Today i am taking my lesson from youtube about coding. During that when i use cursor to write that programming lessons that i got from yt video cursor tab feature suggesting me exactly same details (like name of the person, age, new or old etc) in code which is shown in that youtube video.
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Hi @Adnan
thatās interesting. Can you record a video?
Out of interest, had you previously been interacting with the related code samples beforehand within Cursor? The reason I ask is that this subject reminded me of this blog post (https://www.cursor.com/blog/problems-2023) where the devs were brainstorming ways to get better context. In my own coding practice, I have assumed it is probable that when I copy code from one file, it will influence code prediction etc where I next place my cursor. That is just my guess though, I donāt know if that is actually happening.
(Another idea is that this code sample is from a popular and published sample that the model already knows about, but again, just conjecture).
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I am not shocked to see that code sample but by seeing exact name and age from that yt course is matching even in my first turn. i made the video after deleting that code and getting exactly that suggestion again which was on yt
Could it be that youāve already tried writing this code before? Sometimes I get exactly what I want, but not always. Usually, it makes mistakes. Could that be the case?
Nah man i got this on my first day (first lesson) of learning how to code
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Well thatās concerning. 
Cause I just downloaded this app yesterday.
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Thereās zero chance Cursor is secretly watching your screen or browser and observing the contents of the YouTube videos that are playing and recognizing the text and using that in its suggestions. Odds are either itās some kind of pattern that the model already had in its training data, or the user forgot theyāve typed this example before, or similar.
In this specific case:
- The training video the user is watching has 18 million views. Itās surely seen people doing exercises like this.
- If you google āpatient name john smithā you can see lots of people doing this course (or a similar one?) where the first line of their file will have something similar to
patient_name = "John Smith". So it seespaon the first line and infers. - In the Twitter video the user posted, you can see this isnāt the first time they wrote the program. They say that the first time they wrote it they got this same output, and I think they probably are telling the truth, but at the very least this video isnāt definitive.
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Well, no thereās not a āzero chanceā Cursor is secretly recording (or merely viewing) screens. But neither do these purported facts constitute direct evidence that secret screen recording/viewing is occurring.
In theory, such screen viewing for added context could give one ai-coding product an edge over another, make both more effective and more profitable. If I had time or cared enough, I would review the terms of service.
Bottom line, itās possible screen viewing is occurring, but thereās not nearly enough to say itās probable. The answer is somewhere in the middle.
Try to repeat this on other videos. If your thought is correct, youāll see this happen frequently. I agree thatās a bit freaky, but I strongly think you wonāt see this pattern continue.
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I also thought that itās possible that other Cursor users have watched the tutorial video and followed the instructions before. I sometimes receive suggestions in different languages, which seems to be a feature of the model.
For example, on macOS, you need to give permission for screen recording. Iām not sure if Windows requires the same, so itās questionable.
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Why āprobability of 0ā does not mean āimpossibleā
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I once gave the same prompt to both Claude and gpt to generate a dictionary with customers details. They both generated exactly the same details (i was more shocked than you are). So yeah a lot of the stuff are in training data.
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Itās just typical John Doe training data, you will get on most LLMs. You can relax 
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Another way to think about is that screen reading isnāt free. The devs would have to spend time creating a hidden feature that no one asked for and that would probably make people leave if they did, instead of features that would get them more subscribers. That wouldnāt make any business sense. A lot of questions can be answered by following the money. What would they get out of it? Passwords? There are easier ways to get those, and a lot more than what they could get from their own customer base.
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Are you using Mac or windows?
Electron developer here, you canāt record a screen or take screenshots unless your app is granted permission from the OS.
That youtube tutorial possibly is saved into github of SO many people who followed the video and pushed it to their repo, of course itās in the training dataā¦ assuming thereās image recognition live of the screen is hilarious honestly, considering how expensive it would be - the costs are higher than all the money you have on your credit cards and bank accounts 
so getting your private info from such āscreen watchingā will be less profitable lol, even scammers would not do that, since the ROI wonāt be worth it. what a ridiculous thread ahah Iām sorry guys. but yeah, OP you really should not worry about it, thereās no chance (Iām a devops engineer working daily with GPUs and shit, you have NO idea how expensive it gets for such rate that would require screen recognition, itās in the millions $, when you multiply all cursor users by their screen time dailyā¦), bottom line: impossible financially. but thatās good news for you, that you should not be worried 
.
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