As someone who has been working in security for a long time, and has seen how the sausage is made at even the biggest, most reputable companies who “take securi

As someone who has been working in security for a long time, and has seen how the sausage is made at even the biggest, most reputable companies who “take security very seriously”, the “strictest possible protection of that data” means approximately nothing. The only serious way to protect sensitive data is not to take it in the first place. Hell, not even the NSA can keep a lid on their sensitive data. ”For people who think this is still wrong, I'm curious what their pragmatic alternative is. How else are app developers supposed to analyze their app performance?” Remember, customers first, your “needs” come second. That goes double when they are placing their trust in you by allowing you to be a custodian of their data. Not long ago, desktop software phoning home would have been a scandal. Not long before that, it was offline and couldn’t phone home. Yet, we still had software. Unfortunately, developers have taken the slipperly slope all the way to outright abuse of their privileges in order to collect information that customers don’t know about or understand. This has led us to things like GDPR. It doesn’t matter if your intentions are good or your usage is benign. It isn’t yours to begin with, those aren’t your decisions to make, and developers need to learn to seriously respect that.