
Getting a bit creepy - gingerlime
http://blog.gingerlime.com/2013/getting-a-bit-creepy/
======
gvb
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
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...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/07/25/app-ops-
android-4-3s-hidden-app-permission-manager-control-permissions-for-individual-
apps/)

[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)

~~~
reginaldjcooper
Thank you for this, I am switching to Android for freedom but I wish to retain
privacy also. Asking permissions for each aspect and requiring apps to work if
it is denied is one of the few things I liked about iOS.

~~~
ryanthejuggler
If you really want freedom, use CyanogenMod, or better, Replicant. Google's
been enviously eyeing Apple's walled garden for a while now.

~~~
reginaldjcooper
Oh yes I am well aware :) I think Replicant is the one for me.

------
300bps
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.

~~~
KC8ZKF
How did that work in 1998? Wasn't the phone number in question being used to
connect to the internet?

~~~
acdha
I had a cable modem by 1998. Faster uplink speed than I have now, actually –
saturated the 10MBps network in my house and it wasn't throttled in the pre-
Napster, pre-port-filtered era.

~~~
FireBeyond
What cable companies were giving you 100mbps Internet in 1998?

~~~
acdha
10Mbs, not 100. With Cox in San Diego could hit (IIRC) 16 Mbps per cable
segment but at the time no cable modem had a 100Mb ethernet interface since
that hardware was still expensive.

------
tyleraland
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
Yeah, FB got permanently banished from my phone once I saw my contact list
grow by a couple hundred people.

------
Brakenshire
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.

~~~
madeofpalk
> Unfortunately, I'm not sure other operating systems are much better.

I think the funny part in all of this is that iOS does give you more fine-
grain controls over app permissions.

~~~
tjoff
Seeing how long it took them to realize that "Contacts" were something that
you should ask permission to use I don't know if I'd trust apple with knowing
which planet I live on.

------
Mister_Snuggles
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.

~~~
btilly
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
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.

------
fastball
> _“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
> 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
Is there a 'don't send me email about unread messages' option somewhere?

~~~
gingerlime
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.

------
frank_boyd
> 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?"

------
IvyMike
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.

------
nni
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.

------
sciguy77
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
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.

~~~
tonyplee
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.

~~~
greenyoda
There's an extension for Chrome called NotScripts, which does pretty much what
NoScript does in Firefox:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notscripts/odjhifo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/notscripts/odjhifogjcknibkahlpidmdajjpkkcfn)

------
pnathan
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.

------
morgante
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."

------
bits_of_freedom
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.

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

------
qwerta
>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! :-)

------
whatevermatt
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.

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

