26 ms·
Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers
- sys_64738 7y agoDon't install any apps on your Android telephone.
- jrepinc 7y agoOr better, but still not perfect advice: Do no install any closed-source app on your telephone/computer of any brand.
- ta999999171 7y agowww.f-droid.org
- rapnie 7y agoOr if you do at least check them for trackers before install: https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/ https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/
- rapnie 7y agoThe analysis of the Ring app found 11 trackers and 30 permissions needed: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.ringapp/latest/ https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.ringapp...
- dpkonofa 7y agoDoes this only apply to the Android version? Wouldn't the iOS version need permission to collect things like bluetooth info?
- mirimir 7y agoThis is truly ironic. In that Amazon is using FUD about crime to expose people to potentially criminal exploitation.
- andrewxhill 7y agoFor those interested in alternatives, check out this project to build an open, privacy-preserving home AI/ML platform https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aikea5/aikea-your-private-camera-at-home https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aikea5/aikea-your-priva...
- BubRoss 7y agoWhat does 'home AI' even mean? Most people just want a video camera with a webserver on their doorbell.
- jacquesm 7y agoQuite likely many people don't even want the webserver.
- ta999999171 7y agowebservers can be local, homes.
- Jamwinner 7y agoStill just another useless attack surface.
- ta999999171 7y agoPut it on its own subnet.
- sliken 7y agoI suspect it means using ML to identify things in the camera. Like say cat, dog, man with clip board, man carrying box, etc. I've love to get a hangout/signal/IM text identifying anything approaching my door without having to look at a picture. Bonus if the face recognition is good enough to recognize family.
- ponsin 7y ago
- esseeayen 7y agoThere goes the argument "if you're not paying for the product then you are the product" because ring and associated services aren't cheap.
- ardy42 7y ago> There goes the argument "if you're not paying for the product then you are the product" because ring and associated services aren't cheap. Not really. If you aren't paying for the product, then you certainly are the product. If you are paying for the product, then you may still be the product, but you also may not. It all boils down in that case to how trustworthy and greedy the vendor is.
- Barrin92 7y agoI think the OP's point is that the latter is so common nowadays that it makes more sense to not give the benefit of the doubt and assume that paying for something gives you privacy and makes vendors less data-hungry, and I think that's probably becoming good advice.
- jhhh 7y agoYou could buy a TV worth several thousand dollars and they'll still show you advertisements. Also in Samsung's case they'll take screenshots of what you're watching to find out what you like. There's always money in the advertising revenue stream.
- choward 7y agoAre you talking about smart TVs? Because ads only show up on real TVs if you tell them to. It's the cable you plugged into it or the ads at the beginning of the movie you just paid money for. It's not the TV. The TV is dumb as hell. It only shows you what you tell it to show you.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 7y ago
- axelonet 7y agoThis all is a side effect of the paranoia built by the corporation's. Why would you even want to look at the door when you are 1000's of miles away from your home. I understand pet and baby monitors but this information being on the web for anyone is just bonkers. We are in an age where Technology is advancing at a pace where we don't understand what we need to do with IoT devices.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoMy grandma used a similar product to send video of a break in attempt to relatives so they could pass it on to the police while she was in another city. But I get your point. A lot of this IoT stuff is mostly pointless and serves only to make people feel like they are living in the future.
- Johnny555 7y agoAside from the obvious use of monitoring my door while I'm away, it's also useful to knowing when a package is delivered unexpectedly when I'm away from home so I can ask a friend or family member to pick it up so it's not sitting on my front porch for a week or two.
- ta999999171 7y ago> package is delivered unexpectedly I...huh? How? Are you a darknet dropshipper? (Nothing wrong with that, just can't imagine what carrier doesn't give you a tracking number that you can get alerts on delivery/check status of.)
- scarejunba 7y agoAll those Chinese products with free shipping were like that. They'd show up one day randomly. Also, I buy most of my stuff online so there's always something in flight. Books, toothpaste, whatever.
- horomeme 7y ago
- bozoUser 7y agoHow does Ring compare with Nest in terms of the privacy issues noted in the article ?
