
Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day - seaghost
http://forum.swype.com/showthread.php?13052-Swype-makes-almost-4000-location-requests-every-day
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thefreeman
Actually, to me it sounds like a bug with Swype when location access is
blocked. The users in the thread with the large amount of requests all have
the location permission blocked.

Other users with Privacy Guard installed as well (so they can see the amount
of location requests) who have _not_ blocked location access report that it
only made the request once.

So it just sounds like if it fails the initial request it continues to retry
every few minutes. In my opinion it seems like a bug rather then anything
malicious.

However the posters in the thread do have a good point that there is really no
reason for Swype to even need this permission.

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y4mi
possibly. but its every 20 seconds, not every few minutes…

4000 / 24 * 60 = 4000 / 1440 = 2.777 => 60 / 2.7 = 21 seconds

~~~
DominikR
If Swype tried to get your location every 20 seconds on purpose, it would
drain you battery within a few hours.

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pdenya
If it was successful it would drain your battery, failed attempts should cost
almost nothing so this fits with the bug theory.

~~~
DominikR
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make.

Accessing GPS every 20 secs just can't be what they had in mind when they
implemented it. (not even in case it fails, because it would prevent the CPU
from going into deep sleep, which saves battery)

What I believe is happening:

The developers of Swype didn't test for that error, because Google Play
filters the app for all devices that don't have GPS, so the device is expected
to have the hardware and to return some specific error in case it doesn't work
(GPS turned off and so on)

And the CyanogenMod privacy feature interferes in a way, that causes an
unexpected error that they didn't account for.

Combine that with the lack of an exponential backoff and you'll get this
result.

~~~
andymcsherry
This is a problem with a lot of the enhancements that custom ROMs provide on
Android. They break the API contract a developer has with the SDK and
unexpected things happen. It's the reason all these ROMs aren't allowed to
ship with Google Apps installed -- they fail the compatibility test. Most
developer don't bother to investigate these issues and work around it because
they're rarely documented and hard to discover.

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sikhnerd
Every time I see something like this come up, it really makes me wonder how
many other apps out there are doing the same thing and getting away with it.

Unless you root your phone and use something like the mentioned android
firewall, or go whole-hog and install Cyanogenmod, what chance do you have to
guard against this?

I assume ios users are likely in the same boat, but with even less chance of
recourse.

~~~
Frazzydee
Google seems to have no interest in protecting android users from this either.

There was an app called 'App Ops' that gave android users the ability to
choose which permissions they wanted to grant applications. No root required.

Get too many notifications from an app, or don't need location functionality?
You used to be able to turn these features off one-by-one for each app. You
could also see the last time an app used location services. Android developers
have a bad habit of requesting every permission under the sun, so I've gotten
in the habit of disabling the permissions that don't add value for me.

Unfortunately, Google later removed this feature saying that its release was
accidental. I thought it was a clean solution to a major problem.

Source: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/google-removes-
vital-p...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/google-removes-vital-
privacy-features-android-shortly-after-adding-them)

~~~
userbinator
Why wouldn't Google want users to have such powerful control over their
devices? It's always explained like this: Because it's "simpler." Because
"things will break if the user does something wrong." Because "the average
user won't need it."

Those same poor excuses have been responsible for so much loss of privacy and
freedom elsewhere, not just by Google. To me, they're deliberately preventing
users from having too much power to control their devices, so _they_ can
better persuade them in the direction they want. Then they accidentally gave
the users too much, so of course they would say it wasn't intended, but the
reaction certainly says that it's precisely what the users want...

~~~
untog
That's exactly the reason, and it's more legitimate than you give it credit
for. I can foresee numerous situations where users disable location tracking
(in the name of saving battery) without realising the effect it will have
(rendering a location-based app useless).

A nice middle ground would be to keep App Ops, but hidden away somewhere, much
like the Developer Tools are.

~~~
pessimizer
>users disable location tracking (in the name of saving battery) without
realising the effect it will have (rendering a location-based app useless).

If you can assume that location data would be available, you can also assume
that users will be sentient.

~~~
Karunamon
And random developers start getting one-star "Doesn't work!" reviews because
our "sentient" user forgot to change their settings.

