8 ms·

Getting a bit creepy

117 points by gingerlime 13y ago

bits_of_freedom 13y ago
I'm experiencing a very creepy behavior on Twitter, described here http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH (TL;DR: Twitter displays a different behavior with the user profile of my ex-girlfriend than with any user name, including people I've interacted with much more in the last 1.5 years) I would like many people to do the experiment.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
qwerta 13y ago
>I’m trusting you with my data. I realise there are risks involved, but please treat my data with respect. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. And don’t be a creep. Yes, we can! :-)
Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
I find that emails like that have the opposite effect and push me away from products/services. If the product/service was useful to me, those emails would not be required to keep me engaged.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. My rules are simple: 1. Don't ever email me unless it's in response to a specific request initiated by me.
- btilly 13y ago
  That is how you remember it when they don't work. You don't even remember them doing it when they did work. That's why companies run A/B tests rather than trust word of mouth.
  - Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
    That's very true. Perhaps what turns me off are the desperate "Please come back to $SERVICE, you've been gone for more than 35 seconds! Please come back!!" from the free services. I don't mind the weekly specials from the local computer retailer, for example.
gvb 13y ago
I really like the "NoScript" model of permissions in a browser and wish phone OSes allowed that model. With "NoScript", I block javascript by default but can unblock temporarily or whitelist permanently. On my Android phone: * With standard Android, I have to whitelist an application when installing it. I cannot pick which permissions I give it, I cannot control when it can use those permissions, and I cannot remove permissions. Ever. * With Cyanogenmod, I can restrict permissions fine grained both for permissions and applications. This would be really great if it were usable, but when I try to use it the applications behave very badly (often crashing) if they don't get unfettered permission to use my data. I would love it if (a) applications behaved well in the absence of permissions (I fault Google for setting expectations of availability that don't require this) and (b) I had a UAC style permission granting mechanism[1] so that I control an application's access to my data and can monitor what it is asking for and when. While it could still "steal" my data (cache it, send it to the borg) any time I gave it permissions, it would at least give me a clue that the application was not trustworthy if (when) it popped up unexpected permission requests. [1] I cannot believe I said I like Windows UAC dialogs. That will cost me another year in purgatory. :-/
- Spittie 13y ago
  I'd love to have it, integrated in the OS and by default as well. Something might be moving, as Google added "App Ops" [1] (hidden by default, but it's there) in Android 4.3, which allow you to revoke permissions from applications. That said, there are some alternatives to Cyanogenmod's Incognito mode, which should work better. One is XPrivacy [2], which relies on the XPosed Framework [3]. This is what I'm currently using on my Android phone. You can allow/restrict some permissions by default, and then have a whitelist for certain applications. Another one is OpenPDroid [4], which requires you to patch your rom (there are some preset for the biggest roms, so usually it's just a matter of a few clicks). I haven't used it, but it should work just like XPrivacy. XPrivacy and OpenPDroid send blank/fake data instead of blocking applications from using certain APIs, so they cause way less crashes. They even allow you to choose the fake data to provide, so that you can fake, for example, your location. [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-android-4-3s-hidden-app-permission-manager-control-permissions-for-individual-apps/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-android-4-3s... [2] https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy [3] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401 [4] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156
frank_boyd 13y ago
> But it just feels creepy to email me about it this way. In other words: "Yes, I know it's wrong and they should not know these things about me, but I want to use their product anyway, so can we please just pretend nobody knows what's going on in our society?"
fastball 13y ago
> “You have SMS waiting from Dad, Jonathan and Florian”. The mightytext guys thought it would be more engaging to take a look into my recent SMS messages, pick up recent or popular contacts and use it to get me to use the product. > To me this is crossing some invisible but very clear line. I haven’t used the product yet, and it’s already trawling through my personal stuff? I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, the app he installed? It's routing your text messages through you server. Obviously their system knows what texts you are sending, otherwise how would it function? Also, the product has been used if you give it permission to access your contacts.