- sliken 7y agoFor those that want to avoid such sillyness, Reolink sells relatively cheap cameras. Rated for out doors, power over ethernet, $50-$60 per camera, and includes a microphone. They can easily be connected to zone minder, or any software that can take a rtsp:// URL. Even handles motion detection for specific areas of camera, so you can include the driveway but exclude the sidewalk. You can have it email or upload videos... without access to any reolink related cloud. So you could easily put them in production with zero network access and let something you control notify you with images or video clips for any activity. There's numerous cheap products, but the reolink seems to be one of the better ones that play well with others and doesn't require any WAN network access. Ubiquiti and Axis also have some very nice products, but generally are more expensive.
- Jsharm 7y agoHaving thrown countless hours into zoneminder I had to give up. It's just too buggy. Does anyone have any other alternatives they've got to work? Open Source or otherwise
- sliken 7y agoTry shinobi or motioneye if you want open source. There's quite a few solutions in this space: free, freemium, and commercial.
- shifto 7y agoI don't recommend Shinobi after using it for a few months. It's far from finished, can't do most basic stuff and the interface is horrible.
- bonestamp2 7y agoI saw a commercial software solution a number of months ago that used some kind of machine learning or AI to reduce false positives on motion detection but now I can't find it. Are you familiar with any software that does this?
- blakes 7y ago
- panpanna 7y agoI would love to see some financial documents leaked from these companies. Let's say Apple pre installs Google+ on all its phones. Then I want to know how much apple got paid for this, i.e. how many cents is a users privacy worth to them. And how much money did Google make by using this data, i.e. how much was the data really worth. Because until we have such data, companies can always hide behind phrases such as "... share with partners ... to provide relevant services" and all that nonsense.
- Joeri 7y agoDoes that really matter? Let’s say they get a hundred dollars per service, does that make it better or worse, or maybe it doesn’t change anything? Having said that, I’ve always wondered the same for TV ads. Let’s say I wanted the option to pay extra to never see ads, how much would that be? Why doesn’t the market give me that option?
- snowwolf 7y agoI wonder why Ring is being specifically called out for this practice. This combination of “trackers” are very common in the app ecosystem as they perform much the same analytics functions used on the web ecosystem (e.g. Branch offers ad campaign attribution - did this user sign up from an ad campaign and which one so I can work out ad ROI). I’d hazard a guess that analysis of the apps on your phone (Android and iOS) would result in well over 50% of them using some combination of these services. What’s more interesting is that it could be argued these fall under the intent of the EU cookie directive (even though in a lot of cases they don’t actually use cookies). The only app I have seen asking for cookie like consent is Airbnb (who use all of these same services and more)
- arexxbifs 7y agoI think several companies are routinely called out for nefarious privacy invasions. Ring is extra interesting because of the hypocrisy in claiming they're in the home security business, while actually gathering and selling information that can be be directly counter-productive in that effort (such as when a customer is likely to be home or not).
- snowwolf 7y agoThe thing is they aren’t actually selling that data. All the services mentioned are paid services that ring are paying to use. And ironically they sprang up to fill a need because Google and Apple made it almost impossible to do app install attribution to protect people’s privacy. So we now get more invasive tracking to work around that.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago> The thing is they aren’t actually selling that data. Says who, the company itself? Why install trackers if you're not going to use them?
- snowwolf 7y agoThey aren’t trackers in that respect. Read up on the companies in question. They basically provide analytics to mobile apps so they can better understand their customers to allow them to improve the experience of the app. It’s the equivalent of Google Analytics. Now how those companies then use the data they collect as part of providing analytics is another question (and why lots of people prefer to block Google Analytics for example)
- classified 7y agoThis rampant surveillance economy will continue to fester until it bites some influential people where it really hurts. Until then nobody will be safe.
- chopin 7y agoThere will be safeguards for influential people but not for us.
- bborud 7y agoI hope they do Audible next. I'd really like to know whether or not the extreme sluggishness of the app is due to what I suspect: badly designed activity tracking that implemented by developers who don't know how to do this asynchronously.
- kingosticks 7y agoAre many Ring units sold outside of the US? I see them advertised as a way to combat this "porch pirate" thing. But to me, as someone living in the UK, the idea of a delivery person leaving a package on my doorstep for someone to steal is mad. If I'm not in I expect another delivery attempt or for the package to be taken to the secure local* depot where I can pick it up. If they decide to leave it outside my door and it gets stolen, I fully expect (and will get) another one delivered at no cost to me, other than the time penalty. Why is this even a thing? Is this a new thing that Amazon created with their delivery strategy and now you also get to buy the solution from them?! And if it's just a security camera watching my property/car, then a dumb one sounds fine and cheaper. Not to mention it'll actually look like a security camera which is arguably more valuable as a deterrent. * rarely that local.
