The fact that it had to be mentioned at all for a weather app is concerning & telling of the state of tech
It's the same with fitness tracking apps, so many of them send health data to their servers, but there are a few (often paid ones, of course) that seem to store important data only locally.
Donkeyd, I find the privacy cards in the iOS app store to be an unreliable source. I will read the relevant privacy policy stating 'data not collected' to mean anything but. Do you know if the card self-reporting?
I am very reluctant to fitness apps and devices for that exact reason and I'd really like to see a privacy friendly app.
Bonus points if you know devices that can be used with local data only.
The major apps all have the ability to market weight loss products when you gain weight, for example, which is the thing I personally resent the most.
The “telling state of tech” may be that our hardware has outpaced our ability to socially reason about how useful weather data should be collected and shared, or not shared.
Transparency on the use of data is important to make decisions on this type of stuff. If a weather app requests access to my barometer to improve predictions, independent of my personal data, I would fully comply with that.
Individual and aggregated environmental sensor data could be used for so many good things. We can track storms, fires and floods, earthquakes, air and noise pollution, and save lives.
But it is abused by a greedy, unethical few, and so the systems can no longer be trusted.
Medical data, individual and aggregated, can be used to stop transmissible disease by detecting outbreaks, and improve our personal health through exercise monitoring and early issue diagnosis.
But it is abused by a greedy, unethical few, and so the systems can no longer be trusted.
Domestic data has the potential to manage energy, water use and air quality, keep homes safe from intruders, protect the elderly and babies.
But it is abused by a greedy, unethical few, and so the systems can no longer be trusted.
The pattern here looks like a tragedy of the commons. As engineers we can build systems with ostensible social utility which are then hijacked (sold, acquired, infiltrated) by "digital pirates" who turn them into systems of abuse (surveillance, manipulation and control). Each time the empty "assurances" are the same and the corruption predictable, inevitable and painful.
Perhaps it is time to stop thinking about "privacy" at the level of technical measures and permissions etc, and deal with corruption and abuse, which seems intrinsic to tech, at a different level. We have the mathematical/cryptological knowledge to build better systems. but it's the unethical few who benefit from stealing our data who don't want computer systems to be secure.
Corruption always happens for a greedy, unethical few, but with the right technologies, we can make such abuse very costly. That hopefully, would restore trust from most users.
and then you go on to say "but I would just like to not give folks privacy because it's much more convenient for me not to".
That's not tricky, that's called being a shark. You are making the world a worse place by reasoning in this way and an even worse place by trying to spread it to other people.