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userbinator
The official response is that location data is used for "regional dialects"...
makes sense, but is IP geolocation not close enough? The screenshot there
doesn't make it clear but is this coarse or fine location data? My keyboard,
no matter how smart, shouldn't need to know where exactly it is on Earth to
within a few meters. Within a state or town, fair enough.

~~~
jnbiche
I think this is poor user UI. I mean, in this day in age when so many people
travel through different countries weekly on pleasure or business, their
keyboard layout changes accordingly?

That doesn't make much sense.

~~~
bentcorner
I don't think the keyboard changes UI - from the description it sounds like
they augment the dictionary with words that other people near you are using in
their vocabulary.

Still, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they need to do that many location
requests. Why should where I'm standing _right now_ affect what words are in
my dictionary? It's a poor proxy at best, the words that I use in my language
are a product of both where I grew up and where I spend my time. Where I
happen to be standing does not always matter that much.

I wonder if bucketing users into "these people use the same words" would give
better results?

~~~
hrjet
> Why should where I'm standing right now affect what words are in my
> dictionary?

Since Swype has do to a lot of inference from your gestures, it seems
reasonable that it may perform better when inferring proper names with some
location awareness.

For example, if I am in a particular city, and wanted to type the name of a
street where I am.

I am not saying that's a feature I find compelling; it does sound reasonable
though. Letting the user chose this behavior (and the permission), would be
best.

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blueblob
Could part of this be that "Privacy Guard" blocked the request, so Swype
reissued requests?

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devindotcom
Boy, this may explain why Swype was bogging my phone down so much. Last couple
months maybe it has been really slow, and I thought it was a couple large
games being kept in RAM but at one point with only a couple things in the
background my Swype trace was so slow I thought maybe I had a bugged version.
Removed the app and the phone runs like butter. Like BUTTER. The Google glide
keyboard or whatever isn't as good but brother it's better than dealing with a
frozen phone.

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atoponce
The Google keyboard supports swiping now, and if running 4.3, you can have the
Dvorak layout as well.

~~~
drdaeman
Offtopic: is Dvorak layout really useful on small touchscreens?

I use it on hardware keyboard, where each finger has its place - and it's
great. But all my attempts to use it on phone screen only led to increase of
typos, because frequently used letters are too near to each other.

~~~
atoponce
I love it. I find that a lot of the swiping motion stays on the home row. But,
it is a lot of back-and-forth. It would be interesting to see a mobile
keyboard designed with swiping such that frequently used letters are clustered
together, and less frequently used letters further away.

Meh. Having the Dvorak keyboard on my phone is also an awesome conversation
piece. To each their own. :)

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Relys
Hey guys. Just thought I'd pop in here to mention an alternative to installing
Cyanogenmod or blocking all internet activity with a firewall.

I found XPrivacy while looking for interesting xposed modules to install. It's
like Privacy Guard but better:

[http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-
xprivacy-...](http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-
xprivacy-1-11-8-ultimate-privacy-t2320783)

All you need to do is root your phone and install the xposed framework on your
existing ROM. :)

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DominikR
Maybe this is caused by using Google Play Services to get the location.

The location tracking of Google Play Services is basically a black box, that
tracks the users movement very accurately.

It could be that we don't see the count of location requests Swype made, but
instead the count of location requests Google Play Services makes.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Its also incredibly buggy. I've had it drain my battery randomly.

On top of that, I noticed my maps application on my new N5 wasn't working
correctly. It seemed to update once and then never again. I went into the
location services and there was a EULA waiting for me to say yes to. Once I
said yes, it worked, but wow, that's not how to do business. I should get that
prompt in the maps app or when the phone boots up the first time. Digging
through the menu system in settings is the only way I discovered this.

~~~
DominikR
The update dialog should also be displayed upon opening the Play Store app,
but yes I agree.

The user should be given the option to upgrade the moment an app requests a
feature not provided by the current Google Play Services version.

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bananas
Just about everything I install on my phone is suspect these days with respect
to privacy and permissions. Why does BBC weather need to write to my USB
storage for example and why do I have to let it?

