Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day • Hacker News Board

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#91

Post by icebraining » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #83

gleenn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your metaphor is pretty harsh but I agree with your sentiment. All these mobile apps need more granular security features, which Google almost released, and the EFF was dying for, but then Google quickly retracted it. Very unfortunate. A keyboard does not need to know your location. Nor do half of the damn apps in my phone. It should be easy to make your phone lie to the app and tell it where ever you want. Same with…

"A keyboard does not need to know your location. Nor do half of the damn apps in my phone. It should be easy to make your phone lie to the app and tell it where ever you want. Same with my contacts." Free app, good app, private app. Pick two; someone has to pay for the work.

Swype is paid.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#92

Post by scep12 » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

huxley wrote: post #52

scep12 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "App Ops" settings that they accidentally released seems evident enough that the feature is forthcoming. Am I missing something?

No it just means that there is permissions infrastructure not that they intend to make it available. What would show Google working actively would be to modify APIs or provide solid guidelines for developers to ensure that arbitrarily closed permissions didn't cause an app to crash or freeze. Making app privacy a high priority for future Android development would be clearly working towards it. Having a hidden privacy…

That's fair. I thought it seemed too polished to be an internal debugging tool, but perhaps I'm being overly optimistic. I guess we'll see.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#93

Post by pessimizer » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #47

userbinator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't Google want users to have such powerful control over their devices? It's always explained like this: Because it's "simpler." Because "things will break if the user does something wrong." Because "the average user won't need it." Those same poor excuses have been responsible for so much loss of privacy and freedom elsewhere, not just by Google. To me, they're deliberately preventing users from having too…

That's exactly the reason, and it's more legitimate than you give it credit for. I can foresee numerous situations where users disable location tracking (in the name of saving battery) without realising the effect it will have (rendering a location-based app useless). A nice middle ground would be to keep App Ops, but hidden away somewhere, much like the Developer Tools are.

>users disable location tracking (in the name of saving battery) without realising the effect it will have (rendering a location-based app useless).

If you can assume that location data would be available, you can also assume that users will be sentient.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#94

Post by jljljl » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:40 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #81

madeofpalk wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is about the easiest change for developers to accommodate. All they need to do is handle one exception. But apps didnt have to handle that exception before. If permissions are rejected, it should just return empty data.

Random dummy data would be even better - if you return blank, you give the app a way to know that it's being blocked. Apps are guests in the user's back yard, not the other way around.

How do you provide random dummy data for a Contact List permission without a) running the risk of crashing the app, or b) making it obvious to the app that it's receiving dummy data?

Is android supposed to return a well structured list of fake names and emails? Would instagram show me a list of made up names and user id's if I faked my contacts?

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#95

Post by nitrogen » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:43 PM UTC

fooqux wrote: post #58

Pxtl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really disappoints me is the terrible placement Google uses for privacy features in the Play store. They're really hidden away instead of being prominent searchable fields. Microsoft of all companies does far better with their Windows Store.

I would agree with you except for the part where they force you to see them before you're allowed to even install an app. It's hard to get much less hidden than that.

It's not particularly useful if the permissions aren't displayed on lists and aren't searchable. The only option now is a brute force search by hand, clicking Install on each app in a category until you find a version of 2048 that doesn't demand SD card, camera, and full net access...

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#96

Post by micampe » Mon, May 05, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

sikhnerd wrote: post #7

Every time I see something like this come up, it really makes me wonder how many other apps out there are doing the same thing and getting away with it. Unless you root your phone and use something like the mentioned android firewall, or go whole-hog and install Cyanogenmod, what chance do you have to guard against this? I assume ios users are likely in the same boat, but with even less chance of recourse.

Your assumption is incorrect. On iOS you can turn on or off location (and several other permissions) for any application at any time, since day one.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#97

Post by atoponce » Mon, May 05, 2014, 4:01 PM UTC

drdaeman wrote: post #80

atoponce wrote: post #48

The Google keyboard supports swiping now, and if running 4.3, you can have the Dvorak layout as well.

Offtopic: is Dvorak layout really useful on small touchscreens? I use it on hardware keyboard, where each finger has its place - and it's great. But all my attempts to use it on phone screen only led to increase of typos, because frequently used letters are too near to each other.

I love it. I find that a lot of the swiping motion stays on the home row. But, it is a lot of back-and-forth. It would be interesting to see a mobile keyboard designed with swiping such that frequently used letters are clustered together, and less frequently used letters further away.

Meh. Having the Dvorak keyboard on my phone is also an awesome conversation piece. To each their own. :)

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#98

Post by Loughla » Mon, May 05, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #91

Loughla wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A keyboard does not need to know your location. Nor do half of the damn apps in my phone. It should be easy to make your phone lie to the app and tell it where ever you want. Same with my contacts." Free app, good app, private app. Pick two; someone has to pay for the work.

Swype is paid.

Yes, it is. And yet there are two Samsung phones in my home that come pre-loaded with it. Ergo, free.

It honestly never dawned on me that someone would pay for Swype.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#99

Post by micampe » Mon, May 05, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #87

madeofpalk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps should be able to know what permission they currently have - there's very little (if any) breach of privacy from that. I'm just talking about preventing apps from crashing if they don't handle revoked permissions properly.

Erm, no they should not. The same breach of privacy will occur when an app just re-implements the demanding of a permission. "This camera app will not run without access to your list of contacts. Enable Contact List Access and restart to proceed". If the phone is mine, then I should be able to easily set it to lie on my behalf to protect my interests.

On iOS you can disable any permission at any time for any application and it's plainly explicit in the API. I've never seen any application do what you describe.

The typical example people make is Facebook, which they assume would block you if denied your location but instead works just fine when you remove access to location, camera, photos, and contacts. I don't see why they would behave differently on Android.

Re: Swype makes almost 4000 location requests every day

#100

Post by hrjet » Mon, May 05, 2014, 4:09 PM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #63

jnbiche wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is poor user UI. I mean, in this day in age when so many people travel through different countries weekly on pleasure or business, their keyboard layout changes accordingly? That doesn't make much sense.

I don't think the keyboard changes UI - from the description it sounds like they augment the dictionary with words that other people near you are using in their vocabulary. Still, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they need to do that many location requests. Why should where I'm standing right now affect what words are in my dictionary? It's a poor proxy at best, the words that I use in my language are a product of…

> Why should where I'm standing right now affect what words are in my dictionary?

Since Swype has do to a lot of inference from your gestures, it seems reasonable that it may perform better when inferring proper names with some location awareness.

For example, if I am in a particular city, and wanted to type the name of a street where I am.

I am not saying that's a feature I find compelling; it does sound reasonable though. Letting the user chose this behavior (and the permission), would be best.