experience, most people don't understand the technicalities, nor the potential impact to their privacy.

References;

the originating tweet, https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1104132993893904386
Grammarly's ToS, https://www.grammarly.com/terms