Hacker News Reader

Comment by ancorevard | Hacker News Reader

Slightly related. Only a month ago I deleted my RescueTime account and the app from my Mac. With all the privacy issues lately, I finally realized how much data I'm sending RescueTime, and a made a decision.

I don't have a reason to mistrust them, but I also don't have a reason to give them this much of my trust either. A breach of the RescueTime database would be insanely invasive.

View on HN

If you're on a mac I'm a big fan of Qbserve[1] which stores the data locally.

[1] https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/

Could someone please recommend a cross-platform self-hosted alternative to ResueTime?

There is the open-source ActivityWatch[1] which is not perfectly feature complete but it’s a decent alternative.

[1]: https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch

I'm not sure I'd even trust a self-hosted alternative. Presumably this would need to be exposed to the internet, and would be a nice target for someone to break into given how much information it collects.

Wouldn't they have to target you personally, though? (I may be wrong about that.) If so, doesn't factor into most people's realistic threat models.

Not necessarily, just need to find an exploit and start scanning for folks hosting the service. Most would probably use some standard/default port for it.

Hiding it behind a VPN sounds fairly secure.

I just did the same because of your comment. Thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com