On Thursday, August 2, 2012 12:16:36 PM UTC-7, omoling wrote:
> There is no purpose to create mistrust on other applications. After all, I > strongly believe that the wast majority of developers use private data > carefully. > Do you? Just an observation, Appprivacy does not reflect this belief. It rates the vast majority of apps as dangerous. > I also believe that there are several ways to handle the privacy issue on > mobile. To mention a comment, I really don't see ANY point in requiring > permissions that you might use in the future, but don't use now. > Some users like to know what to expect from the beginning. If certain functionality is planned, planning for the permissions is also reasonable. > if your app requires permission X (eg reading contacts), I must assume you > are using it, the opposite does not make sense, at all. > Baloney. If only a minority of your users want to import contacts into their app, the app is not using that permission for the majority of users. Yet you have to ask for the permission. Often, a developer has several ways to solve an issue, if the shortest and > easiest one implies requiring privacy-concerning permissions like reading > the log files (just saying), a developer cannot, in my opinion, be > frustrated if that request is not liked by some users. > I am not, in general, in favor of doing elaborate implementations just to avoid permissions that your app reasonably requires. You could reimplement the logging system with a lot of effort in order to get less information, and in many cases, no useful information at all. In the meantime, you haven't changed the privacy for the user in any meaningful way; you've just altered the appearance. There are lots of ways to do some good debugging without reading log files, > just saying. > Yes, I guess you could travel to their home with a laptop. There are some good ways of doing some good debugging *with* log files. Just saying. If a developer publishes a good app, and at a later point she updates it by > adding some functionality and some permissions required, users will just > update and continue to use the app. > You assume a reasonableness on the part of users that just doesn't exist. Sure, 99% of users will do just that, but the 1% of users ( which are the likely target group for your app) will write mean comments in the Market about their betrayal. They expect to get free updates for life AND not have to accept any new permissions. And it doesn't matter how good your explanation is, because ALL users will see the new permission and a small percentage will see the explanation. Meanwhile, many users will see these comments and skip installing the app as a result. It doesn't matter how "good" your app is because they will not even install it and find out. > I simply don't trust apps that require permissions for which I can not see > the purpose. > This belief of yours *is* enshrined in the apprivacy app. Trouble is, you think that any permissions for which *you* do not see the purpose should be considered dangerous to all users of your app. You also think that any permission that any one user doesn't see the reason for should be flagged as dangerous for all users of your app. > Finally, I really do not see the point in feeling endangered by Apprivacy: > I'll explain the reason for my bias. It is the "genre" of these apps in general that causes me trouble and no real benefit. Ie, an app that exists to analyze and criticize other apps, often in ways that are reasonable but not terribly accurate. A few examples: Ad Detectors. Ad Detectors flag my app as having push notifications (it doesn't). Two of the developers have admitted their mistake and promised to fix it, but I've spent time answering this question, and I am stuck with comments that say "Pushes unwanted ads and spam to my phone" not because it actually did, but because some other app said so. It doesn't take very many lines of code to write an Ad Detector that is 60% accurate, so I expect hundreds more to crop up. Task Killers Task killers promote the idea that any app that is in memory must be bad. You then get to spend time explaining Android process management to users, which none of them will understand. Battery Monitors I've gotten so many bogus reports of people saying that my app is using up the battery when they haven't even run my app once. Because some other app told them so. The sum total means that I spend my time on politics and combating misinformation instead of working on features that matter to my users. >this app should help both user and developer to keep things clear and transparent: users have a better view at which apps are reading >their data and developers have a channel to reply to some doubts that may arise. I will use that channel, but I see no net benefit to a developer. At best, I can reply to some doubts that are only there because of your app in the first place. A much larger number of users will see "100 people doubted this permission" than will click through to an explanation. Plus now I have to communicate with you and a thousand other developers of "app criticizer" apps. Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-discuss/-/P0KcGzLdbf4J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
