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This is one of those companies that will pay you to bug your app so they can spy on your users. They also emailed me at least 8 times without any sort of opt-in

This is one of those companies that will pay you to bug your app so they can spy on your users. They also emailed me at least 8 times without any sort of opt-in.

cavisne 7y ago
Yeah these companies always have some sort of dodgy trick, like unroll.me that was advertised as an email unsubscriber. Reading the docs I would guess they use their gps polygons and wifi addresses to help apps spy on users, and in return they can resell the user data.
- cosmie 7y ago
  Also keep in mind that unroll.me actually was just a convenient tool for unsubscribing from marketing emails. At first. Then the founders stumbled into it's potential worth when the access required for that purpose was secondarily leveraged for marketing intelligence purposes, and was bought by (what's currently) Slice Technologies. Even when companies aren't using dodgy tricks, you've got to keep an eye out for ways they could if they felt like it.
jonahbenton 7y ago
Absolutely, but the author is not wrong in general about DAAS, and that there are many, many DAAS opportunities that have nothing to do with violating individual people's privacy.
- usgroup 7y ago
  I’d temper the “many opportunities” with, “about as many as there are use cases for data that people understand”. After 6 months of failing to hire in Lisbon a company I know still won’t spend 3k to work out what the local market expects from the sort of job they advertise through a representative sample survey ... they fully understand why it’d help, it’ just esoteric to them . Unfortunately this is pretty normal . There are more good uses for data than there are good users.
- akudha 7y ago
  Can you give a couple of examples of such DAAS opportunities?
  - jonahbenton 7y ago
    I would suggest a way to look at DAAS is through the lens of what has long been called "Decision Support", and apply it to what might now be called "microdecisions." So- think about the personal microdecisions you make on a daily basis, especially the small ones- shopping/cooking/eating; cleaning; dressing; commuting; etc- and appreciate how many of those are not data-driven, are rather just based on assumption, habit, history, etc. Appreciate how many things one wonders about, idly, throughout the day, in regard to those microdecisions. With some reflection it's easy to see that having various kinds of data would lead to your making different micro decisions. Some of those microdecisions can substantively impact things that are important- health, wealth, happiness- so will become business opportunities. Apply that to microdecisions made in the course of work...

This is one of those companies that will pay you to bug your app so they can spy on your users. They also emailed me at least 8 times without any sort of opt-in.

cavisne 7y ago

Yeah these companies always have some sort of dodgy trick, like unroll.me that was advertised as an email unsubscriber. Reading the docs I would guess they use their gps polygons and wifi addresses to help apps spy on users, and in return they can resell the user data.

cosmie 7y ago
Also keep in mind that unroll.me actually was just a convenient tool for unsubscribing from marketing emails. At first. Then the founders stumbled into it's potential worth when the access required for that purpose was secondarily leveraged for marketing intelligence purposes, and was bought by (what's currently) Slice Technologies. Even when companies aren't using dodgy tricks, you've got to keep an eye out for ways they could if they felt like it.

jonahbenton 7y ago

Absolutely, but the author is not wrong in general about DAAS, and that there are many, many DAAS opportunities that have nothing to do with violating individual people's privacy.

usgroup 7y ago
I’d temper the “many opportunities” with, “about as many as there are use cases for data that people understand”. After 6 months of failing to hire in Lisbon a company I know still won’t spend 3k to work out what the local market expects from the sort of job they advertise through a representative sample survey ... they fully understand why it’d help, it’ just esoteric to them . Unfortunately this is pretty normal . There are more good uses for data than there are good users.
akudha 7y ago
Can you give a couple of examples of such DAAS opportunities?
- jonahbenton 7y ago
  I would suggest a way to look at DAAS is through the lens of what has long been called "Decision Support", and apply it to what might now be called "microdecisions." So- think about the personal microdecisions you make on a daily basis, especially the small ones- shopping/cooking/eating; cleaning; dressing; commuting; etc- and appreciate how many of those are not data-driven, are rather just based on assumption, habit, history, etc. Appreciate how many things one wonders about, idly, throughout the day, in regard to those microdecisions. With some reflection it's easy to see that having various kinds of data would lead to your making different micro decisions. Some of those microdecisions can substantively impact things that are important- health, wealth, happiness- so will become business opportunities. Apply that to microdecisions made in the course of work...