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Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

troyhunt.com

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Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#11

Post by sp332 »

RexRollman wrote: post #8
megablast wrote: post #5

Quite funny from a chap who has google+, twitter, digg and facebook button on his page. At the very least, the facebook one tracks users even when they are logged out. He does make a good point, re developers not caring about anything hidden behind the scenes. Good to see them being named and shamed.

"Quite funny from a chap who has google+, twitter, digg and facebook button on his page." He appears to be using Blogger. Are those buttons forced on everyone using Blogger or is that something he would have added himself?

No, blogger doesn't add that stuff by default. You can add it to a template, or find a template that already has it.

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#12

Post by sp332 »

RexRollman wrote: post #7
seclorum wrote: post #3

As a developer, I am guilty of using flurry too much. But its just so damned useful to be seeing what your users are up to with your app! I am addicted to checking my flurry console every day and watching the event logs, looking at session lengths.. even the world map of users is something I can look at longingly every morning.

Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

I don't think it's that unusual. Woopra lets you see your users in real-time, and even start chats with them as they browse your site. http://www.woopra.com/features/live-map/

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#14

Post by maukdaddy »

gyardley wrote: post #13

I wish I could force this guy and his ilk to forever use the unoptimized first version of every product that benefits from user analytics.

The point is that you can utilize user analytics without cross-correlating every damn aspect of my life and buying habits.

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#15

Post by magicseth »

The first part of this article is all about apps doing unnecessarily large network requests. The lack of gzip, optimized images, and redundant requests are more a sign of developers having not enough time or knowledge in the area of bandwidth optimization.

The second half of the article is much more interesting with a discussion of the horrible security practices in apps (or lack thereof). It is an indichtment of Facebook, flurry, and any other app that is leaking data (including passwords) without the user's permission.

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#16

Post by joelhaasnoot »

LiveTheDream wrote: post #10
pooriaazimi wrote: post #4

Thankfully iOS 5 does not allow UDID sharing between different apps: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/19/ios-5-deprecates-udid-as-iden...

> iOS 5 does not allow UDID sharing From the linked article: > First off, let's clear up what it means for Apple to 'deprecate' this identifier. A deprecated function or software component is not yanked out immediately; it's simply been flagged by the developer of the platform (or app, command line tool, what have you) as something that will be going away in the future, eventually.

Whatever happened to always turning on the IDE flag for "Treat warnings as errors"

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#17

Post by rufibarbatus »

saddino wrote: post #9
RexRollman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

s/users/anonymous devices/

One sees small bits of information every now pop into HN about how they might not be as anonymous as expected, to put it mildly, but it would be nice to have an overview of how trackable your vanilla smartphone is or isn't.

My intuition right now is that they're pseudonymous at best, and that the average user is very quick to provide credentials that would associate the pseudonym to their actual names and other personal info.

Can anyone provide an assessment (or better yet, a link to one) on just how anonymous those anonymous devices are?

(@saddino: this response is not directed at you partly because I'm not sure whether you're being technical or sarcastic — or both.)

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#18

Post by mootothemax »

RexRollman wrote: post #7
seclorum wrote: post #3

As a developer, I am guilty of using flurry too much. But its just so damned useful to be seeing what your users are up to with your app! I am addicted to checking my flurry console every day and watching the event logs, looking at session lengths.. even the world map of users is something I can look at longingly every morning.

Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

What's the difference between that and installing Google Analytics on your website?

Re: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

#19

Post by gyardley »

maukdaddy wrote: post #14
gyardley wrote: post #13

I wish I could force this guy and his ilk to forever use the unoptimized first version of every product that benefits from user analytics.

The point is that you can utilize user analytics without cross-correlating every damn aspect of my life and buying habits.

Of course I could. I could do a lot of other things that wouldn't be as effective, too.

When you use something for free that requires money to produce and maintain, of course every damn aspect of your life and buying habits is going to be cross-correlated, as long as this is legal and profitable in aggregate. (Often it isn't profitable. People dramatically overestimate how interesting and/or valuable they are.)

Seriously, you've been handed something for free and I don't look like Santa Claus. What'd you expect?

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