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Apple Restricts 3rd Party Data in iPhone 4.0

18 points by mootymoots 17y ago

Anon84 17y ago
1. All user data captured by an application must be for the sole use of that application only (like the Facebook app for example). The use of location based data for targeted advertising is strictly prohibited 2. You may only send user data to a third party which is specific to the services/functionality of your application and also only if the user has given consent. Example: User updates status on Twitter, presses a “Send” button to confirm sending of said tweet. 3. Sending device data to any third party for analysis is now strictly prohibited. Think mobile analysis services such as AdMob here. Presumably you can send this to yourself as the developer though. 1 & 2 are pretty reasonable. 3 makes sense given iAd.
- andr 17y ago
  No, it does not make sense. Instead of trying to build a better service, Apple is just cutting the lifelines of competing services. That is the poster case of unfair competition.
  - veemjeem 17y ago
    I don't think it's cutting competition -- these seem to be consumer protection. Say the popular flurry analytics tool decides they're going to perform background services to track users, you probably wouldn't even be able to opt-out to the tracking... developers adding the Flurry tool probably wouldn't even be directly aware of the invasion of privacy.
    - gyardley 17y ago
      First, I don't believe that's technically possible to do without an explicit user opt-in, even if we wanted to implement it. Second, I've never understood why people automatically assume the worst of analytics tools. No one assumes random web startups are selling their username, email and password combos to identity thieves, but if a startup collects some anonymous data for analytics, everyone's eager to assume it's both grabbing stuff that's personally identifiable and using it for some nefarious purpose. My pet theory ties this to our desire to feel important - everyone wants to believe their personal information's both valuable and interesting enough to be worth filching despite the obscene legal risks of doing so. However, it's not.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    It's really not a poster case for "unfair competition". It sounds more like "just plain competition" to me. There's no rule of business that requires you to make your platform available to competitors. You do it when it makes business sense, and you stop when it doesn't.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
xsmasher 17y ago
There's a web site that lists iPhone apps that send data to third parties. There really are quite a lot: http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/ http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/ I was alerted to it when my own app appeared in their list with two entries -- one for using Flurry analytics, which is true, and another entry for connecting to my own server, which only happens if you're running a pirated version. I was astounded that someone would be so concerned about their privacy being violated... by the software they stole from me. If they're downloading cracked software from strangers I'd say that's a bigger risk than apps phoning home.
redglasses 17y ago
Hmm. So ... other developers might turn to old-school analytics packages, which install on their own LAMP / AWS / etc? It's interesting to get all the data yourself, but it's a nightmare for client projects - suddenly you're manually responsible for supporting + maintaining all client projects ... forever. (I made one last year, and I've only been using it for my own apps - it's very similar to Flurry - but I never liked losing the data to a 3rd party. Private - I didn't think anyone else would care enough to NOT use Flurry :))

18 points by mootymoots 17y ago

1. All user data captured by an application must be for the sole use of that application only (like the Facebook app for example). The use of location based data for targeted advertising is strictly prohibited 2. You may only send user data to a third party which is specific to the services/functionality of your application and also only if the user has given consent. Example: User updates status on Twitter, presses a “Send” button to confirm sending of said tweet. 3. Sending device data to any third party for analysis is now strictly prohibited. Think mobile analysis services such as AdMob here. Presumably you can send this to yourself as the developer though. 1 & 2 are pretty reasonable. 3 makes sense given iAd.

andr 17y ago
No, it does not make sense. Instead of trying to build a better service, Apple is just cutting the lifelines of competing services. That is the poster case of unfair competition.
- veemjeem 17y ago
  I don't think it's cutting competition -- these seem to be consumer protection. Say the popular flurry analytics tool decides they're going to perform background services to track users, you probably wouldn't even be able to opt-out to the tracking... developers adding the Flurry tool probably wouldn't even be directly aware of the invasion of privacy.
  - gyardley 17y ago
    First, I don't believe that's technically possible to do without an explicit user opt-in, even if we wanted to implement it. Second, I've never understood why people automatically assume the worst of analytics tools. No one assumes random web startups are selling their username, email and password combos to identity thieves, but if a startup collects some anonymous data for analytics, everyone's eager to assume it's both grabbing stuff that's personally identifiable and using it for some nefarious purpose. My pet theory ties this to our desire to feel important - everyone wants to believe their personal information's both valuable and interesting enough to be worth filching despite the obscene legal risks of doing so. However, it's not.
- tptacek 17y ago
  It's really not a poster case for "unfair competition". It sounds more like "just plain competition" to me. There's no rule of business that requires you to make your platform available to competitors. You do it when it makes business sense, and you stop when it doesn't.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

xsmasher 17y ago

There's a web site that lists iPhone apps that send data to third parties. There really are quite a lot: http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/ http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/ I was alerted to it when my own app appeared in their list with two entries -- one for using Flurry analytics, which is true, and another entry for connecting to my own server, which only happens if you're running a pirated version. I was astounded that someone would be so concerned about their privacy being violated... by the software they stole from me. If they're downloading cracked software from strangers I'd say that's a bigger risk than apps phoning home.

redglasses 17y ago

Hmm. So ... other developers might turn to old-school analytics packages, which install on their own LAMP / AWS / etc? It's interesting to get all the data yourself, but it's a nightmare for client projects - suddenly you're manually responsible for supporting + maintaining all client projects ... forever. (I made one last year, and I've only been using it for my own apps - it's very similar to Flurry - but I never liked losing the data to a 3rd party. Private - I didn't think anyone else would care enough to NOT use Flurry :))