- gingerlime 13y ago
  > I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, the app he installed? Blog post author here. The purpose of MightyText (as far as I understand it anyway) is to allow me to use SMS through my computer at greater ease. I accept that in order to do that, technically I need to allow the app to access my Android SMS, contacts etc and "act on my behalf" to deliver messages. I trust the program not to abuse this access I give it. I do not expect it to use this information to spy on me, even if this spying is merely for marketing purposes or to encourage me to use their program more. I think that's the creepy part.
  - santosha 13y ago
    Is there a 'don't send me email about unread messages' option somewhere?
    - gingerlime 13y ago
      These were not unread messages. The list of names were (probably) taken from the last SMS senders on my phone, before I installed MightyText. Since I don't use SMS much, no new messages were delivered after installing it either. So MightyText went through my old messages, and then sent a reminder/engagement-email using those messages. EDIT: I've updated the original blog post to make this clear.
sciguy77 13y ago
I have to say I know exactly what the author means. When I visit a site (like BetaBrand) and all of a sudden start seeing their ads in my Facebook feed, it feels unsettling, even if they are just using the cookies temporarily stored on my computer.
- 300bps 13y ago
  That's Google Remarketing (http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html). The greatest sounding idea which has almost no chance of working in the real world in my opinion. I went to Rackspace.com based on a HackerNews article a couple months ago and I'm still bombarded with ads for them on every site I go to.
  - Ruska 13y ago
    >almost no chance of working in the real world Why do you think this? The company that I work for uses remarketing, and it actually works really well. I don't know the details behind it, but I know that it's a good source of leads (at least for my company). Keep in mind that it might not work very well with you, but HN readers don't exactly represent the majority of web users.
  - disgruntledphd2 13y ago
    Although its a similar approach, I suspect that what is actually being used here is Facebook Exchange, as I doubt Facebook would let Google remarket directly in their users newsfeed.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    Anecdotal evidence suggests it's a working strategy http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/ad-retargeter-adroll-we-quadrupled-revenue-last-year-now-profitable/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/ad-retargeter-adroll-we-qua...
  - tonyplee 13y ago
    I switched to firefox with noscript. Stop using chrome 90% of times. Turn off 3rd party cookie on default for all browsers. pointed doubleclick.net/com to 127.0.0.1 to /etc/hosts. The web felt less creepy now.
300bps 13y ago
Unfortunately things aren't "getting" a bit creepy, they've been creepy for quite some time. In 1998 I worked at a large publicly traded insurance company. We provided quotes online and sent a follow-up email to the person with their written quote in it. I was asked to figure out a way to determine when the person read their email. Our infrastructure was Classic ASP so I: 1. Created a new web site in IIS 2. Changed IIS' processing of .jpg to run through the ASP processor 3. Created a .jpg program in the site that would update a quote's record as having read the email 4. Put an img tag in the HTML email that loaded the "jpg" file with the unique identifier on a querystring Our business people used this to automatically initiate an outbound call to the person the second they read the email. A lot of people were creeped out, "OMG I just sat down to read your email, what a weird coincidence" but by god those people bought insurance from us. Of course today, that is the reason why images don't automatically load in emails. But there are plenty of people finding new creepy things to do every day.
- alextingle 13y ago
  Another reason why reading e-mail in plain text is the only right way.
- KC8ZKF 13y ago
  How did that work in 1998? Wasn't the phone number in question being used to connect to the internet?
  - 300bps 13y ago
    The vast majority of our traffic was done by people while they were at work. It was actually pretty funny how most of our traffic came in on Monday mornings and then went down from there and then the weekends were unbelievably dead. Beyond that, 1998 wasn't exactly the dark ages. I knew plenty of people that had cable modems in 1996. I had an ISDN line myself in 1996 and a DSL line in either 1998 or 1999. There were plenty of options for people back then that didn't live in the middle of nowhere. And call waiting took care of letting calls through unless the person explicitly disabled it. Heck, any time I had dialup I had two or more phone lines and I had a cell phone since 1994. But you're right - like all solutions it wasn't 100% perfect but it sure helped tremendously.
nni 13y ago
