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We use LogRocket to record all interactions with our front-ends and it's awesome for trouble shooting and also invaluable for our product managers. They can se
by beders 4y ago
We use LogRocket to record all interactions with our front-ends and it's awesome for trouble shooting and also invaluable for our product managers.
They can see where users are struggling with the app and where extra-guidance is necessary.
I'm assuming many many many other apps and web pages are doing the same thing.
Nothing to see here.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
- judge2020 4y agoTracking how users use your own app is hardly malicious, in fact it's entirely in an effort to identify user frustration and solve it or otherwise improve the product. Tracking across different apps is definitely malicious, though.
- MereInterest 4y agoTracking how users use their own phones is certainly malicious. Regardless of whether they are using an application that you wrote, it is their phone.
- s3p 4y agoThat is not what is happening here. Users' on-screen taps inside the App Store app are being tracked. Not their interactions with any other aspect of the phone.
- croes 4y agoHe/she is referring to parents comment >tracking how users use your own app is hardly malicious
- MereInterest 4y agoWhere, pray tell, are the user's on-screen taps occurring, if not on the user's phone?
- smoldesu 4y agoYou can justify a lot of crazy behavior with "we need it to improve our product", that doesn't make it inherently ethical though.
- cmeacham98 4y agoThat also doesn't make it inherently unethical, and so far nobody has provided evidence of that claim.
- krono 4y agoThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights says something about arbitrary interference in a person's privacy not being okay, so there's that. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cmeacham98 4y agoNot convinced. By your logic, an nginx log with your IP in it is a similarly egregious and unethical privacy violation. If you're going to commit to "all forms of tracking are bad no matter what" I'm going to need stronger evidence than a link a page on the UN's website.
- krono 4y agoSaving that IP to the webserver's log is rather necessary for it to function, whereas these detailed records of user behaviour can almost never be. Just because someone uses an application, does not mean you "own" them and have a moral right to freely collect and do whatever you want with records of their behaviour. Also it's just weird.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
- jesterson 4y ago
- simonh 4y agoBecause humans aren’t omniscient with perfect reasoning ability, and full knowledge of all possible user circumstances and needs.
- tbjoern 4y agoHow would you find out what causes user frustration? Company internal testing can only go so far, especially in a small team.
- Nullabillity 4y agoAsk them/make it easy for them to tell you?
- digitaltrees 4y agoWhat is malicious about monitoring use to provide a better product in service of users?
- heavyset_go 4y agoDid you clearly ask the users if you can do it? If not, there's probably a reason why not, because users wouldn't like it if they found out they were being recorded.
- carstenhag 4y agoImo, as long as you clearly say "here's the choice: opt in or opt out, we are doing XYZ" in clear words, it's fair. It doesn't really matter whether on each tap you fire a specific event ("TapOnList", "TapOnPurchase") or whether you log all app interactions (where the user taps, are they going around the app not finding something?). Or does it? Where do you cross the line? If this app would be Facebook I would see your grievances - devs could see personal data. But let's assume it's an app where there's barely any personal data, or specific views do not have this logging enabled.
- vorpalhex 4y agoSince we are discussing an app store: "pregnancy tracker" "democrat donation app" "cancer survivors forum"
- vorpalhex 4y ago
- croes 4y agoThe monitoring is the malicious part.
- digitaltrees 4y agoWhy? The act of monitoring is not inherently malicious. The word malicious has a specific meaning and definition: an intent to harm. A life guard monitoring a pool clearly isn’t acting with malice and yet is monitoring. A store CCTV camera monitoring shoppers isn’t designed to harm but rather prevent harm. So monitoring a webapp may or may not be malicious depending on the intent and effect of how the monitoring is used.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoThat you find it useful doesn't make it not an invasion of privacy.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoThat it's on your own app where you anyway know exactly which backend endpoint has been called by the user does. I really don't get the outrage about that, it's something that has existed for 15 or 20 years at least and is used a lot on most websites you go on. What private information do you think is sent to the vendor that would not be otherwise?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> That it's on your own app where you anyway know exactly which backend endpoint has been called by the user does. If it only exposed information the user was already sending, the vendor wouldn't bother with the spyware. > What private information do you think is sent to the vendor that would not be otherwise? Depends on the app; I expect, for instance, market apps (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) to watch the user's every move to try and better model the user's mental state in an effort to get them to buy stuff that they wouldn't have done otherwise.
- adrr 4y agoNo one is modeling your state of mind because it doesn’t work. We do look at click stream data and try to push down the number clicks/swipes/etc to purchase. Everything is done on a cohort basis, there is no value at an individual scale.
- dkdbejwi383 4y ago> Depends on the app; I expect, for instance, market apps (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) to watch the user's every move to try and better model the user's mental state in an effort to get them to buy stuff that they wouldn't have done otherwise. Not being funny but I think you’re vastly overestimating the capabilities of most engineering teams.
- KingOfCoders 4y agoHopefully you have declared that in your privacy statement if you sell in the EU.
- croes 4y agoWe use cameras to record all interactions with our cupboards and it's awesome for trouble shooting and also invaluable for our product managers. They can see where users are struggling with the furniture and where extra-guidance is necessary.
- dkdbejwi383 4y agoI don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Screen tracking is essentially logging which UI elements users interact with and some metadata like the time, their device config, etc. It doesn’t necessarily require capturing video of the user. A better analogy would be hooking up a door open/closed sensor to the cupboard, and capacitive sensors that log the location of touches, so that you can analyse what % of users struggle to find the door handle.
- yreg 4y agoIt's still a stretch since a cupboard can work offline while performing basically any action in App Store requires an API call anyway.
- croes 4y agoYes, it's not fair. My phone keeps more privat data than my cupboard and I use and need my far less than my phone. Tracking invades one of my most used tools, and what's worse I can't see all the tracking that happens.
- vorpalhex 4y agoThe user scrolled past "cancer patient therapy" and selected "cancer survivors forum". Then they uninstalled that and searched for "colon cancer support" Still think this isn't invasive?
- croes 4y agoBTW which App?
- benhurmarcel 4y agoA major one
- jeroenhd 4y agoThis is exactly why I distrust all the apps on my phone and desktop unless I've grabbed them from some reliable open source repository. The disgusting entitlement to stalk me at every step and use me as a lab rat is exactly what's wrong with modern software.
- roguesherlock 4y agoTbh I don’t see it as a huge problem as long as a. The data is anonymous, and b. they aren’t trying to sell the data. I mean if you choose to use someone’s service, you’d want it to get better. And one of the reasons they get better is by collecting feedback of what’s working, what isn’t. It’s very hard to nail down a good ux without feedback.
- willis936 4y agoPoint B requires trust, which users shouldn't give to developers who collect as much analytics as possible. If you can't trust a company to respect a reasonable expectation of privacy then why would you expect them to not profit off of it? It's just all very quiet and down in the Ts & Cs, but that doesn't mean it isn't the logical conclusion if given exposure.
- onion2k 4y agoNow imagine what LogRocket could do with that data when they blended it with data from their other users, or if they augmented it with data they bought in from other services. Or perhaps LogRocket could sell the data to a broker, and then on to [Meta|Google|me]. That's what you're doing to your users. I'd consider that something to see. (I don't have any evidence to believe LogRocket are doing this; LogRocket is just the example. Other tracking services exist, and they sure as hell do do this sort of thing.)