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Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for your effort. There also appears to be a BM6 variant which explicitly states that you get a personal account and will be able to track your car.

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0BLG9Z462

You can click the images where the third one contains a comparison. Interesting that they pretend that BM6 has this as a special feature since it just is a feature of the app.

The QR code [0] on the device points to this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dc.bm6

So I checked other URLs like https://link.quicklynks.com/bm3.html and https://link.quicklynks.com/bm4.html, and the latter redirects to https://www.leagend.com/ which operates this YT channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqkvyOFP5cXQ02f3h1Ns42Q

[0] http://link.quicklynks.com/bm6.html

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Nice find. It appears the application is by the same developer [1]:

The play store page for this app states:

- No data shared with third parties

- This app may collect these data types

- Data isn’t encrypted

- You can request that data be deleted

I just checked the BM2 app (subject of the blog post series) and they have updated with the similar detail [2], updated on the 25th of June 2023, although they say the data is encrypted - will need to verify if this is the case with the latest release. It also still says data not sent to any third party. If they still use the Alibaba AMap SDK - then that's a third party.

The Apple app store also now discloses location data is being sent [3]

I'd like to think my research / blog posts put pressure on them to start being honest with their customers.

This doesn't excuse them though. A battery monitor does not need to know your location.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dc.bm6

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dc.battery...

[3] https://apps.apple.com/au/app/battery-monitor-bm2/id11154920...

We'll probably never know but it would be very interesting to get an idea for their motivation to collect this data in the first place.

It's a fine line between data collection for commercial reasons and spying. Of course the mis-representation is an issue all by itself and Apple/Google should kill this app for that reason alone if they are going to be consistent.

> It's a fine line between data collection for commercial reasons and spying

No there is not. Your permission is the line

I think you misunderstood my comment.

Just to map locations of cell towers is really nice as it can be used to augment positioning of other mobile devices

> You can request that data be deleted

Requesting is easy... but trusting the whole "Yeah, we definitely deleted that data you asked us about" is where things can be tricky. :/

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