- simmonmt 7y agoDeliveries left unsecured on a doorstop is a common practice in the US, typically found in low-crime residential areas. It was by no means invented by Amazon -- it's been a thing for a long time.
- cheeze 7y agoI feel like Europeans often forget just how big the USA is. I live in a major metro. Just like in EU, it would be ludicrous to leave a package on someones doorstep. But if you live in a rural area, things are completely different. Which from my understanding is the same as EU for the most part.
- bart_spoon 7y agoIts pretty common in non-rural areas in the US. I live in a suburban area and its normal. Some of my coworkers who live downtown have had issues with porch pirates, so I'm assuming they have porch drop off as well.
- sib 7y agoIn the past 20 years, I've lived across the major metro areas of Seattle, Silicon Valley, and now Los Angeles. in all places, it's been common practice for delivery companies to leave packages outside unless the shipper has specified otherwise for a high-value or theft-prone item. Over literally thousands of deliveries during that time, the number that have disappeared mysteriously is under 1%. In fact, more have not been delivered at all (i.e., fraud on the part of the delivery person) than have been stolen.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- code4tee 7y agoOther product companies take note: the tide is turning on all this “tracking” nonsense. Clean up your house now or find yourself shamed into submission later. Consumers increasingly don’t care that “the lawyers said it was OK because it’s on page 73 subsection C line 4 of the use agreement For the product.” Privacy is the new black.
- baxtr 7y agoAhh... I so much wish that this was true. However, there is just too much money involved and consumers don't seem to care, at least the "silent majority". This won't end anytime soon
- tjoff 7y agoUntil the industry realizes that the data was worthless all along.
- judge2020 7y agoCrashlytics/sentry is quite useful for tracking the impact a particular error has on your overall userbase. As for the other trackers, I haven't found statistics other than DAUs/MAUs useful (and these can almost always be tracked via server-side analytics).
- derefr 7y agoThe Hard Problem in analytics is getting data that lets you tell real users apart from bots, when bots are motivated to present themselves as real users. Usually can't be done purely server-side.
- bob1029 7y agoThe time decay of data is something that is rarely discussed in my view. Facebook, Google, et. al. are sitting on mountains of archaeology. Why not purge it all and adapt to a new business model where you actually generate value for other market participants and, god forbid, maybe even the consumer.
- sjmulder 7y agoA blatant violation of European privacy law. I hope an ICO picks this up (I've filed a notice with mine).
- TeeWEE 7y agoMost apps that you have installed track information, ip, carrier etc. Its called analytics. Its naive to think this app does it for evil purposes. Note: Maybe all apps shouldnt be tracking this. But this is currently how analytics in apps work.
- sjmulder 7y agoThat everyone does it is hardly a justification. And companies have no divine right to analytics, especially not when it concerns PII and paying customers.
- aembleton 7y agoLoads of Android apps do this. If you are running Android >=9 then you can block the trackers by changing your DNS settings to use one from https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/ Instructions on changing DNS settings https://joyofandroid.com/how-to-change-dns-on-android/ https://joyofandroid.com/how-to-change-dns-on-android/
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoI had a ring for one week. After about 24hrs of ridiculous setup, constant notifications when I left the house or anything happened inside the detection zone even shadows, and realizing I didn’t coming home to look into a camera that was constantly uploading to someone’s computer I’ll never be allowed to access - I put that POS back in the box and returned it. Nice idea in theory, exploitive data mine in practice. I hate it.
- ActorNightly 7y agoRing doesn't upload data unless you pay for a cloud storage account. You could argue that the doorbell transmits the video/audio over the internet, but that transport is encrypted to the Ring app, and its deleted off of AWS after its viewed on the App. If you really want privacy, you should also return your cellphone and go back to using a flip phone.
