Mastodawn

Sync tracking attempts

https://lemmy.world/post/2551067

Sync tracking attempts - Lemmy.world

So this seems like a pretty intense level of tracking. Certainly much more than any of the other lemmy apps I have tried. I get advertisements, totally fine with them earning money, but it took me by surpise. If I look at the privacy policy, it certainly does not indicate to me this level of monitoring. For the record, I am not implying deception on the devs part at all, I am sure things are spelled our correctly in the privacy policy. Just wasn’t sure everone was aware of the extent. Cheers!

Countmacula Aug 2, 2023

Are those exactly what it’s tracking or what it’s “known” to track?

Former? Bad

Latter? This post is misrepresenting at best and downright malicious at worst.

Kertain Aug 2, 2023

Hello! Promise no malice intended.

I was just playing around with the app and noticed duckduck go blocking a ton of new tracking attempts.

I can only go by what was stated in the app as “attempts” hence my post.

Someone who understand how duckduckgos tracking blocker work might know better however. Perhaps you are 100% right.

Countmacula Aug 2, 2023

I think that it’s just good for others to know it probably isn’t tracking all that but few go past the headline.

I have no skin in this game. Hell I have an iPhone 14 pro.

Kerrigor Aug 3, 2023

Each of those is for a valid feature of the app, and you can disable those you don't like.

This entire post is a thinly veiled scare tactic. "well I'm not saying it's a problem, but look what they're doing!! I'm just asking questions here" kind of bullshit

utopianrevolt Aug 3, 2023

Seems more like you’re projecting a reality that isn’t the case. Moreso projecting a weird defensive attitude over a social media application when people are, understandably, concerned about their data privacy. I think we should keep this type of attitude over on the Reddit side.

NevermindNoMind Aug 3, 2023

I read this as “Google attempted to track you 28 times. We don’t know specifically what they were after, but Google is known (who is doing the knowing I don’t know) to track the following information.” So basically it’s saying Google was definitely trying to get your info, and here’s a list of what they might have been after. But it’s not proof of what was actually tracked.

dannoffs Aug 3, 2023

You read it that way because that’s what is says.

DTFpanda Aug 2, 2023

How are you viewing tracking attempts, is it an app?

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Hello, yes duckduckgo has an app that turned on a blocker to try to strip and block tracking attempts. I keep it running and it seems to catch alot.

What raised my eyebrow was it started alerting on a lot of new tracking attempts for Sync. I mean alot of android apps do the same thing this isn’t just for Sync so it’s not doing anything unique there. It was also the laundry list of info points that seemed off.

Figured I would post and see if anyone else has seen the same.

I plan on buying the app, I assume those attempts will go away without the ads.

Chozo Aug 3, 2023

The DDG app is misleading with Lemmy apps, because it will also trigger off of trackers from links you click on. So if you open a news article posted on Lemmy, and that article has trackers, then DDG can't tell the difference and thinks your Lemmy client is the one running the trackers.

Edit: also:

I plan on buying the app, I assume those attempts will go away without the ads.

This is correct, the developer says that the ad framework will not initialize if you have a license to the app.

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Good to know thank you. :)

To be fair I had just opened sync, played around with how it looked and scrolled a bit when I noticed this.

I don’t recall clicking many links, but I could have certainly. Who knows just by looking at thumbnails soemthing could have been passed through?

kadu Aug 3, 2023

This is misleading. You’re looking at a list of what Google’s Analytics can track, not what Sync is specifically using it for.

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Cheers mate The track blocker says “attempts” pretty clearly I wasn’t trying to mislead

Screenshot-20230802-185229-Duck-Duck-Go

ImgBB

kadu Aug 3, 2023

Please do not make bold claims about mechanisms you do not understand, specially under accusatory pretenses.

DuckDuckGo showing “attempts” means that the app tried to resolve Google’s Analytics server and was blocked by DuckDuckGo. That’s it. The list itself is application agnostic and irrelevant - borderline fearmongering to make users more scared and willing to use the blocker, but that’s besides the point.

As I’ve explained in the previous comment, DuckDuckGo can not intercept nor detect the actual data behind these requests, and as such, it can not differentiate between any item on that list - which means you can not claim Sync is collecting this data. Which is why you noticed the privacy policy doesn’t mention any of those things - because they’re not being tracked.

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Fair enought and thanks for that info.

I was mostly posting to get community feedback and thoughts, so I shared what I came across. Figured people out there would know way more about this the I.

utopianrevolt Aug 3, 2023

This seems completely over-the-top when the person is literally trying to have a discussion about something that they have admitted to not knowing much about. “Attempts” is the terminology being used by the DDG app, which explains why OP is using the same wording.

This whole thread has a weird, defensive and “reinforce my purchase” type of vibe. LJDawson has been pretty transparent about this and has worked hard on the app, so I sorta get it, but come on.

“In fact, misleading is putting it lightly.”

How about we all calm down before starting to throw personal accusations out there?

kadu Aug 3, 2023

I don’t have to interpret his post in good faith when the title isn’t a question or invitation for discussion, it’s a direct claim that Sync attempted to collect this data.

