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An open challenge to PandoDaily

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11–20 of 72 posts

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#12
This is apples to oranges. Most users, use applications because they find about it from trusted sources. They are more interested in just using the application and moving on. Users have shown time and again that as long as the source is trusted (friends, media, overhyping blogs) then they leave it up to the company to make sure their data is private. Calling to a challenge of posting everything to public is misstating what users actually provide: a permission to take their data and keep it private versus here is my data for the rest of the world to see. There is a social contract between the user and the company that is bound by the trust that "my info will not be leaked" and looking at the history of the web I think the companies backed by competent teams take this contract very seriously.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#13

To put it another way: If your address book data was stolen and made public because of poor practices by one of your apps, you'd be pretty upset right? PandoDaily mocking that type of situation is somewhat alarming. However, if PandoDaily doesn't care about that type of scenario then go ahead and publish their address books. Otherwise, it's no laughing matter. Edit: I agree with Dave's point. They wouldn't share it b…

Thank you. That was the point of the challenge.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#14
post #6

This is a false comparison. Uploading your address book to Path is not the same as an app locally reading the contents of your clipboard and asking if you want to use that data. It's not even in the same league. And, loathe though I am to defend PandoDaily, the OP misses the point of their article. Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data.…

Sorry but I think you're missing some data here. Every app on the iPhone can upload your address book, pictures and calendar data to their servers, whether or not they have anything to do with contacts. Every app. It's worth taking a look at the trivial crap we put on our iPads and iPhones thinking they're harmless, when each of them could be leaking all our private bits everywhere.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#15
post #6

This is a false comparison. Uploading your address book to Path is not the same as an app locally reading the contents of your clipboard and asking if you want to use that data. It's not even in the same league. And, loathe though I am to defend PandoDaily, the OP misses the point of their article. Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data.…

> Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data.

Are you sure about this?

Has every Path user really reviewed Path's data security policies and deemed them satisfactory? Do Path users even have access to that information? And if they did, would most of them be in any position to evaluate it knowledgeably?

Or isn't it more likely that they trust Path because they don't know the full scope of what Path has access to? Blind trust is easier to extend to someone the less information you're trusting them with, after all.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#16
The whole point of the PD article was that you trust developers to not do these things because market forces keep them in check. If an app was abusing your privacy, it would be revoked by the marketplace (Apple, Google, BN, or Amazon) and its developer's reputation would be tarnished.

Of course, maintaining a database of sensitive information is rife with risk, and it's completely fair for journalists to point that out. However, Path, Hipster, Instagram, etc. have no intention of leaking your data. An article reminding us to give developers the benefit-of-the-doubt in these cases is not even remotely the same thing as an article defending leaking personal data.

It's therefore disingenuous of the author to suggest that reminding people to be civil in the ways they react to these situations implies that we should all be comfortable publicly posting our personal rolodexes.

Someone else's contact information is not your IP to divulge; however, that doesn't mean we need to start a witch-hunt about it.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#17
So, since every single application in your computer can access all of the same data and do whatever they please, has had that ability since forever and we see that as an advantage (see problems with adding sandboxing on the Mac), why are we so concerned about it on our phones and completely ignore the issues otherwise?

The only reason I could come up with is that on the phone we have apps that actually use that data, social networks of various fashions, while on our computers we mostly use apps to do stuff and social networks stay in the browser.

Should we be asking OS vendors to add those checks to our computers too?

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#18

"When you said X, you probably meant Y. But I bet you don't believe Y, thus you were lying about X." How many pointless arguments take this form? He should articulate why he considers the situations comparable, so the Pando people have something to disagree with.

This is a little abstract for me, so I'm not sure I understand the objection. Their point is that we are being silly for caring where our personal data goes. If we're being silly, here's an easy way to prove it. Show us how careless you are with your own personal data. If there's a limit, something you won't do to show how casual you are about it, then we found something that we agree on. My belief is they haven't th…

The article referenced an app accessing the clipboard (x) and your challenge involved uploading all of one's contact information and pictures (y).

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#19
post #6

This is a false comparison. Uploading your address book to Path is not the same as an app locally reading the contents of your clipboard and asking if you want to use that data. It's not even in the same league. And, loathe though I am to defend PandoDaily, the OP misses the point of their article. Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data.…

> Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data. Are you sure about this? Has every Path user really reviewed Path's data security policies and deemed them satisfactory? Do Path users even have access to that information? And if they did, would most of them be in any position to evaluate it knowledgeably? Or isn't it more likely that they trust…

I didn't read all the disclosure documents on my mortgage, but I bought the house anyway.

I'm not saying Path is right for what they did, but neither do I think it's the same as publishing everything where identity thieves can get at it. Such black & white thinking is of little use in creating policy.

Re: An open challenge to PandoDaily

#20

The whole point of the PD article was that you trust developers to not do these things because market forces keep them in check. If an app was abusing your privacy, it would be revoked by the marketplace (Apple, Google, BN, or Amazon) and its developer's reputation would be tarnished. Of course, maintaining a database of sensitive information is rife with risk, and it's completely fair for journalists to point that o…

There are hundreds of thousands of apps. Not all of them have reps that can be tarnished.
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