deadPix3l

Recently, I received my Daskeyboard 5Q which is awesome. Already, the local REST API is great and the color profiles are very nice. But the real power comes in when connected with IFTTT or Zapier. These services have many triggers and actions preset so that building recipes is very easy. Its not without cost though.

In order to do things like send emails, update Evernote notes, or notify based on new Dropbox files, IFTTT obviously needs read and write access to your Gmail, Evernote, Dropbox, and any other services you wish to connect.

Now, Oauth is awesome. I login to a significant amount of services via Google and Github. It means that I only have to trust these large companies to securely store passwords, and I only have to log in once to Google per day/week and everything else is good. Best of both worlds. I did have some hesitation to this at first, not because I don’t trust google, but because I didn’t want everything I use to be compromised in one account. Let’s be honest though, if my Gmail is compromised I’m screwed anyways, and the slew of “reset password” emails is pretty much the same, so it’s fine. I’ve made my peace with this.

So onto helper services like IFTTT and Zapier. Obviously they have some non-authenticated services. Check my RSS feeds - cool, check the weather - sure, news articles, etc. And mostly I just want it to send me notifications, update my hue lights, or trigger key lights on my new Das keyboard 5Q. So the “that” portions are fine. No privacy issues there, at least for me. But the “If this” portions, when I get a new email, when a file in Dropbox is updated, when Github issues are opened or a TravisCI build fails, this is where I become concerned. Can I trust these companies with my Email, Github, Dropbox, and every other account in my life? What gives these companies the right and credibility to access everything? Just because I’m lazy or want minimally more features from products I use?

Recent events have led me to reevaluate what services I use and what data those services can access, and one thing I’ve realized is that RSS is a miracle technology that I take for granted. One I definitely don’t use to it’s full potential. I’m sure I’ll write another post soon about how I’m changing that, and how I intend to use RSS going forward to cut down on services and improve my privacy. For now though, I think the message is it’s important for us to look at what we can cut down, and who really needs and deserves our data. As always, if you have any comments about anything (do you like IFTTT? What amazing things have you done with RSS?), please drop me a line. I’d love to hear it.