

Tracking everything, Placeme is the smartphone assistant of the future - jh3
http://gigaom.com/mobile/tracking-everything-placeme-is-the-smartphone-assistant-of-the-future/

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freshhawk
How sad is it that the ecosystem around mobile apps is so poisonous and anti-
user that something like this gets called "creepy" when it doesn't broadcast
this data anywhere.

All the language around this is similar: "give up privacy" (giving it up to
who?), "scariest and amazingly futuristic".

I creep a bit towards the zealot side when it comes to privacy and having
large amounts of personal data on someone else's servers but this sounds like
a great app.

I know users shouldn't have to understand technical details but at the very
least they should be educated in the difference between "your phone collects
data" and "your phone sends your data to someone else". Technical journalists
should understand the difference though, so I'm blaming the author for
confusing the issue completely.

It is pretty clear these days that in north america where we all borrow our
phones from carriers that lock us out of them it makes some sense to distrust
your mobile phone but carrier IQ or similar malware would already be able to
report all this data.

If you care about privacy then shouldn't we be celebrating apps that store our
data locally instead of putting them in the "cloud" for no reason than to
monetize the personal data? Even if you disagree, the difference has to be
acknowledged.

