Can Github Copilot on VSCode see what I'm viewing on my browser?
I'm entering words from my browser into my code and Copilot guesses the word before I begin to type it. The only way it could know what I want to type 75% of the time, I think, is if it can see the website in my browser. Is this right?
I wondered this too when I was using the Jetbrains ai a while back, but I came to the conclusion that it's probably just trained on code that's on the internet, so you're likely to type something that's literally in its trainingdata when you're copying something from the web.
It's Microsoft. Assume surveillance.
always assume you're compromised to some degree
Believe Microsoft, believe us... but verify.
I assume (but I haven't tried nor do I want to touch any of these) that you could verify using novel sequences, e.g. type in what you assume is isolated "This is a sentence and..." then try completion. You might get a result e.g. "is grammatically correct" or "I like potatoes". You can try that few times just to get some sample. Try then to try in the other context you assume might actually not be isolate, e.g. your browser "This is a sentence and noise is blue." and repeat that several times. If "noise is blue" never ever appeared before and it now does then you can safely assume that regardless of what Microsoft said, there is actually no isolation.
TL;DR: trust but verify. Yourself. Now.
I've seen this thread somewhere else before.
Same thing different context.
And I seem just like before that it's because the user is entering what are very predictable words or phrases and they are just not putting two and two together.
I was wondering the same thing.
What I will say needs to be fact check because I never dig much on it since I'm not using w11 so I can be wrong. There is a feature called recall which take regular snapshot on w11.
A quick search about gives different results but it is apparently a opt in feature, so unless you enabled it, it shouldn't.
If you think it does this from your browser search, try using a second device which isn't windows based to browse the net and see if its still guesses right
Recall is only on copilot+ PCs, not all windows 11 PCs
Thanks for the clarification
The only way I know Forsthaus to work, you would need to use something like the playwright mcp, and use it to let the LLM view what you are browsing. Not sure that even has a GUI.
Weird privacy things like this happen to me as well. I'm just putting it down to the placebo effect, I don't think it really can see your browser unless microsoft is exploiting some security vulnerability in your os.