I've seen accurately targeted technical ads when viewing my local paper's site that are creepy as well, since there's "no way" they should have known enough to put that ad there, and was musing on a post about this creepiness, too. Recommendation engines are interesting, and it is amazing how much information can be gleaned from simple yes/no/didclick kind of stuff, but it can also reach a creepy point faster than we might think. Sort of like the little "20 questions" novelty toy that can surprise you, where (I assume) it exploits the effectiveness of dividing the solution space in half with each question... you do that 20 times and you've reduced the space by a factor of a million.
tyleraland 13y ago
My eye-opening creepy moment was after installing Facebook's android app. I had the G+ app already installed, but logged in with a dummy account which follows various people I don't know in real life. For some reason, G+ put those people in my contact list and one day I accidentally called one of them that put their phone number on G+. It never rang because I quickly hit disconnect. The next day on Facebook, guess who was suggested I add as a friend? Mystery dial.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Yeah, FB got permanently banished from my phone once I saw my contact list grow by a couple hundred people.
pnathan 13y ago
This is thr trade the author made: I sell my personal information away, in order to use a "free" product. I suggest that if someone doesn't like this business model, then purchase your programs; don't get ad-supported programs.
IvyMike 13y ago
I prefer when sites and apps are in my face about what they can do. Because the most likely alternative is they have the exact same information but the consumer isn't fully aware. Which is actually more creepy.
linux_devil 13y ago
As far as I remember , similar permissions are required when you install app for "Uber" cabs.
mathattack 13y ago
Getting our attention is a world of spam requires crossing the creepy line. Unfortunate.
Brakenshire 13y ago
Personally, I'm going to move away from Android, because I feel like I cannot use the device without the sensation that my privacy is under assault, not only from some App creators, but from the OS itself. Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions - unique identity, location, sms, contacts etc - and the OS provides no way to effectively sandbox your data. The OS does not believe that you should be able to control access to your data, on your own terms. I have also come to believe that there is a fundamental misalignment of incentives here - I'm only willing to use a smartphone on the basis that I'm buying a device which attempts to protect my privacy, not attempts to expose it, and that will only work if the business model of the manufacturer doesn't rely on mining my data to sell advertising. Unfortunately, I'm not sure other operating systems are much better.
- alextingle 13y ago
  CyanogenMod without any Google apps works pretty well. Wouldn't that meet your needs?
  - Brakenshire 13y ago
    That's definitely one of the options. I think, so far, it's CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, Replicant, Sailfish OS or Firefox OS. My problem with the Android variants is that they're vulnerable to Google; if Google decided, for instance, to move really core functions into Play Services, they could make these variants unviable. Also, after-market OS's have never been popular, and you want to put your weight behind something which might actually be sold in shops, and stands a decent chance of gaining significant market share and momentum. You're right, though, that I'm being a bit overdramatic, the options are definitely there.
- bostik 13y ago
  > Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions At least that is getting rectified, little by little. Apparently 4.3 introduced a tool called "Apps Ops", which brings some of the fine-grained permission control seen in Symbian (where it was actually possible to select which permissions to grant) to Android. [1] Once the power users learn to make most of this tool, the app developers will have no choice but to learn to cope with their apps getting too onerous permissions yanked from under their feet. Which, to me, is a very good thing indeed. It gives the developers one more avenue to compete in - make your app too nosy and you risk getting sidelined by an upstart clone that behaves better with user privacy. [1]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-hidden-Android-4.3-feature-unearthed-Permissions-Manager_id45753 http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-hidden-Android-4.3-feature-...
whatevermatt 13y ago
What do we expect when we take free candy from strangers? Of course it's creepy. This is just another reason to curate the things we let into our lives.
morgante 13y ago
Honestly, this actually sounds more like a bug than an instance of creepiness. From my understanding, it sounds like MightyText scrapes in your SMS messages and allows you to read/respond to them from their client. Looks like it just picked up old messages and accidentally thought they were unread. Otherwise, this isn't just run-of-the-mill tech company creepiness, it's fraud like the dating websites advertising "3 messages waiting for you."

