Tell HN: Installing Cursor on iOS irreversibly changes your privacy settings
Just hit this today and I'm furious. I installed the Cursor iOS app to see what it had. I've been on `Privacy Mode (Legacy)` for a long time, which is the "Do not store my code" setting. A year or so ago they marked this as "Legacy" and hid it under a "Extra options" menu. They added a new Privacy Mode which is significantly more wishy-washy about what it might store - it includes a clause of "Code may be stored for Background Agents or Other Features", so I've never touched it or wanted to enable it. pic: https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/cursor1/optimized/3X/0/9/09412f800cb07a713d13c034f40eaf28e165e8f4_2_1032x1000.jpeg Upon installing and logging in to the iOS app, my account was changed to the softer Privacy Mode and the previous setting I was on has disappeared from all menus. I contacted support and they've said: > Really sorry about this. When you set up the mobile app, the prompt to turn on Cloud Agents switched you from Privacy Mode (Legacy) to our current Privacy Mode, > without making clear what that meant or that it's hard to undo. That wasn't right, and we're working on making that prompt clearer. > > To be straight with you: I'm not able to switch your account back to Privacy Mode (Legacy). The option to move back isn't available in the app today. So just a PSA I guess; do not install or set up the app if you want to keep your privacy settings. I honestly don't understand how it's legal to make logging into the iOS app change your privacy settings at all. Making the option then disappear from all menus so you can't get it back is doubly ridiculous.
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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.
(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.
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.
That's about the level of respect the tech industry has for users
> 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.