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Seems like everyone is going out of their way to tell us how much they "value" our privacy. The value they place on it wouldnt even get a burp from an atm machine
In fairness, I've had to write a privacy policy due to store restrictions. It boiled down to "everything stays on your phone. I don't collect your data, I don't want your data, I don't even have a backend server that could be collecting your data. If you find my app sending telemetry of any kind, please tell me immediately because that should not be happening"
That being said, this doesn't exactly inspire confidence
A car is parked at the far end of the street. Hidden by the shadow of an old elm, and a reflection of the blue sky on the windshield, an agent patiently writes out his notes:
8:15 am A leaves house on foot
8:17 am B arrives driving and parks car (license plate: GYX 455), walks away
8:40 am B arrives, enters house
9:20 am A arrives on foot, leaves in car
This is called a stakeout. A form of surveillance.
IT folks will also recognize this as analytics data. You can almost see the json: timestamp, event name, metadata
As analytics data gets tagged to individuals, it becomes targeted surveillance.
Regular analytics is like a surveillance camera: you just see each person in a snapshot, all in the same place. You’re seeing the story of the place. Like a 7-Eleven, tracking when its customers come to decide when to make the coffee.
But modern analytics is more and more all the events about a person or cluster of people. That’s a lot more like the FBI following Hemingway, keeping a log of all his activities to build a profile.
I've published a simillar app to the play store (a calculator for keeping track of your stats in a game) and it got denied because it had no privacy policy, and I had to add one. Maybe that's why they need to include it?
My Xiaomi Redmi 11 keeps telling me the Calculator can't use the network (why?) and keeps asking me to accept the privacy policy.
Also the app wallpaper - the one that changes the locked screen background image (important complex stuff /s) - also keeps asking me to accept the privacy policy.
And, as far as my reading of the policy goes, these privacy policies are just the one, it's not a different one for each app.
They are just promising not to share with the government or any private entity that you are the idiot who had to use a calculator to find half of 17, just in case you were worried about someone finding out.