Astrid

Privacy/App Permissions

Asked by GW

I have some concerns about why Astrid needs certain permissions. Can anyone explain the rationale/features behind these?

I understand these:
Your Personal Information (read calander data, write calendar data)
   That makes sense given what the app does.
Network Communication (full internet access)
   That makes sense given the RTM integration. (Though I won't use that)

Less sure about these:
Your location (coarse (network-based) location)
Phone Calls (read phone state and identity)

I'm thinking that some of this is tied to Astrid's use of Flurry, which purports to allow developers, among other things "Improve decisions - know exactly how, where, when and by whom and application is used".

I saw the comment about ads and personal data on one of the pages. I'd rather pay for apps up front than risk apps trying to monetize my data, so I'll check back to see if a future version has less scary permissions. I don't believe there's anything malicious being done here, but I'll check back and see if there's a version that either explains its use of those settings or better-yet, doesn't have access to so much data. We all need to be careful when we think about all the personal information stored on our smart-phones...

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Tim Su
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Revision history for this message
Jon Paris (jon-todoroo) said : 		#1

Thanks for asking the question about the use of personal data in Astrid. We appreciate your concern. We are currently using Flurry to detect bugs and get a sense how the application is being used so we know which features are being used and the phone data (phone make/model/unique id) help us see which issues are happening on which phones.

We have never done third party ads in Astrid. For one week we displayed a link to an Astrid User survey. I realize that collecting any data can be a concern for some. Feel free to ask more questions or take a look at flurry and the source code to see how we are using it.

Revision history for this message
Best Tim Su (tim-todoroo) said : 		#2

Yup. I'm Astrid's lead developer, we're using Flurry to collect statistics on what exceptions users are running into in the field. Flurry uses the "read phone state" information to detect unique users to produce an accurate usage count, and it uses coarse location tracking to determine what geographic location (country / US state) users are using the application. We use this data to determine which languages to support and communities to focus our development. That's all the data that we're collecting. Technically we don't get access to the raw data - flurry aggregates it and displays overall statistics.

Now, I can't speak for Flurry or what they're doing - we evaluated a bunch of platforms and Flurry offered easy integration and a powerful platform. We are open to changing services. I appreciate your paranoia!

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GW (gwhyte) said : 		#3

Thanks Tim Su, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
GW (gwhyte) said : 		#4

Thanks to both of you for your responses. I'll look a little into Flurry and determine if I trust them as much as I feel I can trust you -- or at least enough to get me to try it out. =)

For your part, if you decide to charge for the app, I hope you'll consider making a flurry-less version for those of us sporting tinfoil hats along with our androids. I'd be more likely to pay for it with those permissions and any concern tied to Flurry removed. I make donations to the free firefox plugin "Noscript" because it lets me block some of the data collection tools in the web world that are similar to what Flurry does for android app developers - it's a premium I'm willing to pay and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Cheers!

Revision history for this message
Tnbiggs (tnbiggs) said : 		#5

Hi, I'm looking for a good to-do list, and would even pay good money.

Astrid looks like it might be a good program, but it asks for too many permissions.

Just to give you a feeling for how strongly my feelings are on this subject:
THERE'S NO WAY IN FREAKING HELL AM I GOING TO GIVE SOME PROGRAM ACCESS TO ALL MY CONTACTS AND PHONE CALL INFORMATION, ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE IS NO NEED!!!!

There are actually a lot of people who feel this way. By using Flurry or whatever other reason (excuse) to get this sometimes very personal information from us, you've basically removed all of us as potential customers. We'll just look for the next program on our list that might meet our needs. People usually just say nothing and move on, but since I believe in helping out the Android community, I'm not just writing you off, but letting you know, in the hope that good Android software companies can restore their sanity and put programs on the market that people like me are actually willing to put on their devices.

Here's hoping for the impossible (you never know, sometimes it happens)....