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Comment by seclorum | Hacker News Reader

As a developer, I am guilty of using flurry too much. But its just so damned useful to be seeing what your users are up to with your app! I am addicted to checking my flurry console every day and watching the event logs, looking at session lengths.. even the world map of users is something I can look at longingly every morning.

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Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

Actually, I find that to be creepy. You are basically stalking your users.

What's the difference between that and installing Google Analytics on your website?

I can easily protect myself from GA tracking.

You can't compare a mobile app with a web application. One of the author's points was that "view source" world as we know it in the web doesn't work anymore on mobile apps. That's why he had to resort to Fiddler to see what is going on under the hood.

The better question is: What's the difference between this and a desktop application that gathers your data?

If the same thing happened with a desktop app (spying on your every click, "calling home"), it was labeled as spyware within days.

Analytic of every click on a site is by no means better than these, and many apps didn't specify such behavior in their Privacy statement.

Isn't knowing and understanding what your users are doing with your app the cornerstone of making a better app?

Sure, but they could try asking their users rather than peeking through a hole while they shower.

Users don't know what they want. ;)

The ends justify the means?

Well, I'm not doing it for sexual or violent gratification (what I associate the word 'stalking' with) but I am looking to see how people are using the apps .. and it has definitely helped me identify trouble areas with usability, improvements over versions, and so on. Without flurry analytics, I probably wouldn't be able to identify improvements and tweaks that I can make that will benefit the whole, and would have to rely on a very small percentage of users giving me feedback, which may in fact not be of any benefit whatsoever to the larger whole.

Its a delicate situation, but as a developer I have to be trustworthy - and I think this is best reflected in the changes I make that make users think my app is worth using, more and more ..

I don't think it's that unusual. Woopra lets you see your users in real-time, and even start chats with them as they browse your site. http://www.woopra.com/features/live-map/

s/users/anonymous devices/

One sees small bits of information every now pop into HN about how they might not be as anonymous as expected, to put it mildly, but it would be nice to have an overview of how trackable your vanilla smartphone is or isn't.

My intuition right now is that they're pseudonymous at best, and that the average user is very quick to provide credentials that would associate the pseudonym to their actual names and other personal info.

Can anyone provide an assessment (or better yet, a link to one) on just how anonymous those anonymous devices are?

(@saddino: this response is not directed at you partly because I'm not sure whether you're being technical or sarcastic — or both.)

>One sees small bits of information every now pop into HN about how they might not be as anonymous as expected, to put it mildly, but it would be nice to have an overview of how trackable your vanilla smartphone is or isn't.

Its very trackable. You can get a unique ID, user name, location, and so on. There is no anonymity with cell phones, really - its a farce.

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