The Nokia C2 I have floating around is starting to look interesting again. It
has no idea where it is.

~~~
wcoenen
Every functional phone knows where it is, in the sense that it knows the
signal strength of one or more nearby cell towers.

A java app on your Nokia C2 could probably determine its location like this:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11628648/how-to-find-
use...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11628648/how-to-find-user-
location-using-cell-tower-in-j2me)

~~~
bananas
Yeah but there is no possibility of running one of these on S40 platform as
J2ME apps don't run in the background.

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hadoukenio
Does this mean we can't even trust the input options on a phone now? After
blocking this, does it also mean I'm now going to have to change every
password I've ever typed on my device? FFS.

~~~
onli
In fact, when activating a different input method on Android 2.3, there is a
warning specific in that direction, that it does read everything you type, and
therefore should only be changed if you trust the other keyboard. It is a
valid warning.

In fact, I don't think that we should trust our phones at all, not
specifically but only including the input method.

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evanw
I found a similar issue with the Square Register app for Android.
CyanogenMod's PrivacyGuard feature tells me it tried to access my location
22,000+ times in a 2-day period:
[https://twitter.com/evanw/status/453576355284660224/photo/1/...](https://twitter.com/evanw/status/453576355284660224/photo/1/large)

I assumed this was a programming issue (perhaps unregulated retries) rather
than the app legitimately trying to locate me 10,000 times per day.

~~~
thrownaway2424
That doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. Square needs location data because
the Square Wallet auto-pay magic is geofenced with respect to the register.

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orbitingpluto
I'm showing 0 kb for Swype for mobile data usage, and I believe that was
before I put it into full restricted mode for cellular. It could be phoning
home later.

Swype can toggle enabling/disabling cellular data, contribute usage data &
"social integration".

Also you shouldn't set up "backup and sync".

My point is it looks like there is some setting where it is not phoning home
all the time.

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hardwaresofton
I recently noticed swype was making my phone lag if I used it (I was using
samsung's keyboard as an alternative, it has swype-like functionality), so I
stopped using it, imagining something like this was the case. Couldn't
understand why a typing app would every slow down -- glad my paranoia paid off

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jgalt212
I have a Droid Moto X. Swype was pre-installed, so I can't even uninstall it
without rooting my phone.

I got an Android phone b/c I didn't want to be one of Steve's sheep, but given
some of the comments here it's probably safer to be in his flock than not.

~~~
dublinben
Perhaps you are thinking of Swiftkey. Swype is definitely not preinstalled on
Moto X phones.

~~~
jgalt212
Maybe I misspoke, but are the Motorola Droid X and Moto X the same phone? If
they are you may be mistaken per my experience (I cannot uninstall Swype, so I
assume it was pre-installed) and per the wiki

On June 16, 2010, Swype opened a public beta for the Android operating
system.[20] The Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy Note,
___Motorola Droid X_ __, Motorola i1, and Motorola Droid 2 Android-based
smartphones come with Swype pre-installed.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype)

~~~
dublinben
I think you did misspeak. The Motorola Droid X is a phone that came out in
2010. The Motorola Moto X is a phone that came out in 2013. There is no such
phone as the "Droid Moto X."

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sciguy77
>On a side note, it has also read my contacts list 6 times, my call log 43
times and received 6 SMS/MMS messages.

That's pretty alarming and seems to imply that this is not one small keyboard-
related bug but rather a larger problem.

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talles
Pardon my unawareness, but why would Swype get my location again?

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martincmartin
It's explained in the post. To figure out the regional dialect.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
So if I'm on vacation in France, suddenly I get the French keyboard?

~~~
codezero
No, but it will be more likely to assume you are typing Rue Carnot rather than
row boat if you are near that street, or the name of some nearby restaurant.

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brokentone
At least Android provides the user the tools to audit this per app. Apple
should follow suit.

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mariusz79
We, as customers, are being raped by the corporations.. No dinner, no movies,
no candles, no Vaseline. The sad thing is, many of the people here are part of
the problem.

~~~
minikites
A software bug is not on the same level as being violently sexually assaulted.
You are part of a much larger problem.

~~~
mariusz79
Software bug? Do you really believe that this is software bug? It logs
location many thousands of times every day and nobody noticed that?

~~~
gliptic
Who says it logs them? And, someone did notice it.

