5 ms·

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in

by cik 13y ago

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my data back?

zwily 13y ago
Isn't this just an extension of what Google Now does? Do you mean that you'll never be okay with the idea, unless it's Google doing it?
tene 13y ago
So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.
- grimtrigger 13y ago
  Just because its fun to play "worst case scenario"... An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada
  - true_religion 13y ago
    Aren't there laws in place about selling/sharing individualized personal information? If not, then I think there should be so apps that simply want to use aggregated data will be allowed and will be guaranteed to be safe.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    >> "An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada" What scares me about this is that there is a place in the world having an illness affects your employment prospects and costs you money (insurance).
- brymaster 13y ago
  When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.
  - tene 13y ago
    Right, and... what would the harm be there? Is that just a fundamental value for you?
    - brymaster 13y ago
      > Right, and... what would the harm be there? That's a little too obvious to state so I won't pretend there's people here that haven't figured that out yet for the sake of overly-pedantic or naive arguing. You're moving into "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" territory. > Is that just a fundamental value for you? Yep. It's in my country's constitution and protected under various laws.
      - alaskamiller 13y ago
        You probably mean bill of rights. The US Constitution has no wording expressing any concerns over an American's privacy.
        brymaster 13y ago
        I'm referring to the 4th amendment in the Bill of Rights, in the US Constitution that was interpreted by Katz v. United States to protect individuals with a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
        OvidNaso 13y ago
        The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution.
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        The Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution.
    - 13y ago
- sneak 13y ago
  Presumably it's also sending up a log of exactly where and when you used them, too, so it's basically your full high-res location history if you're as smartphone-addicted as most people in the tech industry are these days.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  We've heard recently of HR departments saying that, because a study showed that sociopaths are (obviously) less likely to have Facebook accounts, people without Facebook accounts are bad hires. There is no personal data that corporate America will not find some way to use for evil.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Why wouldn't sociopaths have facebook? It's an excellent arena to play out little mind-games. I don't doubt some HR departments would act on something like that, although they probably wouldn't stop hiring people that have a resume with strong leadership positions even though there are studies showing a correlation between attaining management positions and sociopathy...
- cik 13y ago
  Sorry, I'm relatively new here, so I don't know the etiquette, so I'm responding to you directly. I appreciate the question! Firstly, it's not a matter of what's the harm, it's a matter of what's their right. The only person with a right to my information is me. I can appreciate the need for financial data sharing (note: need), but I don't appreciate the "need" of phone application data. My example above with music is a good one. What if the CRIA (RIAA up here) decides to come after me for my music collection, based solely on data gleaned from this company. I own 800+ cds, I've dutifully ripped them all, I've bought another 100+ albums on iTunes, eMusic, etc. But I can't prove the eMusic ones. They're MP3s, and more importantly, because I'm pro-privacy, each one has been regenerated from the