One great feature of gsuite, in my opinion, is the ability to prevent oauth-authenticated access to the email APIs, IMAP, and POP for your organization. These shady apps are ALL stealing your data. Literally every single one of them. And just telling your users to be careful about what apps they use isn't going to cut it, someone in your organization will leak everything.
Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
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Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#12This sort of thing is why I don't trust any apps that I haven't built myself, and keep them firewalled off from the internet to they can't phone home. I trust commercial applications on the desktop to exactly the same degree, for the same reasons. In terms of privacy and respecting the users, the state of software today is deplorable.
A colleague of mine is attending a conference this week where attendees are 'required' to install an app to their personal phones so that they can get the latest updates to changes to the conference agenda.
No doubt this is a data-mining platform marketed to conference organizers who probably don't have much of a clue what the real value add is for the app creator.
I have strongly encouraged them to not install the 'app'.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#13People should really read the privacy policies before using any email app these days. Many popular ones state that they, at minimum, will keep access tokens on their servers, and many outright cache copies of your messages.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#14I installed Edison on iOS somewhat recently. At the end of setting up my server info, there was a question asking if I approved them using/sharing my data. I tapped NO. My information was all deleted like I had just installed the app brand new. I thought it was a bug so I went through set up again. Selected NO again. Account info deleted. You can’t use the app without agreeing they can use your info/data.
I uninstalled.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#15Edison posted a response[0] with this amazing sentence: > to protect your privacy by rejecting an advertising-based business model, our company Edison Software, measures e-commerce through a technology that automatically recognizes commercial emails and extracts anonymous purchase information from them [0]: https://medium.com/changing-communications/a-reminder-of-how... (non-Medium: https://outline.com/7K3TAL )
"we had to destroy the village in order to save it"
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-09/destro...
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#16>Edison
Are there really no good open source email clients on iphones?
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#17This sort of thing is why I don't trust any apps that I haven't built myself, and keep them firewalled off from the internet to they can't phone home. I trust commercial applications on the desktop to exactly the same degree, for the same reasons. In terms of privacy and respecting the users, the state of software today is deplorable.
WeChat killed their web interface for most users and replaced it with a message that translates to: "For your own account safety, this account cannot use the web version. You can use the Windows or Mac client [download links]" Safety? Web is about as safe as it gets. It's one thing to spy on users but it's a whole another thing for Tencent to masquerade under the name of safety to cheat users into downloading what co…
> Safety? Web is about as safe as it gets.
I strongly prefer native apps over web apps because I can firewall off native apps. I can't do the same for web apps.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#18Edison posted a response[0] with this amazing sentence: > to protect your privacy by rejecting an advertising-based business model, our company Edison Software, measures e-commerce through a technology that automatically recognizes commercial emails and extracts anonymous purchase information from them [0]: https://medium.com/changing-communications/a-reminder-of-how... (non-Medium: https://outline.com/7K3TAL )
That's an amazing level of marketing doublespeak right there. Protecting my privacy by reading my emails? Right, pull the other one.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#19If something is free on the internet, there is a good chance you are the product.
And if you're paying for something on the internet, there is a good chance that you are the product.
Re: Companies that buy data derived from scraping the contents of email
#20From their T&C's page "you may provide us with information about your contacts (such as names, email addresses, etc.)" Whoever installs this app consents to sharing the information of their contacts, who might not consent to having their data shared. Ultimately, this could lead to giving disposable contact details to friends and relatives, in order to (try to) preserve one's privacy.
That's a tough problem to solve, "Import your Address Book" has been a feature of communications platforms as far back as I can remember.