- Rooster61 7y ago> and its deleted off of AWS after its viewed on the App How do you know this? And how are you sure that information isn't shared before being deleted? Also, it's not only about privacy (although I do think people should care a bit more about it than they do on average). Data stored and sold makes money that is dependent on you to produce, yet you get no compensation for it. Many people have a problem with that, including myself.
- ActorNightly 7y ago> How do you know this? And how are you sure that information isn't shared before being deleted? Ring states it on their website. https://shop.ring.com/pages/privacy https://shop.ring.com/pages/privacy I mean, nobody REALLY knows, but if that's the standard you are going to use, then you pretty much have to assume that any company can and will spy on you, and apply the same critique to them. Based on reports and news, Amazon has been perhaps the best out of the big companies when dealing with privacy, as they are fairly transparent on the data they collect for what use, and had not had any major cases of leaks despite them perhaps having the best data set of peoples behavior with shopping history which is the most relevant to advertisers. Being that Ring uses AWS for back end, as can be verified through network traffic inspection, I personally don't see any red flags with them saying they delete the data. >Data stored and sold makes money that is dependent on you to produce, yet you get no compensation for it. This is HORRIBLY wrong. Gmail, youtube, reddit and most everything that is free on the web and on mobile is your compensation for your data. Yes, companies make profit, but they still spend that advertising revenue on hosting and maintaining that service, and recouping the initial investment they put into building the thing.
- ActorNightly 7y agoThere is a big difference between saying Ring Doorbell leaks user data, and Ring App leaks user data. Even though BBC purposefully puts the wrong thing in the title for clicks, I would hope that HN users would pay more attention to detail. In other news, smartphones spy on you.
- supercanuck 7y agoThis is pedantic. The Ring Doorbell doesn't function without the App.
- ActorNightly 7y ago" Ring doorbell 'gives Facebook and Google user data" I hope I really don't have to explain the implication in this statement of how the doorbell sits there, records/listens, and then sends out data to FB/Google. Versus saying that a smartphone app collects tracking analytics, like pretty much every other major app out there.
- _jal 7y ago"No, you see? It is the remote control that explodes when you push the button. Not the TV! That's entirely different!"
- damq 7y agoIf hypothetically this analogy was even close to accurate, it would be entirely different because the remote is usually an order of magnitude less expensive than the TV.
- bdcravens 7y agoYou can have the app installed without owning a doorbell (using the Ring Security system, for example)
- derwiki 7y agoI have ring doorbell/cams and use the web site, not the app.
- boboguitar 7y agoThe user data for Google is just crashlytics. Saved a few people a click.
- reaperducer 7y agoThe user data for Google is just crashlytics Is there an opt-out? Or, more importantly, was there an explicit opt-in? Data from crashes on my device is still my data, not Google's. Google can pop up an alert telling me things went pear-shaped, and then ask to send it back to the devs for analysis.
- izacus 7y agoEvery single app on your phone will use such service (Android or iOS,). You're not wrong about ownership of data. But highlighting Ring and Google in this manner is some seriously biased and dishonest reporting.
- 7777fps 7y agoWell maybe Ring shouldn't have bundled so many third party trackers. If it really were just crash reporting, this would have probably gone unreported on.
- Kalium 7y agoThis may be an excessively optimistic read. A person has to know a reasonable amount about software systems and common development practices to decide crash reporting isn't worth writing about. The bar to deciding that Google is getting user's data somehow and this is newsworthy is lower, and requires no grasp of underlying details. Technology journalists are often journalists first, and technologists second if at all. I don't blame them, it's the nature of the job.
- UweSchmidt 7y agoWorth noting that "crash reporting" is very much worth reporting on and paying attention to, as transmitting a lot of sensitive data in crash reports could be beneficial to fixing bugs (but obviously not beneficial to the indiviual's rights).
- bdcravens 7y agoSo how many developers here use Google Analytics, Intercom, Segment, error logging like BugSnag or Sentry, etc? Wait until the BBC finds out how many of us are giving Amazon user data. (I mean, it's s3 and RDS, but that clarification would be overly pedantic)
- Nextgrid 7y agoThe difference is that Amazon isn’t an advertising company and has little incentive going through user data on their systems. In addition, the data isn’t in a standardised format so they would have to spend considerable efforts parsing the data first. Facebook and Google on the other hand make their money from stalking people and developers are giving them data in a nice standardised format.
