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Comment by MD87 | Hacker News Reader

Presumably you need to be connected to wifi to obtain games, so that's not a great answer.

I also found the scoreboards surprising. I wouldn't expect a Gameboy-like device to be reporting things back to a server. I don't have any particular privacy concerns about it myself, but it is surprising, and I can see why people might object.

It also seems to contradict their privacy policy (https://panic.com/privacy/):

    Panic apps and products _do not_ send out _any_ private information. This includes
    ...
    Usernames
    ...

But the scoreboard API seems like it's tied to usernames...

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Given the context around that line, I interpret that as applying to their actual Mac applications that deal with usernames/password/hostnames, especially since the sentence that precedes that is

> Except as described above

And further up there is a carve-out for Playdate logging.

They also don't really need to send out your username for the API call -- they already know who you are because your device is tied to your account.

I do find it surprising that there is no way to not participate in leaderboards.

> Presumably you need to be connected to wifi to obtain games

Not only that, but the API link provided by the author specifies that scores are stored in the device if Wifi is offline and uploaded later, so aparently, there's no way to block uploading unless the device is hard-reset (is that even possible?) before connecting to Wifi to get another game.

The only good thing I see is that the score board is not mandatory and it seems pretty benign if no other data is attached by the OS when scores are uploaded. But then, if scores are supported, 90% of the tracking infrastructure is already there.

You might want to read the Usage Analytics section of their privacy policy.

https://panic.com/privacy/

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