Better AI Depends on Better Data: We Need Your Help | The JetBrains Blog
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TL;DR Over the past few years, AI has made remarkable progress, but it doesn’t always deliver what professional developers need. One key reason is that most models are trained on public datasets th

Relevant snippet:

We’re now adding the option to allow the collection of detailed code‑related data pertaining to IDE activity, such as edit history, terminal usage, and your interactions with AI features. This may include code snippets, prompt text, and AI responses.

Comment:

So if I accidentally Cmd+V a slightly-sensitive string into my IDE, I now have to consider that string compromised? Even if I’m just doing some local testing? If I paste someone’s name in, that’s potentially me causing a data breach? What?

Source: https://furry.engineer/@ret/115305628217251579

  • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
    293·
    2 days ago

    Stating that this is on by default is misleading. If you or your company pay for the product or if you use the open source (“community”) or EAP version of it, it’s disabled by default.

    The option is only enabled by default in one very specific use case:

    We are asking our users to help with this, and here’s how it works:

    • For companies: Admins can enable data sharing at a company-wide level. To support early adopters, we’re offering a limited number of free All Products Pack subscriptions to organizations willing to participate while we explore this program. For companies that are not willing to opt in to the program, nothing changes, and as always, admins are in control.
    • For individuals on non-commercial licenses: Data sharing is enabled by default, but you can turn it off anytime in the settings.
    • For individuals using commercial licenses, free trials, free community licenses, or EAP builds: Nothing changes. You can still opt in via the settings if you are willing to share data with JetBrains (and your admins, if any, allow it).

    For reference, the non-commercial licenses are the full, commercial versions of the IDE provided “at no cost for education, hobby projects, and open-source work.” The risk of entering confidential data into your IDE that could then get collected is much lower for these use cases… though still not zero.

    Do those users get a notification of this change when installing an update? If not, that’s concerning. But if they do, and can then quickly opt out if desired, then this really seems like a non-issue. This is especially true since JetBrains makes it clear that being able to anonymously collect data is the reason they’re able to offer those products for free; thus why users on those licenses cannot opt out of that anonymous data collection.

    It’s pretty clear that JetBrains is saying “We would like your data so we can improve our product; if you’re okay with that, we’ll let you use our tools for free.” And they also have options, free and paid, where you don’t have to give up your data. Seems like a reasonable trade for a person to be able to make to me.

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
        2·
        15 hours ago

        Interesting. Where did you go to see that? Did you have anonymous data collection enabled, by chance? I wonder if they tied enabling it to that setting by mistake or if something else is going on… Just to confirm, do you have a noncommercial account or is it corporate?

        Assuming it’s corporate - if you haven’t already, can you report that to JetBrains? What you described is out of line with what they published. I would expect them to take it seriously as I would expect their corporate customers to be very unhappy about this, if it impacted them.

        Just to do my own due diligence - I have a personal “All Products Pack” license. Of the tools installed, only Datagrip has an update to 2025.2.4 available (the version where this data collection was added). When I opened it for the first time, I was prompted to “Help Us Improve Full Line Code Completion.” I clicked “Don’t Send,” then confirmed that everything was unchecked in Settings > Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Data Sharing. So for individual users, at least in my case, it seems it’s behaving as described.