

Apple Restricts 3rd Party Data in iPhone 4.0 - mootymoots
http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/04/apple-restrict-3rd-party-data-in-iphone-4-0/

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Anon84

           1. All user data captured by an application must be 
              for the sole use of that application only (like 
              the Facebook app for example). The use of location 
              based data for targeted advertising is strictly 
              prohibited
    
           2. You may only send user data to a third party which 
              is specific to the services/functionality of your 
              application and also only if the user has given 
              consent. Example: User updates status on Twitter, 
              presses a “Send” button to confirm sending of said 
              tweet.
    
           3. Sending device data to any third party for 
              analysis is now strictly prohibited. Think mobile 
              analysis services such as AdMob here. Presumably 
              you can send this to yourself as the developer 
              though.
    
    

1 & 2 are pretty reasonable. 3 makes sense given iAd.

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andr
No, it does not make sense. Instead of trying to build a better service, Apple
is just cutting the lifelines of competing services. That is the poster case
of unfair competition.

~~~
veemjeem
I don't think it's cutting competition -- these seem to be consumer
protection. Say the popular flurry analytics tool decides they're going to
perform background services to track users, you probably wouldn't even be able
to opt-out to the tracking... developers adding the Flurry tool probably
wouldn't even be directly aware of the invasion of privacy.

~~~
gyardley
First, I don't believe that's technically possible to do without an explicit
user opt-in, even if we wanted to implement it.

Second, I've never understood why people automatically assume the worst of
analytics tools. No one assumes random web startups are selling their
username, email and password combos to identity thieves, but if a startup
collects some anonymous data for analytics, everyone's eager to assume it's
both grabbing stuff that's personally identifiable and using it for some
nefarious purpose. My pet theory ties this to our desire to feel important -
everyone wants to believe their personal information's both valuable and
interesting enough to be worth filching despite the obscene legal risks of
doing so. However, it's not.

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xsmasher
There's a web site that lists iPhone apps that send data to third parties.
There really are quite a lot: <http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/>

I was alerted to it when my own app appeared in their list with two entries --
one for using Flurry analytics, which is true, and another entry for
connecting to my own server, which only happens if you're running a pirated
version.

I was astounded that someone would be so concerned about their privacy being
violated... by the software they stole from me. If they're downloading cracked
software from strangers I'd say that's a bigger risk than apps phoning home.

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redglasses
Hmm. So ... other developers might turn to old-school analytics packages,
which install on their own LAMP / AWS / etc?

It's interesting to get all the data yourself, but it's a nightmare for client
projects - suddenly you're manually responsible for supporting + maintaining
all client projects ... forever.

(I made one last year, and I've only been using it for my own apps - it's very
similar to Flurry - but I never liked losing the data to a 3rd party. Private
- I didn't think anyone else would care enough to NOT use Flurry :))