- duxup 7y agoIs there a difference here between "an advertising company" and "does a lot of advertising"? Amazon is very much the latter and that would seem to provide plenty of incentive to do dig through data / recognize the value / use it as they wish. I'm sure they do plenty of analytics on data from their own platforms and that considerable effort could easily be extended to include any other data that they have access to.
- thinkling 7y agoAmazon's advertising platform now serves 13% of US search ad revenue [1]. They're definitely working on getting more revenue from advertising. [1] https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-advertising-market-share/ https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-gaining-google-search-a...
- bdcravens 7y ago> Facebook and Google on the other hand make their money from stalking people and developers Yet React and Angular are quite popular
- 7y ago
- sneak 7y agoNanoleaf light panels also phone home (to Nanoleaf) constantly, from the hardware itself.
- 5cott0 7y agoHalf a dozen ad trackers, a/b testing frameworks, & analytics libraries have been the standard in mobile apps for years. Growth at all costs.
- rooam-dev 7y agoHow should someone grow a product without a/b testing and/or metrics?
- 5cott0 7y agoDid I say you could? Just pointing out the standard because I’m somewhat surprised this is news to anyone here. A growth at all costs mindset in many cases leads to redundant and irresponsible overuse.
- sethammons 7y agokeep the data in-house
- sillysaurusx 7y agoLittle story for you. When I made the GPT-2 Chess notebook (sigh... do I link to it and risk seeming like I'm plugging my stuff, or let people google for it? Whatever: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/12hlppt1f2N0L9Orp8YCLgon6EF5V3vuR https://colab.research.google.com/drive/12hlppt1f2N0L9Orp8YC...) one of the first questions a reporter asked me was "How many people played it?" I had to be like "I have no idea. A few thousand at least, based on bandwidth bills." Then they started asking if I was tracking the games. "Nope. I don't like apps that track data, so I didn't want to make one here." And at the end of it, I was like... this is stupid. I should have tracked clicks and tracked the games. We should have a clear distinction between "user data" and "data that common people might reasonably care about being tracked." The headlines are a strange game of telephone. Every app tracks data. That's what most apps are for.
- bmgxyz 7y ago> And at the end of it, I was like... this is stupid. I should have tracked clicks and tracked the games. Why do you feel this way? I agree with your positions at the beginning ("I don't like apps that track data, so I didn't want to make one here.") and the end ("Every app tracks data. That's what most apps are for."), but I don't see why that would cause you to want to have tracked games and interaction data on your own project. Perhaps if I'd ever built something that got popular I'd know the feeling better.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoHm. Well, being able to answer basic questions like "How many people played it?" and "Can you use the human inputs to help improve the engine?" would be nice. Can't use the human inputs to improve anything if the data doesn't exist. Lichess tracks all games, for example, and I don't think they ask for permission. Is that a bad thing? I was forced to conclude it's probably fine, but perhaps an argument could be made.
- sliken 7y agoWell generally I think anyone who creates something is interested in some feedback on how well it's going. A developer might react differently if 10 people used their software or 10,000. Or even if 10 people used the program 1000 times vs 10,000 people using it once. Not to mention that it's hard to iterate on something and make clear improvements if you can't tell how the software is being used. Sure you can read forums, tickets, issues, etc. But if your settings allow 1000 different configurations and 99% of your users use one of 5 different configurations that can be a very useful thing to know.
- amriksohata 7y agoMakes you wonder why Facebook needs that data? To link who comes home to FB location and people's profiles? I'm sure they pay them for this but then you read what happened after the NSA leak in recent times where the NSA had put intentional backdoors in with companies
- tasssko 7y agoCan you wipe the ring firmware and repurpose it?
- ogre_codes 7y agoIt's frustrating that Amazon is trying to hard to win the prize for being the creepiest tech giant. I generally like Amazon and much of my online shopping is through them, but this makes me more inclined to try alternatives. I've already mostly dropped Facebook and Google, it'll be harder for me to ween myself off of Amazon.
- bogomipz 7y agoWow what a great irony - a device that's designed to help your surveil your own property is being used to surveil the people that bought the device and by extension put their trust in it and the company. It's one thing to have a business model where it's understood that a service is free in exchange for user data but what we are seeing increasingly is this greed where its not enough to sell a good or service for cash because that would be leaving money on the table. These companies seem to have an expectation and entitlement that your data is part of the business model despite not disclosing that to their customers.