117 points by gingerlime 13y ago

I'm experiencing a very creepy behavior on Twitter, described here http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH http://pastebin.com/KR01pmAH (TL;DR: Twitter displays a different behavior with the user profile of my ex-girlfriend than with any user name, including people I've interacted with much more in the last 1.5 years) I would like many people to do the experiment.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

qwerta 13y ago

>I’m trusting you with my data. I realise there are risks involved, but please treat my data with respect. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. And don’t be a creep. Yes, we can! :-)

Mister_Snuggles 13y ago

I find that emails like that have the opposite effect and push me away from products/services. If the product/service was useful to me, those emails would not be required to keep me engaged.

ams6110 13y ago
Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. My rules are simple: 1. Don't ever email me unless it's in response to a specific request initiated by me.
btilly 13y ago
That is how you remember it when they don't work. You don't even remember them doing it when they did work. That's why companies run A/B tests rather than trust word of mouth.
- Mister_Snuggles 13y ago
  That's very true. Perhaps what turns me off are the desperate "Please come back to $SERVICE, you've been gone for more than 35 seconds! Please come back!!" from the free services. I don't mind the weekly specials from the local computer retailer, for example.

gvb 13y ago

I really like the "NoScript" model of permissions in a browser and wish phone OSes allowed that model. With "NoScript", I block javascript by default but can unblock temporarily or whitelist permanently. On my Android phone: * With standard Android, I have to whitelist an application when installing it. I cannot pick which permissions I give it, I cannot control when it can use those permissions, and I cannot remove permissions. Ever. * With Cyanogenmod, I can restrict permissions fine grained both for permissions and applications. This would be really great if it were usable, but when I try to use it the applications behave very badly (often crashing) if they don't get unfettered permission to use my data. I would love it if (a) applications behaved well in the absence of permissions (I fault Google for setting expectations of availability that don't require this) and (b) I had a UAC style permission granting mechanism[1] so that I control an application's access to my data and can monitor what it is asking for and when. While it could still "steal" my data (cache it, send it to the borg) any time I gave it permissions, it would at least give me a clue that the application was not trustworthy if (when) it popped up unexpected permission requests. [1] I cannot believe I said I like Windows UAC dialogs. That will cost me another year in purgatory. :-/

Spittie 13y ago
I'd love to have it, integrated in the OS and by default as well. Something might be moving, as Google added "App Ops" [1] (hidden by default, but it's there) in Android 4.3, which allow you to revoke permissions from applications. That said, there are some alternatives to Cyanogenmod's Incognito mode, which should work better. One is XPrivacy [2], which relies on the XPosed Framework [3]. This is what I'm currently using on my Android phone. You can allow/restrict some permissions by default, and then have a whitelist for certain applications. Another one is OpenPDroid [4], which requires you to patch your rom (there are some preset for the biggest roms, so usually it's just a matter of a few clicks). I haven't used it, but it should work just like XPrivacy. XPrivacy and OpenPDroid send blank/fake data instead of blocking applications from using certain APIs, so they cause way less crashes. They even allow you to choose the fake data to provide, so that you can fake, for example, your location. [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-android-4-3s-hidden-app-permission-manager-control-permissions-for-individual-apps/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-android-4-3s... [2] https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy [3] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574401 [4] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156

frank_boyd 13y ago

> But it just feels creepy to email me about it this way. In other words: "Yes, I know it's wrong and they should not know these things about me, but I want to use their product anyway, so can we please just pretend nobody knows what's going on in our society?"

fastball 13y ago

> “You have SMS waiting from Dad, Jonathan and Florian”. The mightytext guys thought it would be more engaging to take a look into my recent SMS messages, pick up recent or popular contacts and use it to get me to use the product. > To me this is crossing some invisible but very clear line. I haven’t used the product yet, and it’s already trawling through my personal stuff? I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, the app he installed? It's routing your text messages through you server. Obviously their system knows what texts you are sending, otherwise how would it function? Also, the product has been used if you give it permission to access your contacts.