original MP3s, headers ripped. That means the MP3 looks nothing like the one I purchased. The problem in the current court system is that although the notion of innocent until proven guilty exists, it would take a long time to establish that reasonable doubt. And this is for legitimate usage of my music collection. Let's go a (perhaps crazy) step further, pretend you're in America (disclosure: I'm in Canada), and you have two political parties. Political party "A" produces an app that you download, just to check it out. All of a sudden you're deemed to be an "A" as opposed to a "B". As data gets sold, or to be legally accurate "shared only within our partner organizations" you apply for a mortgage at a bank wherein the loan officer is affiliated with "B", and your loan gets denied? Why should your political interest (not even affiliation) have anything to do with your ability to receive financing. Extend that concept to interest in health insurance, or VPN network usage, or a more realistic general interest in chemistry (I like model rockets, they need propellant). The reality of the situation is that corporations cannot be trusted, neither can government. At the very least the EXTREME MAJORITY of Terms of Service agreements make it abundantly clear that "data is only shared with partners" or something similar. The net result is that anyone can partner. Sorry if that came off rantish.
avree 13y ago
How do you know that Google is not doing all this as part of the Android OS? Or any other app on your phone that requests network access? Secondly, why would you care?
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  > Secondly, why would you care? Where have you been the past months, under a rock? Privacy and trust are very valuable concepts these days, after months of NSA spying and companies trying to monetize every byte of your personal(and public) data.. Its just a bad time for this, everybody is pretty sensitive over this sort of things right now, and we cant blame them
  - recuter 13y ago
    For extremely narrow definitions of 'everybody'.
bitwizzle 13y ago
Apps on your phone (that have the right permissions) already have the ability to do everything that this app does. Did you personally audit the source code/reverse engineer every app to find out whether it is abusing these privileges? Do you trust the author of every privileged app on your phone? This is the reality of smart phones. The only difference with this app is that it is upfront about profiling you. Coverscreen has a lot to lose if it anyone finds out they are misusing your data. You should be more worried about apps that aren't telling you how you're being profiled/monitored.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
MWil 13y ago
I agree. Wouldn't an optimal solution (from both consumer and business viewpoints) be to have 3 "chips" that use NFC or some other touch enabled technology - home, car, work. You stick them wherever you want actually.
jjcm 13y ago
I feel like the benefits outweigh the potential for downsides. Seeing potential is immediately obvious - but a company having anonymous application launch data seems harmless, and finding a way that the information you're sending them could directly impact your life in a negative way seems like a snipe hunt. Especially if you limit it to scenarios where the data benefits their company and negatively impacts you - it just doesn't seem realistic. I may be biased here though - I do a lot of work on user interface tailoring for Microsoft, which inherently requires a lot of tracking.
- nooneelse 13y ago
  How can data used to watch for when a person is at home and work be considered anonymous? How many people do you live with and also work with and also carpool with?
jw_ 13y ago
The privacy policy linked upthread suggests that they intend to upload very detailed information about your location and usage.
miguelrochefort 13y ago
> I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Oh boy, how will you survive the next 20 years? Saying "I will never touch a computer" 40 years ago would have had the same effect.

