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The Telegraph is reporting on a Twitter blog post announcing that the Twitter app for Android and iOS is going to keep track of the list of applications you have installed on your phone or tablet. While the Telegraph is claiming "Twitter to snoop on every app on your phone", Twitter says "We are not collecting any data within the applications."
"Twitter is using your app graph to help build a more tailored experience for you on Twitter." "To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in."
This seems like the next step in companies prying their way into every personal detail of someone's life. Yes there's an 'opt-out', but shouldn't it really be an 'opt-in'? And would you really trust an app that wants to track this information to honor the 'opt-out'? IMHO the best way to ensure Twitter doesn't track your apps (or more) is to not have the app installed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday November 27 2014, @06:27AM
o wrought with fraud and misrepresentation that a pedometer has to know who I am calling on the phone? Android users don't care,
Actually, there is a great deal of misunderstanding that leads people to believe that a pedometer has to know who you are calling.
Its all google's fault. They have lumped groups of access rights into bundles, and using any part of that bundle requires the application to notify you about using the whole bundle. That is flaw number one.
This is what one of the other posters referred to as the lack of fine grain controls.
In fact the pedometer does not know who you are calling. The pedometer probably has voice prompts. Those have to be suppressed when you are in a call.
So the App is responsible to monitor phone state to determine if it is allowed to make noise. That is flaw number two.
Ideally, Android would simply traffic-cop all attempts to make noise, instead of expecting each app to make that decision. I fundamental design flaw that Android inherited from its Linux roots.
Second misunderstanding: Android users DO CARE. They've been bitching about it for years.
Android had an improved permission system encoded in the development environment, but withdrew it, probably because it was a mess, and would break more things than it fixed. There are third party utilities that allow you to retroactively remove permissions, but you need to root your phone to use them.
And then your pedometer can announce right in the middle of your phone call, because you denied it access to phone state.
There are structural problems in android that really do need fixing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Wrong Turn Ahead on Thursday November 27 2014, @06:47AM
I use Cyanogenmod, which came with something called Privacy Guard enabled by default (granular permissions). I'm not sure if it is the same code Google was testing but it seems to be largely useless. Increasingly, more apps are refusing to function until you grant them all the permissions they wanted initially. On a side note, the more technology advances, the less I want any of it...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday November 27 2014, @07:13AM
C'mon, frojack, I said "who I am calling", not "that I am calling". The need for my contact list, to measure what is going on with the accelerometer? It could be bad design, but we should never attribute to incompetence what is obviously by design and just frigging evil. This is the little know, but much more useful, Reverse Hanlon's Razor.