5 ms·
Why would you think native applications do not track you? They do. And they have way more insight into your world then a web app.
by TekMol 8y ago
Why would you think native applications do not track you? They do. And they have way more insight into your world then a web app.
- stephenr 8y agoWhat exactly is a native app going to 'track'? It has zero access to your browser.
- Moru 8y agoA native app on windows have full access to your computer and can track just about everything from what you click in the app to passwords entered in other apps and websites.
- stephenr 8y agoThats more of an advert for not using Windows than not using Native Apps.
- icebraining 8y agoIt's not really Windows-specific; both Windows and macOS have sandboxes to prevent that behavior, but both allow you to download and run unsandboxed applications.
- yosamino 8y agoWhen you open the app, when you close it, which button you press, which device you are on, which ip address this device is using ... there's a whole lot of things that fall under the general term "tracking". There can be arguments made about if this is good/bad/neccessary/terrible/etc. but it's easily possible and done all the time. Google Analytics makes it easy for example: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v4/ https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
- stephenr 8y agoWhile I can see some wouldn't accept that level of information gathering, most of that doesn't tell the app author much. It's not like a web-app that uses GA, which in turn means google's internal profile of you shows another app you use/etc. The creepy level tracking that GA is possible of in a browser isn't quite there in a native app - there's no intrinsic data storage system like cookies that's shared between all native apps and sent automatically with http requests.
- tomsmeding 8y agoI suppose it can read/write the browser's cookie database whenever the browser isn't running -- or maybe even when it's running, I don't know. That would enable using Google Analytics just as if it was a webpage. Do not forget that native code running locally is at least as powerful as X, for almost any X that you can use on your computer. (The only thing that's more powerful than that, is native code running locally as root.)
- davchana 8y agoReally? I thought browsers encrypt their user data & such with some type of user credentials?
- gruez 8y agoSuppose that's the case. How does the browser get the credentials? It's probably not from the user, because I never heard of a browser that requires a password at startup. It could be from the OS, but native "apps" aren't sandboxed, nor are they signed, so the OS has no way of differentiating between 2 apps.
- stephenr 8y ago> nor are they signed macOS apps are increasingly signed, because there are additional steps a user must take to run unsigned apps.
- ValentineC 8y agoI just had a look at my macOS firewall (Hands Off) and can count at least 15 seemingly-native apps being blocked from accessing www.google-analytics.com.
- expertentipp 8y agoAnd you have no easy and straightforward way to check or block the requests an application is doing. I don’t know why people assume that applications are less malicious than webapps e.g. Tinder software update takes good couple 100's of MB of mobile data, their image swiping module must have some rocket science happening.