Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
And just FYI web apps cannot acces sthe download folder, or indeed any folder on your computer, that would be s ecurity nightmare.
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I did not realize that. I thought they could, if you granted permission. Shows how much I know. Anyway, you're correct - it would be a security nightmare if they could access other areas of your computer without constraint. That would certainly be a disaster.
I wasn't trying to say that Calibre is trying to "hide" anything. I was just using the word "hidden" to describe an area of your computers storage that is not well known to many people. Therefore, stuff can build up there, unbeknownst to many users. Luckily, hard drives have so much capacity these days there is little need to worry about storage space. Personally, my bigger concern for these "little known storage areas" has more to do with websites tracking you and violating your privacy for their commercial purposes.
So in general, I don't like websites being able to store anything locally without my express permission. Maybe there's a setting for that in web browsers, but I haven't found the proper way to use it yet. Example: I have Chromium set to "delete cookies at the end of a browsing session", except for the specific websites I have granted permanent cookie privileges to. However, Chromium does not appear to delete other site data, aside from cookies, when I tick this "delete at end of session" checkbox. I would have expected either (1) a separate checkbox for each type of site data storage (which doesn't exist in Chromium that I can find), or (2) a single checkbox (the "cookies" one) that controls ALL of these different types of site data. But I haven't found either of these two things to be the case. So I am wary of any site data stored at all, and routinely review it manually. If I can't come up with an immediate reason for why it should be stored locally (e.g., a book from calibre-server's built-in reader), then I just delete it. Too bad, so sad for whatever web app decided it should save it on my computer.
Below is an example. Have I ever been to "weather.com"? Not to my recollection. Not that I remember even intentionally doing. It is not a website that I have granted permanent cookie privileges to, so even if I hit it accidentally, it's data should have been deleted at the end of my browsing session. Yet here is data that it has stored on my computer, apparently permanently, unbeknownst to me, until I looked just now (I have deleted it after this screenshot). Insignificant disk space is being used, but that's not the issue. The issue is that it is there in the first place. My response to behavior like this is to to tend to dislike website/apps that do this by default. I realize that some website/apps require such storage, but those should be few and far between, and subject to my explicit approval before they are allowed to store data. Maybe I just need to dig deeper into Chromiums web browser settings. This could be user error on my part.