Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

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> They are relying on reputable companies to be good stewards of their data, and infer their intent from their actions.

Perhaps, but without a proper study of their users (and potential future users), how can they infer their intent, and why should they assume that all or even most users will have the same intent? It's certainly conceivable that a user might deny Path access to Location Services (for example, to prevent the automatic location updates due to annoyance rather than personal privacy concerns, or even to save battery life), while still having no problem with including location information from explicitly posted photos.

Honestly, I think any attempts at preempting all supposed outrage like this are futile. You're always going to have someone who will complain about something in your app that works differently than they expected or intended. If Path did ignore geotagged photos, they might have someone just as outraged as this author, but for the opposite reason.

The argument that Apple should be more clear is more valid, since for them there is little downside to being as explicit as possible. This is the same position I took in the Great Address Book Debate. I don't think app developers have a responsibility to second guess the options provided by their platform (especially when their platform is as huge as iOS). In fact, I don't even think it's wise in general.

This might be true about most other features of most apps, however your location is actually fairly sensitive information for LOTS of people, and I think you're underestimating that.

The outrage of a user who disabled location services, but wanted their location uploaded is NOTHING compared to the implications of sharing someone's location without permission. We are talking about life-and-death, in some rare cases (e.g. http://www.petapixel.com/2012/12/03/exif-data-may-have-revea...).

> Perhaps, but without a proper study of their users (and potential future users), how can they infer their intent,

In this case, they don't need to infer my intent. My intent is clear: I have not gone into the app settings and configured it differently. I disabled location services at the OS level for the entire application.

My intent could not be more clear.

Maybe you are afraid Path is using location services in the background or have some other reason to fear that Path is improperly requesting your current location. This does NOT imply that you don't want Path to have EXIF location data from photos you provide it.

A much better option would simply be to provide a simple interface to allow users to exclude this information each time they post a photo and/or in the application settings.

The only clear intent that can be gathered from turning off Location Services is that you do not want Path to access your phone's location sensors. This is pretty explicit in iOS Settings. It is not at all clear that you do not intend for Path to use other sources of location information that you explicitly choose to share, like photos or status updates.

> It is not at all clear that you do not intend for Path to use other sources of location information that you explicitly choose to share, like photos or status updates.

You're right, it's not clear. So, it should explicitly ask when you do so.

(I don't use Path so I don't know if it in fact asks this or at least makes clear that it will be sharing your photo locations before doing so. The article implies it does not.)

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