Unless you are ultra-paranoid or cynical, it is pretty reasonable to believe that a site is not submitting the contents of a form before you click the Submit button.

Especially because why would they? What do they gain from seeing first drafts of form submissions?

The closest thing I can think of is as an "abandoned cart" for forms.

"You were about to submit our contact form to ask about our software. Are you still interested in a demo? (we're evil, by the way)"

Abandoned Cart is a good example. It takes the email address if it's been filled out and auto-sends a reminder email later.

Not really the same thing as taking your payment and address information and sending it to some guy in a basement. Half-complete or incorrect data isn't an issue any company wants to deal with. Abandoned Cart functionality makes money, so that's why it's included.

Another use is for a form with questions, like you get in jobs postings. Seeing how someone types in the answers may be more revealing than the answer itself.

As far as I know many support/chat applications do this, so the support rep can see what you typet/think and respond faster. Also useful if the user is trying to scam the company, they can see if the user changes details about their story while typing.

Whenever I talk in a chat pop-up I always assume they see live what I'm typing.

Agreed, but it still disturbs me.

And I do think that a normal person must be a bit pathologically skewed, here in 2022, if they are not a little bit cynical or paranoid when they interface with a computer.

Finally, one can be ultra-paranoid, cynical, or just mildly knowledgeable about the technology upon which the entire modern experience depends.

> cynical or paranoid

Language can change everything.

A few years ago in a digital self-defence class someone picked me up on choices of words.

Paranoia and cynicism are pre-Snowden words from an era when the nature of online computers was unclear to most people. Since 2013 (that's almost a decade ago now) we've been in a world where it's taken for granted by anyone with an IQ of 2 or more digits, that digital devices and many services are hostile. Cynicism and paranoia are no longer strictly possible.

I was grateful to the young woman who pointed out that adopting negative psychological language empowers the attacker and places the victim on a back-foot. Cynicism and paranoia are no longer accusations you need to hear, nor feelings you need to own.

Since then I have tried to couch digital self-defence language more carefully in terms of self-respect, dignity, informed consent, and ultimately in terms of ethics and morality that reasonable and informed people expect. By "reasonable", we do not mean bullied and browbeaten into learned helplessness by threats of compulsion, total lack of real choice, subterfuge and deception.

Good points, though I was one of those people who was disturbed that Snowden's 'revelations' were news.

Pre-Snowden, there were many of us who weren't paranoid or cynical, but who were not surprised by surveillance tech. And some of us weren't tech experts either.

One person's cynicism is another person's gentle understanding of social mechanisms.

I remember having discussions about this exact thing over 20 years ago. The fact that it's still considered ultra-paranoid or cynical after all this time is unsettling to me.

Why? Most people are not web experts.

There's probably an untold amount of shady data-trading stuff happening whenever I swipe my credit card at a POS somewhere. I don't know because I'm not a payment processor expert.

You don't have to know the intimate technical details. You just need to have the awareness that "something shady is probably happening as a result of this interaction".

If someone is surprised that in 2022 people are tracking / logging your digital interactions, well, I don't know what to say.

I think it's better that these types of things remain 'news.' It would be much worse to give up ground on privacy.