Opt-out for window title tracking

[cunidev]

Window titles, especially in browsers, tend to leak a lot of private data (e.g. Gmail's <title> exposing e-mails, all text editors exposing document names, etc.).

An easy-to-configure "kill switch" flag to discard any "window title" data from watchers would solve this issue and be arguably even more suitable if enabled by default for most users.

[cunidev]

Just an example of how intrusive this data can't be, scrolled not to include my personal email, Twitter chat names and a purchase confirmation e-mail title including product names.

[ErikBjare]

This should be done in the watcher, not the server. If you take a look at aw-watcher-window it should be easy to figure out how to do it. I suggest you provide a placeholder title (like "untracked") when sending the heartbeat instead of omitting it entirely (as otherwise all kinds of things that expect the field to be there will break). It definitely won't be enabled by default, as that is not what I expect the vast majority of users to want.

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On Fri, 4 Oct 2019, 17:35 cunidev, ***@***.***> wrote: Just an example of how intrusive this data can't be, scrolled not to include my personal email, Twitter chat names and a purchase confirmation e-mail title including product names. [image: image] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/13885615/66220323-1f572600-e6cd-11e9-8622-0c29193a7ce1.png> — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#59?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAKXDOWK74ODQQBOO4SEBVDQM5PFBA5CNFSM4I5Q7J22YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEAMBLAY#issuecomment-538449283>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKXDOTZ2WXO2TGPOUU2HCDQM5PFBANCNFSM4I5Q7J2Q> .

[cunidev]

I just discovered that aw-watcher-window already supports this feature, though not documented and only as a run-time argument instead of something in the configuration file. Should an "incognito" parameter (possibly with some levels) be added at config level for watchers to know what kind of data to ignore?

[johan-bjareholt]

I just discovered that aw-watcher-window already supports this feature, though not documented and only as a run-time argument instead of something in the configuration file.

Oh right, I had forgotten about that completely.

Should an "incognito" parameter (possibly with some levels) be added at config level for watchers to know what kind of data to ignore?

Filter specific titles seems a bit excessive and would probably be a bit overkill, but if you have a use-case for a exclude-title property in the config feel free to add that.

Still though, the best solution for your use-case sounds like it should be to just to start aw-watcher-window with the --exclude-title flag.

[cunidev]

Actually my main concern was a lack of a GUI frontend for this. As I'm working on a Gtk GUI for AW, I wanted to make sure this aspect was easily configurable by the user (why not, if all other options are expressed in a dedicated configuration file?). So ok, I'll work on that soon. Could we move this issue to aw-watcher-window?

[cunidev]

I've made a PR here, feel free to review it: ActivityWatch/aw-watcher-window#37