this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Will they be now on FDroid? I think only one Proton app is there and it's a little bit sad.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Proton VPN and proton pass

IRRC they even removed all telemetry from pass but not VPN.

They should definitely push drive and calendar there too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Why the fuck does their VPN have telemetry?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Telemetry is not bad in itself. It can be used for bug/crash reports, or usage statistics, without tracking or personal data collection.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Do you want good products? That happens through telemetry. Simple as that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm curious, any advice on that? How does one do "good" telemetry? I'm the first to complain about Microsoft, Apple, (even worst) Google, Meta and now OpenAI collecting data to sell me stuff... but it's true that also some data is needed to get some kind of introspection in terms of usage. Developers need to understand what is actually happening with the software they develop.

Now I'm wondering specifically about 2 side :

  • how to do the data collection correctly (e.g local only, only send on crash, only send without PII, store only aggregate)
  • how to get informed consent from users (e.g off by default, UX that supports understanding of why it's done and how)

I'm genuinely glad that the mindset around privacy have changed since the last few years but I'm wondering how, when it's a genuinely positive good case (to truly make better products), to do it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Your app has a button on its front page. No one ever presses that button. With good telemetry, you will know this and remove the button. The only thing you need to know is how many times each user opens the app and how many times they tapped that button. Crash reports can include the causes of errors. Without this data the app might have that unused button there forever and crash everytime anyone taps the donate button and you wouldnt know why you arent getting any dontaions.

Telemetry is usually collected on non metered networks. Usually it is opt-out by default, set by the user in the apps settings. Personally, I'd inform the user of this and let them decice on first startup.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

It's a VPN! What did you expected? /hj