gingerlime 13y ago
> I'm confused by this example. Isn't this exactly the purpose of MightyText, the app he installed? Blog post author here. The purpose of MightyText (as far as I understand it anyway) is to allow me to use SMS through my computer at greater ease. I accept that in order to do that, technically I need to allow the app to access my Android SMS, contacts etc and "act on my behalf" to deliver messages. I trust the program not to abuse this access I give it. I do not expect it to use this information to spy on me, even if this spying is merely for marketing purposes or to encourage me to use their program more. I think that's the creepy part.
- santosha 13y ago
  Is there a 'don't send me email about unread messages' option somewhere?
  - gingerlime 13y ago
    These were not unread messages. The list of names were (probably) taken from the last SMS senders on my phone, before I installed MightyText. Since I don't use SMS much, no new messages were delivered after installing it either. So MightyText went through my old messages, and then sent a reminder/engagement-email using those messages. EDIT: I've updated the original blog post to make this clear.

sciguy77 13y ago

I have to say I know exactly what the author means. When I visit a site (like BetaBrand) and all of a sudden start seeing their ads in my Facebook feed, it feels unsettling, even if they are just using the cookies temporarily stored on my computer.

300bps 13y ago
That's Google Remarketing (http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html). The greatest sounding idea which has almost no chance of working in the real world in my opinion. I went to Rackspace.com based on a HackerNews article a couple months ago and I'm still bombarded with ads for them on every site I go to.
- Ruska 13y ago
  >almost no chance of working in the real world Why do you think this? The company that I work for uses remarketing, and it actually works really well. I don't know the details behind it, but I know that it's a good source of leads (at least for my company). Keep in mind that it might not work very well with you, but HN readers don't exactly represent the majority of web users.
- disgruntledphd2 13y ago
  Although its a similar approach, I suspect that what is actually being used here is Facebook Exchange, as I doubt Facebook would let Google remarket directly in their users newsfeed.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Anecdotal evidence suggests it's a working strategy http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/ad-retargeter-adroll-we-quadrupled-revenue-last-year-now-profitable/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/ad-retargeter-adroll-we-qua...
- tonyplee 13y ago
  I switched to firefox with noscript. Stop using chrome 90% of times. Turn off 3rd party cookie on default for all browsers. pointed doubleclick.net/com to 127.0.0.1 to /etc/hosts. The web felt less creepy now.

300bps 13y ago

Unfortunately things aren't "getting" a bit creepy, they've been creepy for quite some time. In 1998 I worked at a large publicly traded insurance company. We provided quotes online and sent a follow-up email to the person with their written quote in it. I was asked to figure out a way to determine when the person read their email. Our infrastructure was Classic ASP so I: 1. Created a new web site in IIS 2. Changed IIS' processing of .jpg to run through the ASP processor 3. Created a .jpg program in the site that would update a quote's record as having read the email 4. Put an img tag in the HTML email that loaded the "jpg" file with the unique identifier on a querystring Our business people used this to automatically initiate an outbound call to the person the second they read the email. A lot of people were creeped out, "OMG I just sat down to read your email, what a weird coincidence" but by god those people bought insurance from us. Of course today, that is the reason why images don't automatically load in emails. But there are plenty of people finding new creepy things to do every day.

alextingle 13y ago
Another reason why reading e-mail in plain text is the only right way.
KC8ZKF 13y ago
How did that work in 1998? Wasn't the phone number in question being used to connect to the internet?
- 300bps 13y ago
  The vast majority of our traffic was done by people while they were at work. It was actually pretty funny how most of our traffic came in on Monday mornings and then went down from there and then the weekends were unbelievably dead. Beyond that, 1998 wasn't exactly the dark ages. I knew plenty of people that had cable modems in 1996. I had an ISDN line myself in 1996 and a DSL line in either 1998 or 1999. There were plenty of options for people back then that didn't live in the middle of nowhere. And call waiting took care of letting calls through unless the person explicitly disabled it. Heck, any time I had dialup I had two or more phone lines and I had a cell phone since 1994. But you're right - like all solutions it wasn't 100% perfect but it sure helped tremendously.

