Comment by reikonomusha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reikonomusha | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like an app I’ve wanted forever! But as with all apps I’m particularly sensitive to giving bulk access to my photos (and other data).

The app description says “images are all processed on device and nothing is sent to any server” but the app’s privacy policy talks about first- and third-party collection of potentially PII.

> The app does use third party services that may collect information used to identify you.

> I want to inform you that whenever you use my Service, in a case of an error in the app I collect data [...]. This [data] may include information such as your device Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, [...], the configuration of the app when utilizing my Service, [..], and other statistics.

Could an error log dump the strings it detected in my images and send them off to this third-party for instance?

I assume everything here exists with the best intentions, but I worry about using an app like this to scan and analyze all my images when there are a host of exceptions in the privacy policy.

> But as with all apps I’m particularly sensitive to giving bulk access to my photos (and other data).

I don't understand why iOS doesn't allow blocking internet access for apps. You can only disallow mobile data access, but not WiFi access.

The frustrating part is that in China they have the functionality [0], so it's there, but we are not allowed to use it for our privacy.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/69k1j8/the_chinese_i...

Advertising on iOS relies on internet access so toggling it off would mean no ads.

It doesn’t need to. The OS could download ads and show them in—app and report back impressions through the OS. And, Apple doesn’t make much money from iOS ads.

But developers do and they make free apps on the app store

Apple doesn't have any ad frameworks that are open to third-party developers, so they would have to build one to support this. And that didn't work out so well last time they tried.

The data collected is, as mentioned, used to analyze crashes. In case of an error, some information is collected, that can be explained as being justified: device unique ID, to know if an error happened on one device multiple times, IP address is collected in web server access logs, configuration of the app could mean a lot of things, i.e. resolution of the viewport, etc.

If the Privacy Policy contains no mention of sending images to the server and storing the images and/or text contents, then ... it's not happening.

edit: This comment was posted before you edited yours.

I don’t feel so concerned about images being sent to the server, but rather the information derived and collected about the images.

Again, if it's not mentioned in the Privacy Policy, a sane thing would be to assume it's not being done.

You can be paranoid, but then you shouldn't have a cell phone at all, let alone an always-connected smartphone.

No, its actually insane to take every written statement at its word.

If it makes you comfortable, I am not sending text (or any other metadata for images including location, camera fingerprint etc). I plan to add basic analytics to know which views/features are being used and also crash detections.

If the Privacy Policy contains no mention of sending images to the server and storing the images and/or text contents, then ... it's not happening.

A Privacy Policy is just words in most jurisdictions. Short of a Wireshark analysis, there's no way to know for sure.

I'd rather the program asked if I want to send the crash log the next time I opened it. I have several programs that do that, and I wish it was more widespread.

> A Privacy Policy is just words in most jurisdictions. Not for long. At least in EU.

Well, it's already illegal, it just takes time to prosecute enough data processors until others start being afraid of the fines and start ACTUALLY implementing GDPR.

I'm in the same boat. I wish Apple gave us a way to block internet access for specific apps. Currently, there is way to block cellular data for a given app but wifi is always unrestricted.

Try Google Photos.

That's the opposite of what the parent wants. Google photos uploads everything to their cloud.

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