* System and root directories cannot be selected. * Can only being activated after user action. * Requires https. * Double-confirmation for write access.
No API like this could ever be bulletproof, but it's a start I guess.
Very cool API though, and it really does open up a whole new world of possibilities.
Root of the home directory is also excluded.
But obviously yeah, nothing's going to prevent you from giving a website access to your .ssh directory if you explicitly select it.
Personally I don't have a problem with that. The ability to upload files has been a thing on the web for forever and I don't think there's ever been anything that stopped users from uploading their private key. Possibly some users have gotten phished that way, but at a certain point you have to accept responsibility for your own actions, otherwise you start ceding control of your life to a corporate nanny state.
That desperately needs something like the Public Suffix List [1] - a community-managed list where authors of software can blacklist directories containing sensitive files or such files directly for all browsers implementing this feature.
If I were to design such a list, it would include ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.config, ~/Library, ~/.{ba,z}sh{rc,_profile,_history}, ~/.m2, ~/.npm, ~/.npmrc, ~/.profile at the very least. Because users will get phished.
~/Pictures and ~/.ssh are as far apart as they can be while staying in the user's home directory. I guess you could stick stuff in... /var or something, but that seems worse overall.
My Nix Home Manager settings for XDG directories:
xdg.userDirs = {
enable = true;
createDirectories = true;
desktop = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/desktop";
documents = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/docs";
download = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/download";
music = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/music";
pictures = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/visual/picture";
publicShare = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/public";
videos = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/visual/video";
templates = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/templates";
};