3 ms·
A perfectly good explanation is deterring spammers.
by puzzle 9y ago
A perfectly good explanation is deterring spammers.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoEasy enough to fake your user agent. Or is it a native app with extra security / checks?
- puzzle 9y agoI thought we were talking about phone numbers. They're not impossible to obtain in bulk, but that's much harder than faking user agents.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoIf they wanted to verify my phone number, text me a code. That isn't a problem. It's the app install requirement we're talking about. Which both gives them access to some data on your phone, and also means only Android and iOS users can sign up. (On Android, Hello gets access to your contacts, your rough location, the ability to read and modify your storage, use your camera, and view your Wi-Fi connections)
- s73v3r_ 9y agoRead and Modify Storage and Camera permissions are needed so that it can take pictures, presumably to post (Why so many Android apps think they need to be their own camera instead of just dumping out to the user's preferred camera app I'll never understand). Everything else seems pretty sketchy.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoWell, and as you point out, the camera permission is arguably completely specious. Android should, if I recall, also have a photo picker so you can select a single photo to give to the app, rather than giving it global access to your stuff. I understand why it wants contacts, to make it easy to add people, but again, it can be done in a "let the OS offer the contact picker" way, if we're making a privacy-respecting app. If Google is expected to be the steward of protecting users, they should not allow apps on the Play Store which don't use the most privacy-respecting method possible to implement the needed functionality.
- jasonlotito 9y agoMobile only signup does nothing to deter spammers.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoI recommend you check out what a click farm looks like: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=click%20farm https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=click%20farm
- puzzle 9y agoI know what they look like, but I also know about services like Sift Science. I used "deterring" rather than stronger words for a reason. On a couple of former teams, I had to deal occasionally with spammer scum.
- dorfsmay 9y agoI'm frankly not interested to be part of an exclusive social media thing where only people who have phones can participate.