Copyfish by Ui.Vision Open-Source RPA Software

4 Stars out of 5

Review by anonymous

I agree with the previous reviewer that the new permissions look fishy, but it seems they are not currently abused. I unzipped the add-on and looked at the source.

"Exchange messages with programs other than Firefox" is used to communicate with the UI Vision XModule used for desktop OCR.

"Display notifications to you" is used to display notifications when you have a paid subscription that is about to expire, and for displaying messages when using the desktop capture feature.

"Access browser activity during navigation" I'm not sure about, it might be needed for some functionality to work but I didn't find anything obvious. There seems to be no feature like collecting browsing activity or something abusive like that.

Of course the permissions coul be used for abusive purposes in the future so it is always best to be a bit paranoid. Even with the permission system in Firefox you have to trust the developer to an extent.

Developer response

posted 5 years ago

Thanks a lot for this critical but qualified response! As you found out already, the new permissions are needed so that Copyfish can communicate with the UI.Vision XModule, which it uses for desktop screenshots, for desktop OCR. Of course, you only need to install the desktop OCR module if you want to OCR outside of the web browser (e. g. from desktop apps, desktop dialogs, images, invoices, PDF,...)

For more details, please see https://ocr.space/copyfish#desktop