this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Why the fuck does their VPN have telemetry?
Telemetry is not bad in itself. It can be used for bug/crash reports, or usage statistics, without tracking or personal data collection.
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 :
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.
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.
It's a VPN! What did you expected? /hj