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Introducing Cover

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Re: Introducing Cover

#31

Post by true_religion »

grimtrigger wrote: post #23
tene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

Just because its fun to play "worst case scenario"... An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada

Aren't there laws in place about selling/sharing individualized personal information?

If not, then I think there should be so apps that simply want to use aggregated data will be allowed and will be guaranteed to be safe.

Re: Introducing Cover

#32

Post by k-mcgrady »

grimtrigger wrote: post #23
tene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

Just because its fun to play "worst case scenario"... An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada

>> "An actuary finds a link between late night cell phone usage and mental illness X. They determine that given your cell phone usage pattern, you have an 50% chance of illness X. Such information is sold to insurance companies, employment background check companies, yada yada"

What scares me about this is that there is a place in the world having an illness affects your employment prospects and costs you money (insurance).

Re: Introducing Cover

#33

Post by jqueryin »

mortenjorck wrote: post #10
fidotron wrote: post #5

This is a neat idea, however, I fail to see either why it requires so much funding ($1.7m according to TechCrunch) or any server backend whatsoever.

The real product here is almost certainly an analytics service. From Cover's privacy policy at https://www.coverscreen.com/privacy : Cover records the following items: The list of apps installed on your phone, including which apps are on your homescreen and dock The number of times you run an app, including the time and place where you ran it (specifically, the cell tower or wifi network you were connected to, or tha…

I'd suggest that a portion of the funding go towards a re-write of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm not one to mess with having holes in legal documents that could later bite me in the ass.

It's glaringly obvious they did not hire a lawyer to write their Privacy Policy or Terms of Service. I understand they mention "human readable" in the beginning of the Privacy Policy, but does this really hold up in court? In the Terms of Service, they make mention to "You" as opposed to "Client", "Customer", etc, with no definition.

Re: Introducing Cover

#34

Post by tene »

brymaster wrote: post #26
tene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.

Right, and... what would the harm be there? Is that just a fundamental value for you?

Re: Introducing Cover

#35

Post by bovermyer »

brymaster wrote: post #26
tene wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's say your worst fears are true, and it's sending up a log of every app you use. What happens then? What's the harm? I'm not being rhetorical, I really don't follow what the fear is here. I can't imagine how my life would be any different if some company knows that I launched chrome at 12:22, then hangouts at 12:30, then some half-assed game at 12:35.

When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.

This is true. And... if you're on the Internet, I'm sorry, but you can have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That includes owning a smartphone.

Re: Introducing Cover

#36

Post by fbnt »

fidotron wrote: post #5

This is a neat idea, however, I fail to see either why it requires so much funding ($1.7m according to TechCrunch) or any server backend whatsoever.

I could build you one of those without privacy intrusion, and add the ability to switch from home/work/car automatically using GPS.

I'd be happy with 1% of what they raised , anyone interested? :(

Re: Introducing Cover

#37

Post by brymaster »

tene wrote: post #34
brymaster wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we give up all privacy, suddenly it no longer exists.

Right, and... what would the harm be there? Is that just a fundamental value for you?

> Right, and... what would the harm be there?

That's a little too obvious to state so I won't pretend there's people here that haven't figured that out yet for the sake of overly-pedantic or naive arguing. You're moving into "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" territory.

> Is that just a fundamental value for you?

Yep. It's in my country's constitution and protected under various laws.

Re: Introducing Cover

#38

Post by rcthompson »

On a semi-related topic, is it really possible for an app to properly replace the Android lockscreen? I haven't found any way to do it. As far as I can tell, all the "lock screen" apps use a hack where they disable the stock lock screen and then emulate a lock screen by asking you to make the lockscreen app your default home screen and then launching your "real" home screen when you "unlock" them. I've seen it said that they do this because it isn't truly possible to replace the lock screen. The problem is, of course, that this hack sometimes doesn't work or produces weird results often enough to discourage me from using any custom lock screen.

Re: Introducing Cover

#39

Post by jw_ »

cik wrote: post #11

This terrifies me. There's an instant problem of paranoia, and trust here. I would never be okay with the idea of an application monitoring what I'm doing, in order to reorder itself. Mind you, I say all this without knowing if it requests network access. How do I know you're not sending my usage patterns upstream to CoverCorp? How do I know that you're not reading the Android Music Provider database, and sharing my…

The privacy policy linked upthread suggests that they intend to upload very detailed information about your location and usage.

Re: Introducing Cover

#40

Post by lnanek2 »

rcthompson wrote: post #38

On a semi-related topic, is it really possible for an app to properly replace the Android lockscreen? I haven't found any way to do it. As far as I can tell, all the "lock screen" apps use a hack where they disable the stock lock screen and then emulate a lock screen by asking you to make the lockscreen app your default home screen and then launching your "real" home screen when you "unlock" them. I've seen it said t…

There are some other alternatives. HTC had a lockscreen API for a while. Similarly, generic Android has started supporting widgets on the lock screen, basically. One of the evangelists even has a popular widget lockscreen with extensions called DashClock that many people are writing for.

Lastly, I haven't tried it, but I suspect replacing the Android Launcher would also let you do it. This is the method Facebook used for putting their talking heads in every app.

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