POSTED BY

Joel Johnson

AT 11:07 AM
Tuesday April 14, 2009

Politics • Software

greg yardley • pinch media

Pinch Media's Greg Yardley responds to our comments about iPhone stats tracking

I really enjoyed the response Greg Yardly, Co-Founder of iPhone stats tracking package developer Pinch Media, gave in response to my link to a story about what sort of data Pinch Media collects from iPhone users for its clients. (Reproduced in part here, but you should really read the whole thing):

I didn't consent to any of the tracking Boing Boing does - there's no terms of service or privacy policy that pops up on first entry. Even if there *was*, by the time I got here, it'd be too late. If we went by the first commenter's standards, Boing Boing's running eleven different pieces of spyware.

Every single person who installs an iPhone application consents to data collection in advance - it's right there in the default EULA Apple's provided so developers don't have to hire lawyers before publishing something. So unlike Boing Boing, the developer actually has gotten your consent beforehand.

...

Analytics provide a useful function - they help keep costs low by allowing developers and content providers to optimize. Boing Boing's use of eleven different trackers - while a little on the high side - are no different from a developer's use of Pinch Media. Without them, Boing Boing would make a lot less money and have a lot less resources devoted to spreading hypocritical, misleading FUD.

...

Oh, and for the commenter that suggested a lawsuit could produce detailed information on a user's movements - you can't subpoena what we don't store, so the best you're going to get is nearest city. Try the carriers, they're much more likely to share.

Greg Yardley
Co-Founder, Pinch Media

I can understand Yardley's frustration as he goes around the web defending his company. That can't make for a fun Tuesday morning. I'm glad he's willing to engage the issue head-on.

And as far as Boing Boing's tracking and analytics goes, I can't really argue against his general point. It's useful for me as a writer and small businessman to have some basic stats (tracking pageviews to understand what sort of articles readers find compelling, for instance), and I think most people understand that a baseline of metrics is par for the course on commercial sites, but I hate the amount of tracking the comes out of the ad networks, too, and it only seems to be getting worse. There's rarely more perfidious Javascript than that coded by an ad network programmer.

But there's one difference between web-based tracking and the sort of analytics that Pinch Media gathers on the iPhone: it's pretty simple to figure out what stats tracking occurs between a web site and a browser on a computer, as Yardley shows; it's much more difficult to discern—or even be aware of—tracking that occurs in a closed system like the iPhone. And it's not FUD to point it out so users can make their own decision.

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8 Comments

Anonymous Anonymous

#1 – 11:58 AM April 14, 2009

Hoisted on your own petard, there Joel!

Brandon West

#2 – 12:04 PM April 14, 2009

For us gathered here in geekdom, it's trivial to see what information our browser is sending. But I'd wager that most of the people out there on the internet don't know how to do it.

The closed system is at fault. Let's not blame the apps for the faults of the closed system that we knowingly use.

Anonymous Anonymous

#3 – 12:06 PM April 14, 2009

So, basically, it's Apple that's to blame. Good, all the more reason to jailbreak or get a Palm Pre.

bardfinn

#4 – 2:24 PM April 14, 2009

ip route cough.cough.cough.cough 255.255.255.0 Null0

repeat this on the internal interface of every edge device.

bardfinn

#5 – 2:28 PM April 14, 2009

And don't forget to update the BGP Egress filter and add this route to the no-export community. We wouldn't want this to be advertised.

Anonymous Anonymous

#6 – 9:32 PM April 14, 2009

I am very unimpressed by Greg's answer.

First, the data Pinch media is collecting are substantially more intrusive. UUID, hardware and OS versions, and location? Much more serious than IP and some(at times questionably accurate) platform information.

Second, on the web, it is fairly simple to opt-out by various simple technical means: cookie and flash object blocking, adblocking, modified hosts files, and the like. On a phone, not so much.

Third, the "default EULA is consent, oh I'm so virtuous" stuff is nonsense. Shoving weasel words into bland boilerplate is, in practice, meaningless.

He can take is injured innocence and go whistle. If you want to be an ads and spyware monger, don't expect respect.

Anonymous Anonymous

#7 – 1:51 PM April 24, 2009

Greg's "you do it too" response is no response at all.

I encourage all readers to contact pinch media and ask them:

1. How they can Opt Out from having their UUID and other information sent to Pinch Media

2. How to find out what applications currently do this, for those who wish to avoid it.

Here is their contact form:
http://www.pinchmedia.com/contact/

They have not responded to my requests.


Anonymous Anonymous

#8 – 2:34 PM July 28, 2009

its not unreasonable for developers to know what popular options/features are within their products, but including information like each phone ID is ridiculous. and i think that the major point people are complaining about is that this sort of information acquisition forces people to submit, and never giving a choice.
as users we are supposed to trust that an app developer will not misuse data collection but we can never be sure for certain nor can we guarantee that the dev can be hacked into from a third party source.
and based on what is happening with spy-ware from other sources it is only reasonable that users be skeptical and cautious, which brings us back to Pinch which expects users to bend over backwards because they have made assurances that data wont be misused... so if pinch is honest and doesn't misrepresent its behavior (selling our information indiscriminately)then they should always allow people to not participate in their data collection.

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