Christopher HamiltonI just cannot think of any good reasons for a chat app to request access to your credit score, medical records, fitness data, web browsing history, sexual orientation, text messages, etc.
Yet #Threads does and it is fucking gross
Pierre Bourdon@39digits it's not "requesting access" - it's saying that (in some unstated situations) the app *may* collect that information.
Example of such situation: a non-e2ee chat with server side history. The user might be talking about their financials, or their health, or ... and the company needs to collect and store it. GDPR-wise they can probably even do that without explicit consent because it's legitimate interest.
@delroth Am I misreading the Google docs on what Optional means under the Data Handling section? Genuinely curious here.
They say "You can declare that your app collects certain data optionally only if all users – regardless of device or region – can either optionally provide information, opt out or opt in to have the data collected."
I took "either" to mean you either opt-in or opt-out but you have to be given the choice 😅
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10787469
@39digits in the example I cited this would be "optionally provide the information" since the users are themselves writing it in the chat box (they don't have to talk about financials/health/...). Similarly with photos/videos/audio recordings, which presumably would only get collected when they get uploaded to be shared with others.
@delroth I have to admit that for me, Google's use of the word "either" implied a choice between two things. Their placement of the "or" in their guidance document led to my misinterpretation.
I would HOPE any form of private chat is encrypted and the public posts are the only way such information could be optionally provided. But I currently live in a country debating how to add backdoors to encrypted chats 🥹 🙃 Wild times for data privacy.
@39digits it does seem like they're missing an Oxford comma in that "either ... or".
FWIW I said "chat" because that's what your initial post used, but everything would apply the exact same way for data that is collected to be more widely reshared - let's say, to followers or publicly on a Twitter clone. And there E2EE isn't a realistic option anyway.