Think Palm and iPhone ‘Spyware’ is Scary? Try Google Android

20Aug09

Lions, Tigers, and Spyware on Phones, Oh My!

Mobile spyware is the focus of the tech media’s latest frenzy. It started when a hacker discovered that the Pre sends back location data about users to Palm.  Next, a blogger ‘discovered’ that certain iPhone apps also phone home.  The frenzy came to a head when ReadWriteWeb published Dear iPhone Users: Your Apps are Spying on You.

(from www.flickr.com/photos/gerlos/3119891607/)

(from www.flickr.com/photos/gerlos/3119891607/)

This article focused on the NYC-based iPhone Analytics company Pinch Media. The issue? Pinch Media’s software allows developers to learn a lot about their users: Apps with geolocation features can return information about the location of their users. Apps using Facebook Connect can even return demographic information (gender and age) about their users.

Of course, there’s no personally identifiable information here. It’s all aggregate anonymous information — and this has been Pinch Media’s response to the issue. Tracking anonymous information for benign purposes is analytics — not spyware. At the end of the day, developers simply don’t know all that much about their individual users. It’s not like they can identify them by name, right? RIGHT?

Well, um, on that note… we know the full name and location of each and every Android user with our app.

How?!  Did we build in some sneaky spyware into Exit Strategy NYC?

Nope.  Google tells us. This information is part of the Google checkout process behind android app purchases.  Each app download contains the full name of the user:

androidpurchases

Clicking on the order number reveals a more detailed page containing the billing city and zip code of the user:

androidpersonalinformation

Creepy?  Absolutely.  A google/facebook/linkedin search can reveal incredibly detailed information about every android user with our app. Furthermore, this information is pushed on us — I certainly didn’t choose to see this detail about our users!

Seeing this level of user information displayed was extremely alarming at first. But when you think about it, it’s really not that surprising. Google Android purchases are processed through Google Checkout — the same system that applies to e-commerce transactions.  Certainly I would need to know my customers’ personal information if I were shipping a physical product.  Should digital purchases be any different?

Filed under: Analysis, Apple, Pinch Media, Platforms, ecommerce, media, nextNY, questionable conduct   |  Comments
  • nexusoneforum
    If a customer purchased this from you directly you'd have the same information. I don't see it as being creepy either.
  • managercommunication
    Do no evil is sometimes not so easy.
  • Thanks for all the comments folks -- interesting to see that most people don't see the unexpected transmission of personal information surprising when purchasing an app.

    The point of this post was to make people think about the current fear mongering around spyware on mobile phones. The media makes it out to be like the developers are watching you and know everything about you based on analytics. But on iPhone and Palm, they know very little about their users -- just vague anonymous information. But on Android, they DO KNOW everything about -- developers are given the names and practically the addresses of all its users and combined with the location data that's passed back, there are seriously scary privacy implications.

    I don't think most app purchasers on android realize that their personal information is being sent to the developer. That fact certainly surprised me and led to this post.
  • Jake
    > I don't think most app purchasers on android realize that their personal information is being sent to the developer.

    Yes, we do. This is COMPLETELY normal. It allows us as customers to get things like customer support, upgrades, and benefits. In fact, I more surprised to learn that iPHone app developers do NOT get this information.

    Seriously, wtf?
  • someguy
    agree with other folks here, if you're charging for an app, you would expect the full name of the persona purchasing. just standard ecommerce. nothing big brother.
  • zack
    You are being ridiculous. The people who buy your application are your customers. You need this information just as any service needs it - To provide support to the people who have given you money if they have issues, and to protect yourself if they attempt to do a charge back or whatever.
  • Physical products don't send back geographic locational data.
  • ashish
    Can you connect a full name and location? That's where it gets creepy.

    If you can correlate the location of an app user and a full name, I think that might create a dangerous situation if the information fell into the wrong person's hands.
  • Even when charging people for digital products, you generally want a billing address. I don't think there's anything creepy here.
  • Nothing creepy here - just proper provision of data to an independent seller. If you sold your app separately outside an App Store, you would have had the same data. If Apple refuses to share that data with you for their own benefit, at least Google does.
  • How is that creepy?

    As a buyer, you provide that information for every web-based order you place. The only "creepy" part is that Google provides you with what the user stored previously, rather than letting the user enter it over and over again for each purchase.

    Incidentally, eBay does the same. So does Amazon. It's what sellers require to ship a product to a buyer, so both systems try to help the buyer by storing the information for them.

    The only difference is that in the case of buying Android apps via Google, you're shipping bits via an electronic medium and don't strictly speaking need that information.

    You can accuse Google of not updating business processes in a situation where a new process would work just as well. I'm not sure that's their place, though - and there might actually be laws involved that would prevent that. After all, an email address is hardly a way to identify a debtor.

    But creepy it ain't - those are just old-fashioned business transactions for you.
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