Subject: bug#74218: [PATCH] Ask confirmation before sending region to search engine.

From: Fabio Natali <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2024 11:29:37 +0000

On 2024-11-07, 13:05 +0200, Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> wrote:
> My take on it is that the user might not realize that the region is
> very large and includes parts she didn't intend to send.  IOW, a
> cockpit error.

It's not only that. Commands can be typed by mistake. The fact that the
command's docstring warns about its effects is not enough.

By default, 'eww-search-words' is bound to 'M-s M-w'. The probability of
accidentally mistyping that combination is not at all negligible. I did
discover the command's beheaviour via view-lossage after mistyping 'M-s
M-w', for example.

One might argue that, no matter how long, all sequences of keys and
commands could be mistyped, but that'd be a bit misleading. I think that
adding a warning and a yes-or-no confirmation request would make
'eww-search-words' sufficiently safe, that's the assumption behind my
patch.

As I said above, I don't think that the sensitivity of a block of text
is a function of its length. Case in point, a password, an address, any
piece of Personally Identifiable Information.

Users can always override the default and might decide to customise
'eww-search-words' as they like - but I still think it's important to
provide a safe default, something safer than what we have today.

Just my 2 cents. Thanks for giving this patch attention.

Have a lovely day, cheers,

Fabio.

-- 
Fabio Natali
https://fabionatali.com