alt.hn

6/30/2026 at 6:33:59 PM

Tell HN: Installing Cursor on iOS irreversibly changes your privacy settings

by zkldi

6/30/2026 at 7:10:14 PM

That support quote is from an LLM. If you have any escalation paths (twitter, or this thread lol) there may still be a way to change it back.

by soared

6/30/2026 at 8:19:49 PM

Hacker News front page remains the one true support channel for all larger tech companies. The official channels stonewall you, but HN reaches people who can actually help

by nikanj

7/1/2026 at 12:06:13 PM

> “That support quote is from an LLM…”

I don’t know what support calls their digital support systems (let’s call it “the script”), but that quote sounds very familiar—-support person following a script don’t have the access, or authority to effect change.

What’s more, if the old way is deprecated, the people with authority don’t want you to change back. There is no path to reverse the change in the hands of support.

Even if it was literally the case this is a chat response, I see no difference with most human-support CSRs.

That’s not how business is run these days—-at least that’s my experience with SaaS for small businesses.

by xtiansimon

6/30/2026 at 11:32:45 PM

(I work at Cursor) Sorry about this, we should have made this more clear. The new privacy mode is needed because we have to store some state to enable running agents in the cloud. If you don't want to use cloud agents, you can continue using the legacy privacy mode. Currently the mobile app requires this new privacy mode and won't work without it. We're pushing an update right now to make this more clear in app and can help you get reverted back to the legacy version on the support thread.

by leerob

7/1/2026 at 12:05:40 AM

Hi leerob,

Where is the support thread?

I have ticket T-D95851 at the moment, if you could get someone to resolve it. I do not want to use cloud agents.

Thanks

zk

by zkldi

7/1/2026 at 3:46:48 AM

Will do. On it.

by leerob

6/30/2026 at 7:25:11 PM

The mobile app is kind of pointless anyway, imo. It cannot start an agent session on your computer, it can only be "handed off" an existing session from your computer. I don't use Cloud Agents, because for some reason they can't connect to our Linear instance. So I was only interested in using the mobile app as a proxy for my home system.

by jmuguy

6/30/2026 at 7:45:44 PM

It is surprising that they went this route instead of the Claude-code route. The cloud agents are significantly more limiting.

by LatticeAnimal

6/30/2026 at 6:53:57 PM

That's about the level of respect the tech industry has for users

by conartist6

6/30/2026 at 6:43:55 PM

Similarly, the Claude app for iOS tries to force you through a mandatory onboarding where you're required to set your account name among other things. I've never needed this to use the CLI or the web app so I have no idea why they think they need it on iOS. There's seemingly no way to bypass this, so on iOS I've had to use Claude in Safari. Ridiculous.

by LoganDark

6/30/2026 at 9:29:05 PM

> I honestly don't understand how it's legal

The legality is irrelevant since as consumers we don't have the time or the money to sue them for it. And even if one of us somehow do have both, we probably agreed to binding arbitration with the firm they pay anyway.

by matheusmoreira

6/30/2026 at 7:24:51 PM

Wow - same happened to me earlier today and was bummed. Glad to see a public place to flag this.

by sbmsr

6/30/2026 at 6:50:03 PM

Yeah fell into the same trap. Super annoying

by HeyMeco

6/30/2026 at 7:08:47 PM

Happened to me too, incredibly dark pattern

by jklm

6/30/2026 at 6:45:49 PM

This bait-and-switch with privacy is what annoys me. I get that if the software was completely free, you are the product. But if I'm paying, why can I not have a privacy policy that actually benefits me - the user?

by cmdrmac

6/30/2026 at 9:31:37 PM

Your payment is just a signal that you've got disposable income. You're paying to make yourself an even more valuable product for them to sell.

by matheusmoreira

6/30/2026 at 7:49:40 PM

You're probably not paying nearly enough? IDK, but pricing in tech is stretched on both ends (either way too cheap, or incredibly expensive) so much that it's hard to say anything for sure just because one is a "paying customer".

by klibertp

6/30/2026 at 8:00:13 PM

> You're probably not paying nearly enough?

What are the real prices then? What is the “privacy price”?

by throw1234567891

6/30/2026 at 9:42:24 PM

Some hundreds of thousands of dollars for a computer capable of local inference with GLM 5.2.

by matheusmoreira

6/30/2026 at 9:01:58 PM

Fair point. I'd add on that the company should explicitly spell out strong privacy as a feature then and charge more. Saying that "we won't use your data for training", but then not really meaning it is a bit disingenuous. How I interpret that statement may not necessarily align with the company (i.e., what kind of training?).

by cmdrmac

6/30/2026 at 9:23:50 PM

Did LLM companies pay everyone for the code and text they stole?

by sunaookami

6/30/2026 at 9:40:55 PM

No, they just reached some absurd token settlements that made a mockery of all other copyright enforcement victims.

One would think dozens of SWAT officers would rappel down helicopters and storm the mansions of these big tech CEOs in order to bring them out in cuffs and serve zillion dollar fines on behalf of the so called rights holders. Kim Dotcom got destroyed while AI companies got a slap on the wrist.

by matheusmoreira

6/30/2026 at 8:18:40 PM

For folks are looking for an open source alternative that respects your privacy, see Paseo (disclaimer: I am the maintainer)

by boudra

7/1/2026 at 9:33:16 AM

Right now, all large-model companies are competing to attract users. There’s no time to stop and consider user security and needs, lol.

by mosbyllc

7/1/2026 at 3:12:03 AM

I've been trying the iOS app today and its missing all of my active sessions from my laptop but has tons of old, no longer valuable sessions. And I enabled every 'show X' option/filter. Hope the app improves.

by ninininino

7/1/2026 at 6:52:15 AM

[dead]

by sanju3026

7/1/2026 at 6:08:44 AM

[dead]

by DanLemmon

7/1/2026 at 3:22:41 PM

[dead]

by Mona1

6/30/2026 at 9:20:20 PM

[dead]

by Mona1

6/30/2026 at 7:41:23 PM

Elon’s invisible hand strikes again.

by rekttrader

6/30/2026 at 8:31:47 PM

The company was acquired days ago. You think this was implemented since then?

by MetaWhirledPeas

6/30/2026 at 9:14:18 PM

That company has always been garbage.

by ai_slop_hater

6/30/2026 at 6:52:36 PM

surprise! the ai companies that stole every conceivable copywritten work to train their models doesn't want you to be able to have any privacy either.

by sleepybrett

6/30/2026 at 8:49:14 PM

But they sure seem awfully worried about other companies distilling their models. The irony is rich.

by doublescoop

6/30/2026 at 7:35:45 PM

I suspect that while they prefer you to give up all your data, what's even more likely is they are moving fast and breaking things at a rate unseen before, and not enough conversation is happening in design phases where someone can flag that "Hey if you add this new prompt it might break an important user contract you forgot about."

In either case annoying still.

by dbalatero

6/30/2026 at 7:47:33 PM

just another line in the context. 'Make sure the customers have at least the same level of privacy protection that they currently have.'

by sleepybrett