Then, the body directly claims that the data collection is fairly large and that the privacy policy didn’t directly mention all these categories being collected, once again suggesting the app is indeed collecting everything.

It’s one thing to see this, get scared and ask if it’s true. It’s a whole different thing to make a bold accusatory post. I’ve seen Reddit backlash from false posts like these claiming secret data collection go nuclear before the developer even wake up the next morning to have a chance at explaining things, and his post had over 30 upvotes in mere minutes after being made - during the day the app launched publicly.

throw personal accusations

What personal accusations? Please quote the exact portion of any of my comments that contain any personal information or claim about OP. “Misleading” means what it means - it’s an impersonal word.

Ithronmorn Aug 3, 2023

Thank you for spelling it out so clearly. I’ve seen the screenshot from DDG a few times today but I didn’t know how the underlying mechanics of it worked. Now I even notice at the top it says “known to collect:”.

kadu Aug 3, 2023

Yep! And please keep in mind I’m not saying the app is bad. I personally use a different, but similar in functionality, DNS blocker.

Their wording though… it’s definitely designed to scare users a bit.

gt5 Aug 3, 2023

Are you able to see what domains were blocked? Other posters have suggested that these attempts are blocked by DNS. If we could see the domains that were queried, we could have a better understanding of what’s being attempted here.

My speculation would be that we would see google owned domains, but I don’t know

RobMyBot Aug 3, 2023

It’s still misleading. It doesn’t say what information was attempted to be gathered those 28 times. It may very well have been 28 attempts to collect the same exact “Device orientation” over and over again (and it most likely is something simple like that).

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Correct! I just updated title and added this info to the top of my post.

Zpiritual Aug 3, 2023

It’s still not a listing of sync attempts only what google analytics is known to collect. If you bothered to count the items you’d have noticed It’s 33 items list yet only 28 attempts were made.

thantik Aug 3, 2023

If Sync is using any kind of advertising platform (Google…) – then this is likely just the things that their Advertising add-in for the app probably wants to track. Highly doubt it’s the app itself.

Tangent5280 Aug 3, 2023

Wait what do you mean, tracking on the back end? Can you point me to any articles on the same?

thantik Aug 3, 2023

www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/…/428448

They don’t need cookies and typical browser-based tracking in order gain information about you.

Is DuckDuckGo as Private as It Claims? Turns Out, Not So Much.

DuckDuckGo search browser claims it doesn't track your web activity like other search engines, however, new reports state otherwise. See here for details.

Entrepreneur

andysteakfries Aug 3, 2023

Remove ads, problem solved.

utopianrevolt Aug 3, 2023

For those who don’t want to pay to remove ads, there’s always some pretty great open-source alternatives. Sync is the only app so far to truly care about foldable phones and I wanted to support the dev, so I paid to remove ads but I understand why others might be apprehensive.

redcalcium Aug 3, 2023

AFAIK there will be an option to remove ads completely using revanced manager soon, but if you can afford to support the dev by paying for it, it’s better to do so instead.

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

I agree if you like the app, support the dev by paying for it. Which after playing around with it more I belive I will be doing.

I do feel bad if DDG blocker is stopping his ads from reporting in, thus stopping his source of income. Definitely not my intention.

WarmSoda Aug 3, 2023

Dont use an app that has ads, problem solved.

(Thankfully it’s a multiple choice quiz)

tirestarter Aug 3, 2023

“Known to collect” is going to be vastly different from what’s actually being collected. It’s more realistically just serving ads, getting some crash/reporting. But because it’s all under Google, it’s going to show up as Google. DDG/other blockers won’t know the difference.

thegoodandthebad Aug 3, 2023

There’s still time to delete this.

limecool Aug 3, 2023

Here’s the URL to the dev’s privacy policy as listed on the Play Store. It should give a better idea of what he actually does: www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/28463889

Privacy Policy of Sync for Lemmy

This Application collects some Personal Data from its Users.

iubenda

ViktorShahter Aug 3, 2023

I don’t wanna take part into all that discussion I’m more interested in why there’s so much hype around this app. It’s beautiful and stuff but not open-source and I bet there’s no gamechanging features.

ubermeisters Aug 3, 2023

Because people are simple. Spez bad, so someone has to be good. The dev of sync is the “good guy” to a lot of reddit users, so now he’s their Jesus so to speak.

Earl Turlet Aug 3, 2023

It’s a very polished experience. Not easy to explain, but it has a lot of knobs and you can get it to behave exactly like how you want. It feels like it’s not even there at that point.

theyawner Aug 3, 2023

To me it’s how it focuses more on the UX - how content is presented and how you navigate and interact with it.

southsamurai Aug 3, 2023

You do know you can edit titles, right?

You can change it to reflect the reality of what’s going on. You can edit the body in the post further, to reflect what you’ve learned since posting.

Kertain Aug 3, 2023

Nope I didn’t! But now I do. Thanks friend :)

Updated title and added an edit to the top to state what I think was the salient info discussed.