nni 13y ago

I've seen accurately targeted technical ads when viewing my local paper's site that are creepy as well, since there's "no way" they should have known enough to put that ad there, and was musing on a post about this creepiness, too. Recommendation engines are interesting, and it is amazing how much information can be gleaned from simple yes/no/didclick kind of stuff, but it can also reach a creepy point faster than we might think. Sort of like the little "20 questions" novelty toy that can surprise you, where (I assume) it exploits the effectiveness of dividing the solution space in half with each question... you do that 20 times and you've reduced the space by a factor of a million.

tyleraland 13y ago

My eye-opening creepy moment was after installing Facebook's android app. I had the G+ app already installed, but logged in with a dummy account which follows various people I don't know in real life. For some reason, G+ put those people in my contact list and one day I accidentally called one of them that put their phone number on G+. It never rang because I quickly hit disconnect. The next day on Facebook, guess who was suggested I add as a friend? Mystery dial.

rhizome 13y ago
Yeah, FB got permanently banished from my phone once I saw my contact list grow by a couple hundred people.

pnathan 13y ago

This is thr trade the author made: I sell my personal information away, in order to use a "free" product. I suggest that if someone doesn't like this business model, then purchase your programs; don't get ad-supported programs.

IvyMike 13y ago

I prefer when sites and apps are in my face about what they can do. Because the most likely alternative is they have the exact same information but the consumer isn't fully aware. Which is actually more creepy.

linux_devil 13y ago

As far as I remember , similar permissions are required when you install app for "Uber" cabs.

mathattack 13y ago

Getting our attention is a world of spam requires crossing the creepy line. Unfortunate.

Brakenshire 13y ago

Personally, I'm going to move away from Android, because I feel like I cannot use the device without the sensation that my privacy is under assault, not only from some App creators, but from the OS itself. Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions - unique identity, location, sms, contacts etc - and the OS provides no way to effectively sandbox your data. The OS does not believe that you should be able to control access to your data, on your own terms. I have also come to believe that there is a fundamental misalignment of incentives here - I'm only willing to use a smartphone on the basis that I'm buying a device which attempts to protect my privacy, not attempts to expose it, and that will only work if the business model of the manufacturer doesn't rely on mining my data to sell advertising. Unfortunately, I'm not sure other operating systems are much better.

alextingle 13y ago
CyanogenMod without any Google apps works pretty well. Wouldn't that meet your needs?
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  That's definitely one of the options. I think, so far, it's CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, Replicant, Sailfish OS or Firefox OS. My problem with the Android variants is that they're vulnerable to Google; if Google decided, for instance, to move really core functions into Play Services, they could make these variants unviable. Also, after-market OS's have never been popular, and you want to put your weight behind something which might actually be sold in shops, and stands a decent chance of gaining significant market share and momentum. You're right, though, that I'm being a bit overdramatic, the options are definitely there.
bostik 13y ago
> Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions At least that is getting rectified, little by little. Apparently 4.3 introduced a tool called "Apps Ops", which brings some of the fine-grained permission control seen in Symbian (where it was actually possible to select which permissions to grant) to Android. [1] Once the power users learn to make most of this tool, the app developers will have no choice but to learn to cope with their apps getting too onerous permissions yanked from under their feet. Which, to me, is a very good thing indeed. It gives the developers one more avenue to compete in - make your app too nosy and you risk getting sidelined by an upstart clone that behaves better with user privacy. [1]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-hidden-Android-4.3-feature-unearthed-Permissions-Manager_id45753 http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-hidden-Android-4.3-feature-...

whatevermatt 13y ago

What do we expect when we take free candy from strangers? Of course it's creepy. This is just another reason to curate the things we let into our lives.

morgante 13y ago

Honestly, this actually sounds more like a bug than an instance of creepiness. From my understanding, it sounds like MightyText scrapes in your SMS messages and allows you to read/respond to them from their client. Looks like it just picked up old messages and accidentally thought they were unread. Otherwise, this isn't just run-of-the-mill tech company creepiness, it's fraud like the dating websites advertising "3 messages waiting for you."