Comment by thisisit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thisisit | Hacker News Reader

5 years ago I was researching the iOS app ecosystem. As part of that exercise I was looking at the potential revenue figures for some free apps.

One developer had a free app to track some child health data. It was long time ago so I don't remember the exact data being collected. But when asked about the economics of his free app, the developer felt confident about a big pay day.

As per him the app's worth was in the data being collected. I don't know what happened to the app but it seemed that app developers know what they are doing when they invade privacy of their users - under the guise of "free" app. After that I became very conscious about disabling as many permissions as possible and especially not using apps to store any personal data, especially health data.

I don't understand why anyone would let these psychopathic corporations have any of their personal or health data. Why would you use an app that tracked health data, or use a wearable device from any of these companies that did that. You have to assume, based on their past behavior, that they are logging every detail and it's going to be sold and saved in perpetuity.

I guess because people want to track some things about their health, and people provide good pieces of software with a simple UI to do it, and this is more useful that, say, writing it down in a notebook, or in a text file or notes app.

I guess also people feel that corporations _shouldn't_ be allowed to do bad things with it.

Sadly, we already know with experience in the last 20 years, that many people don't care about what information they give to large corporations.

However, I do see more and more people increasingly concerned about their data. They are still mainly people involved in tech or related disciplines, but this is how things start.

Well maybe one reason this is hard to understand is that the plaintiff in this case hasn’t been harmed in any way. I suppose you could also argue, why would anyone go outside, there are literally satellites in space that image your every move in control of psychopathic corporations, logging every detail which they sell and save in perpetuity.

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