Can We Trust You?
I understand in the privacy page you indicate that nothing is logged but still the thought that anything I type into the address bar goes through your server regardless of whether I am in incognito mode / private mode or normal - essentially giving you the same power Google has over me.
Which begs the question, how do you intend to support the service on the long run? I would assume after more users start flocking over you would need more power to maintain Shortmarks. This is of course negligible if you are extremely generous.
Again thank you for sharing this solution to everyone, and you have already incorporated the feedback and export pages onto Shortmarks within such short notice - I admire your dedication.
Offering a hosted version sounds like the best way to go on this. Marking this as completed since there’s already a hosted version item.
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v5point0 commented
Like you have mentioned, a private server option - something which could easily integrate with services like Dropbox would mitigate privacy concerns.
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Adminjaden (Owner, Shortmarks) commented
This is a concern I have as well, and I appreciate you bringing it up. I'm honestly not sure what else I can do to engender trust. Maybe have a third party to review the code? I have no intention of doing anything shady or slimy that would break users' trust. I haven't decided how to support the service in the long run, but I hate things like interstitial ads and selling user information more than most. My current thinking is to add a pro plan that will cost a nominal amount a year (similar to what XMarks now does) and provides additional services that are worth paying for. There will always be a free service, and if possible I'd like to give all beta users lifetime pro service. I can't make any guarantees on that yet though, because I don't know what the server costs will be.
In short, I plan to be as honest and up front as possible. The primary goal is to provide a reliable, lightweight service that helps users search more efficiently. If it grows successful enough I would love to be able to work on it full time, but for now the server and bandwidth costs are minimal and I will cover them out of my own pocket. I designed Shortmarks to do most of the work in the browser to ease the burden on the server, but as the user base grows there will come a time when I'll need to invest in more servers to meet the demand.
If there ever came a time that I wasn't able to maintain the service, I would open source the code to allow people to host their own service. In fact, that's an option I'm considering anyway to allay privacy concerns.
I hope that puts your concerns to rest. If not, please let me know what else I could do. As I said before, I'm in this for the long haul. I use Shortmarks dozens if not hundreds of times a day and for no other reason than my own usage plan to maintain the service indefinitely.