by cik 13y ago

zwily 13y ago

Isn't this just an extension of what Google Now does? Do you mean that you'll never be okay with the idea, unless it's Google doing it?

tene 13y ago

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

grimtrigger 13y ago
Just because its fun to play "worst case scenario"... An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada
- true_religion 13y ago
  Aren't there laws in place about selling/sharing individualized personal information? If not, then I think there should be so apps that simply want to use aggregated data will be allowed and will be guaranteed to be safe.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  >> "An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada" What scares me about this is that there is a place in the world having an illness affects your employment prospects and costs you money (insurance).
brymaster 13y ago
When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.
- tene 13y ago
  Right, and... what would the harm be there? Is that just a fundamental value for you?
  - brymaster 13y ago
    > Right, and... what would the harm be there? That's a little too obvious to state so I won't pretend there's people here that haven't figured that out yet for the sake of overly-pedantic or naive arguing. You're moving into "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" territory. > Is that just a fundamental value for you? Yep. It's in my country's constitution and protected under various laws.
    - alaskamiller 13y ago
      You probably mean bill of rights. The US Constitution has no wording expressing any concerns over an American's privacy.
      - brymaster 13y ago
        I'm referring to the 4th amendment in the Bill of Rights, in the US Constitution that was interpreted by Katz v. United States to protect individuals with a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
      - OvidNaso 13y ago
        The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        The Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution.
  - 13y ago
sneak 13y ago
Presumably it's also sending up a log of exactly where and when you used them, too, so it's basically your full high-res location history if you're as smartphone-addicted as most people in the tech industry are these days.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
We've heard recently of HR departments saying that, because a study showed that sociopaths are (obviously) less likely to have Facebook accounts, people without Facebook accounts are bad hires. There is no personal data that corporate America will not find some way to use for evil.
- e12e 13y ago
  Why wouldn't sociopaths have facebook? It's an excellent arena to play out little mind-games. I don't doubt some HR departments would act on something like that, although they probably wouldn't stop hiring people that have a resume with strong leadership positions even though there are studies showing a correlation between attaining management positions and sociopathy...
cik 13y ago
Sorry, I'm relatively new here, so I don't know the etiquette, so I'm responding to you directly. I appreciate the question! Firstly, it's not a matter of what's the harm, it's a matter of what's their right. The only person with a right to my information is me. I can appreciate the need for financial data sharing (note: need), but I don't appreciate the "need" of phone application data. My example above with music is a good one. What if the CRIA (RIAA up here) decides to come after me for my music collection, based solely on data gleaned from this company. I own 800+ cds, I've dutifully ripped them all, I've bought another 100+ albums on iTunes, eMusic, etc. But I can't prove the eMusic ones. They're MP3s, and more importantly, because I'm pro-privacy, each one has been regenerated from the original MP3s, headers ripped. That means the MP3 looks nothing like the one I purchased. The problem in the current court system is that although the notion of innocent until proven guilty exists, it would take a long time to establish that reasonable doubt. And this is for legitimate usage of my music collection. Let's go a (perhaps crazy) step further, pretend you're in America (disclosure: I'm in Canada), and you have two political parties. Political party "A" produces an app that you download, just to check it out. All of a sudden you're deemed to be an "A" as opposed to a "B". As data gets sold, or to be legally accurate "shared only within our partner organizations" you apply for a mortgage at a bank wherein the loan officer is affiliated with "B", and your loan gets denied? Why should your political interest (not even affiliation) have anything to do with your ability to receive financing. Extend that concept to interest in health insurance, or VPN network usage, or a more realistic general interest in chemistry (I like model rockets, they need propellant). The reality of the situation is that corporations cannot be trusted, neither can government. At the very least the EXTREME MAJORITY of Terms of Service agreements make it abundantly clear that "data is only shared with partners" or something similar. The net result is that anyone can partner. Sorry if that came off rantish.

avree 13y ago

How do you know that Google is not doing all this as part of the Android OS? Or any other app on your phone that requests network access? Secondly, why would you care?

oscargrouch 13y ago
> Secondly, why would you care? Where have you been the past months, under a rock? Privacy and trust are very valuable concepts these days, after months of NSA spying and companies trying to monetize every byte of your personal(and public) data.. Its just a bad time for this, everybody is pretty sensitive over this sort of things right now, and we cant blame them
- recuter 13y ago
  For extremely narrow definitions of 'everybody'.

bitwizzle 13y ago

Apps on your phone (that have the right permissions) already have the ability to do everything that this app does. Did you personally audit the source code/reverse engineer every app to find out whether it is abusing these privileges? Do you trust the author of every privileged app on your phone? This is the reality of smart phones. The only difference with this app is that it is upfront about profiling you. Coverscreen has a lot to lose if it anyone finds out they are misusing your data. You should be more worried about apps that aren't telling you how you're being profiled/monitored.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

MWil 13y ago

I agree. Wouldn't an optimal solution (from both consumer and business viewpoints) be to have 3 "chips" that use NFC or some other touch enabled technology - home, car, work. You stick them wherever you want actually.

jjcm 13y ago

I feel like the benefits outweigh the potential for downsides. Seeing potential is immediately obvious - but a company having anonymous application launch data seems harmless, and finding a way that the information you're sending them could directly impact your life in a negative way seems like a snipe hunt. Especially if you limit it to scenarios where the data benefits their company and negatively impacts you - it just doesn't seem realistic. I may be biased here though - I do a lot of work on user interface tailoring for Microsoft, which inherently requires a lot of tracking.

nooneelse 13y ago
How can data used to watch for when a person is at home and work be considered anonymous? How many people do you live with and also work with and also carpool with?

jw_ 13y ago

The privacy policy linked upthread suggests that they intend to upload very detailed information about your location and usage.

miguelrochefort 13y ago

> I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Oh boy, how will you survive the next 20 years? Saying "I will never touch a computer" 40 years ago would have had the same effect.