Unexpected network connection, accessing bookmarks and reading list entries.

[Daniel Höpfl]

Referring to this post on Mastodon: The Affinity suite apps seem to access the bookmarks and reading list entries on start and try to access (all of) those websites. The apps should not connect any web service unless the user opted in and I do not see any reason to access the bookmarks or reading list.

I cannot reproduce that report using the latest release (from your website) but the behavior was confirmed by a different user for the AppStore version. I think the reported issue is serious so I want to make Serif aware of it.

[Komatös]

33 minutes ago, Daniel Höpfl said:

serious so I want to make Serif aware of it.

The Affinity programmes check for updates once a day and send anonymised usage data and crash reports, but I doubt that they access browser data.
If you do not want anonymised data to be transmitted, you can switch it off in the settings. To find under Settings > General > Other

 

[Daniel Höpfl]

1 hour ago, Komatös said:

The Affinity programmes check for updates once a day and send anonymised usage data and crash reports, but I doubt that they access browser data.

Set aside that you more or less cannot collect usage date anonymized if you can resolve the reporting IP address to a user account (which Serif most likely can when you are logged into your account), I, too, strongly doubt that they access the browser data on purpose. The fact that a second user confirmed the behavior made me report the issue. I consider it a serious issue because the data accessed is very sensitive.

My guess is, as it was also mentioned in the linked thread, that the Affinity apps use one of Apple’s frameworks for the login/pseudonymous data reporting which in turn access the browser data as a side effect. If that’s the case, I’d consider it a bug on Apple’s side (which should clearly be called out by Serif and – if possible – should be worked around).

[stokerg]

Hi @Daniel Höpfl,

Thanks for raising this.  From speaking to the Dev team, this will be Apple components doing their own checks.  Affinity itself can't and doesn't read you browser bookmarks or reading list.  This has also been reported for other apps as well, one of those reports is here.