"Third party tools." Ads. They're called ads. Don't beat around the bush. Google won't fix the problem because their business is selling ads.
Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
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Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#12I wonder if there is a comparable study for iOS apps? Or are there iOS versions of "Tinder, Spotify, Uber and OKCupid" better than the Android counterparts. > Both of these trackers have been profiled by Privacy Lab and can be identified by Exodus scans . I have tried looking up Exodus but can't find any info. Anyone knows what this tool and how does it work?
https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/ https://github.com/exodus-privacy/exodus https://github.com/YalePrivacyLab/tracker-profiles
Does anyone know why Firefox uses DoubleClick?
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#13The surprising part to me is that it's only 3/4. I assume the rest are not doing any real analytics.
Of course they are using 3rd party tools, because the software and infrastructure required to do meaningful analytics on a large user base is way beyond what any startup or independent developer can afford to invest. There aren't even decent Open Source options - Google Analytics long ago sucked the air out of Open Source in this space and choosing Open Source means running your own infrastructure, which is non-trival the moment you start having Gigabytes+ of usage data.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#14Am I the only person who doesn't mind being tracked? I don't use an ad-blocker or VPN and allow all cookies.
I see it as a fair trade for reading articles, watching videos, playing games, etc. without paying any money out of my own pocket.
EDIT: Why the down votes with no replies on this?
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#15"Many of these trackers are also available in the Apple iOS app store, though technical and legal barriers limit privacy and security analysis."
https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/isp-privacy-lab-publishe...
And from https://boingboing.net/2017/11/25/la-la-la-cant-hear-you.htm...:
"As Exodus and Yale note, these trackers are almost certainly also present in iOS: the companies that make them advertise their iOS compatibility, for one thing. But iOS is DRM-locked and it’s a felony – punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense in the USA under DMCA 1201, and similar provisions of Article 6 of the EUCD in France where Exodus is located – to distribute tools that bypass this DRM, even for the essential work of discovering whether billions of people are at risk due to covert spying from the platform."
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#16This is such a non-story.
How so? Everybody screams bloody murder whenever the topic of telemetry is brought up and this is telemetry on a massive scale.
You're right, but I guess it seems to be a non-story to developers because the first thing you do prior to launch is add telemetry for user behavior and app performance.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#17Only 3/4? That only means the "researchers" didn't try hard enough on the remaining 1/4.
100% of every app you use, mobile or web, has user behavior tracking.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#18Only 3/4? That only means the "researchers" didn't try hard enough on the remaining 1/4. 100% of every app you use, mobile or web, has user behavior tracking.
Nonsense. Here are some of the apps I use:
- AOSP email client
- Silence
- F-droid
- Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
I don't think any of those are tracking my behaviour.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#19The surprising part to me is that it's only 3/4. I assume the rest are not doing any real analytics. Of course they are using 3rd party tools, because the software and infrastructure required to do meaningful analytics on a large user base is way beyond what any startup or independent developer can afford to invest. There aren't even decent Open Source options - Google Analytics long ago sucked the air out of Open So…
Exactly this. We're constantly told not to "roll our own X", making paid offerings like Azure App Insights, which is more robust than any hand-rolled solution we could ever develop, so appealing.
We're not trying to sell the user, or their data. We just want to know which features are being used and whether or not it's meeting our performance criteria, thus doing the user a favor by meeting those criteria.
Re: Three quarters of Android apps track users with third party tools
#20Only 3/4? That only means the "researchers" didn't try hard enough on the remaining 1/4. 100% of every app you use, mobile or web, has user behavior tracking.
Oh common, even you have to believe your statement is hyperbolic. What about the little crud apps people write for convenience? I wrote a weather app that scrapes data that I look at but made it faster so I don't need to load the entire website every time I want to review it. 0 tracking what-so-ever. I've come across several apps published by friends that do the same and couldn't imagine it's hardly a strange thing to write an app and not want to see it as some sort of monetization scheme.