Saturday, December 11, 2010

A note on privacy and tracking software

How many people use Monal? A lot. Thousands and thousands of people all over the world in all sorts of random places (Hello, Antarctica!). However, all I know is what the Apple download/upload  counter shows and what people tell me in emails.  Much the same way I have objections to ads in my software, I do not like the "metrics" software and libraries that are out there. Unlike many other iOS apps, Monal does not contain and will never contain user tracking software. Consider this app your refuge from ads, trackers and middle man servers.

2 comments:

  1. Is there an easy way to determine whether an iOS app contains tracking software?

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  2. There is no simple way. There are so many different ways of doing it. The most obvious is anything with ads is tracking you in some way. For example, it might know your GPS location and send that to get more targeted ads. This is why it is good practice to say no to allowing access to location unless you actually have a need for it.

    There are so many ways a program will phone home that its really not possible to know what it is doing with your data short of connecting to a wifi network at home and watching the traffic on another computer

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