- bogomipz 7y agoThe privacy horror aside is there a possibility that this data sharing could possibly be used to subvert the security of the owners home that ring is protecting? Could patterns be inferred such as a home owner's work schedule, when they are on vacation, that they might be using a device with outdated firmware etc? Or is that too far fetched?
- Havoc 7y agoTime to set up a vpn pi hole combo on a VPS. This is getting ridiculous
- notsureifgood 7y agoThis may be a workaround for the app for those who are more technical. Since I have NextCloud Server set up, I added a custom script on the server to auto-download all my ring MP4s from the Ring Server every 15 mins. Also: - creates GIF for faster viewing through the nextcloud app. - updates info for current status of the ring devices. https://gist.github.com/parvez/f8375438070fa3b0572013efbe72c03d https://gist.github.com/parvez/f8375438070fa3b0572013efbe72c... It could be enhanced to support SIP for live viewing.
- surround 7y agoI could show this article to my neighbor who owns a Ring doorbell and he wouldn’t care. Nobody I know seems to care about digital privacy. And it’s not just people who are less technically knowledgeable, either. A friend of mine who has worked in computer sciences his entire life doesn’t care about privacy. A different friend, who already has a raspberry-pi connected to his home network, refused to install pi-hole (pi-hole.net) because, in his words, “I don’t really care.” Nobody cares.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoIs there any legal precedent for a retailer being held accountable for the products they sell. Enough to sway decision making at the C-Level? Perhaps we're one Home Depot or one Lowe's away from "Sorry. We're not going to sell these type of products." A massive return of unsold product could crush a young company. If CVS can stop selling cigarettes, perhaps others might follow but in a different way.
- habosa 7y agoI work at Google (on Firebase) but I am asking this question as a regular mobile developer. What do people on HN find acceptable in the apps they use? As a developer I want some basic analytics and crash reporting so I'm not just stumbling in the dark but I would hate for my users to say that I'm tracking them involuntarily. Is there a way to strike a balance that seems fair? Are there particular services people trust?
- woutr_be 7y agoI think it all depends on what you use that data for. I have no problem with a developer tracking me throughout the app, as long as they use the data to improve their app. The same goes for crash reporting. But as soon as that data is sold, or used to somehow push sales or content, then it becomes a problem for me.
- MR4D 7y agoShould be retitled “Android Ring Doorbell App...” because there is no mention of iOS or iPhone anywhere in the article. Still sucks, but to iPhone users, this just validates their Apple purchase even more.
- dangus 7y agoDo you have some kind of source that would indicate that phone apps on iOS cannot possibly have any sort of 3rd party trackers? No claims in the article were made regarding the iOS version of the app, so I don't know why we should jump to the conclusion that the iOS version doesn't track what you do and report to 3rd parties. It looks like the iOS app was not included in the test at all, so no conclusion can be assumed.
- MR4D 7y agoI agree. But the titling is wrong because it only addresses Android. Likewise, if the reverse were true, and it only dealt with iPhone, then it should say iPhone in the headline because it didn’t address Android. This isn’t a preference argument for one phone or the other - it’s about clarity of what the article is about.
- mobjack 7y agoIt is likely that the iPhone app contains the exact same trackers. Those trackers are commonly used across platforms.
- ddggdd 7y agodoes anyone know if xprivacylua and adaway can protect me from this kind of bad behavior?
- 0x7B 7y agoHas anyone contacted Ring and asked them to enumerate all the third party services they send data to, why they do it and how to opt out? I’m a long time Ring customer and this is completely unacceptable.
- nocturnial 7y agoIf you are an EU citizen, you can ask the company for that data yourself and if they don't reply, file a complaint with privacy commission of your country. The various privacy commissions (PC) in the EU are actually talking to each other. The privacy invading companies are testing whether or not they can force their case to be decided only in the jurisdiction of the PC in Ireland. (legally, this is just nonsense... ) I've seen many try this tactic and it has always failed. I'm guessing they are using this as a delay tactic to prevent it being decided by the courts.
- prodigyboi 7y agoThe article references Crashalytics and MixPanel as third party services where the data is sent. Aren’t those just tools for error logging and usage measurement? Not sure about the others though.