Wouldn't sending metrics to my own server still be the second party. In fact, the device doesn't need to be involved at all. The server could record the hit to

Wouldn't sending metrics to my own server still be the second party. In fact, the device doesn't need to be involved at all. The server could record the hit to its API from a device and generated the metrics entirely server side. I assume one could do whatever they want with this data. Presumably, one could justify creating a url connection to a server on the internet for any reason, for example to let the server knows the users current local time.