Android Play Store Privacy | Hacker News Reader

Android Play Store Privacy

codebutler.com

52 pointsEricButler25 comments

Same thing happens if I sell something in a real or internet shop. Why is this so surprising?

When you buy a TV at Best Buy or online at Amazon, the shop doesn't send your personal information to the TV's manufacturer.

One of the reasons I prefer to buy my software through the Mac App Store instead of at some random developer's website is because I want to limit the number of businesses that have my personal information. Large companies are bad at keeping customer information safe, but I don't even want to think about how individual developers store it.

If you buy a TV via Amazon Marketplace, the seller of the TV certainly gets similar personal information (otherwise they can't ship it).

That's a valid point. The Mac App Store doesn't keep inventory. They don't first buy the apps wholesale and then resell them. They just list the apps, just like Amazon does for physical products in the Amazon Marketplace.

I do have to say I don't like to buy from the Amazon Marketpkace, I prefer to buy fromm Amazon directly (and that was the scenario I was referring to.)

Exactly. Twenty years ago, the idea that someone from whom you purchased a product might (gasp) know who you are would have been obvious. Even once the web arrived we all dutifully typed our credit card and contact info into every online purchase, and no one cared. Now all of a sudden it's "revealed" that Android app vendors have the same info (broadly -- they don't get credit card numbers) and it's a "privacy" concern?

That said... maybe there's something to this. Apple has shown that a different model can work, that isolates the buyer from the seller. Is that a good or bad thing? I think there's an interesting discussion to be had here, but this "privacy" nonsense has to stop.

I am surprised to hear you refer to this as "privacy nonsense"; things like a name and address are obviously identity related information. As such, any identity related information has to have privacy concerns.

In some ways, I see this as a breach of trust; I can trust Google with some of my data but I dont think every app developer is worthy of even a certain percentage of that trust.

This doesn't seem responsive to what I said. Every other financial transaction you engage in carries some kind of disclosure of identity. Your credit card has your name on it and discloses it when it's swiped. You can't order anything at all online without giving them a shipping address. You can't even buy a coffee for cash without your picture being taken by security cameras.

Holding this particular kind of transaction up as (no joke: your words) a "breach of trust" is just ridiculous on its face. So much so that frankly I suspect this is just yet another "Apple vs. Google" flame war in clever disguise.

Again, I agree there's an interesting discussion to be had about this stuff. But only if you give up the absurd absolutist flaming.

Let me assure you that there was no insinuation of any Apple vs Google flame war in my comment. While breach of trust might see over the top to you, the interpretation was supposed to be quite simple, let me explain:

Most financial transactions do involve exchange of identifiable information; that remains true for online as as well as real world transactions; you are absolutely right about that. However, in all those transaction, you 'choose' to share some amount of information. One of the reasons services like Paypal became popular was the implicit lack of trust in an online transaction; people were more willing to trust an intermediary to keep their credit card information secure, than using it with any and all online merchants. Similarly, I trust Google as a company more than most other companies with my data and that's a 'choice' I made; however, them sharing certain parts of my identity with a multitude of app developers does seem to be something I didn't 'choose' to do. That seems to be a decision that Google took on my behalf and therein lies the "breach of trust" that you seem to have taken an exception to.

There is no flaming involved; I just think Google can do better.

So, I largely agree with you; I agree with you sufficiently that the app-ish store that I run, Cydia, works much more similarly to Google Play than to the App Store in this regard (although not all the way down to personal phone numbers and addresses; these are not given to the package vendors).

However, I can appreciate the other side of this argument, and I think you are failing to draw the analogy the way a normal user would: when you purchase something online from Amazon, do you expect the manufacturer to know who you are? I would actually be very surprised if that is true right now.

How about when you purchase something, twenty years ago, in person, from K-Mart; do you expect the people who made the product you are purchasing to know who you are? Sure, it is clear that the K-Mart employee talking to you does, and it is clear that K-Mart's credit card computer does, but the manufacturer?

Further, while many people probably didn't realize this, it is clear that K-Mart's computer could (although it probably didn't twenty years ago; almost certainly did ten years ago) keep track of exactly what was purchased, and by whom using what credit cards, for their own data analysis and optimization.

But, would you ever have expected K-Mart to put together a massive list of all of the information on all of the people who purchased the shampoo you bought, and then send it to the shampoo company? If you did, I'm pretty certain you would be in the minority, even with today's technology.

Are you familiar with a payment instrument called ... Cash?

Another point which backs up something I read once ... Google is run by engineers, Apple is run by designers, Microsoft is run by MBAs.

Google isn't run by engineers anymore.

Having a developer calculate tax seems odd. Does this mean every single developer who puts a paid app on android store needs to figure out the intricacies of digital download tax for every single state / country? Sure big companies can hire someone to do it but that seems excessive for an individual developer.

Makes that 30% Apple take seem a little more reasonable, doesn't it?

Except that Google takes the same cut ...

At least in the US you're not responsible for collecting sales tax for a location you don't do business in, and i'm pretty sure there are minimum thresholds or exceptions to prevent people from having to collect sales tax on yard sales or fruit stands, for example.

However, if you do business internationally, this is not as clear: you do not have any a priori right to take money from citizens of other countries for your products or services; as a specific example, if you have customers in the EU (and you meet the various thresholds in any of the member countries) you must register for VAT (probably through the VAT on e-Services program designed for streamlined registration of overseas companies selling digital products). Every quarter, for example, I have to remit collected VAT for every EU country through HMRC (in pounds sterling, which is really quite irritating).

(Even domestically, the rules regarding whether you are doing business in a state are dependent on the state. If you travel at all, have any contractors, work with any other companies, or even simply ship goods around, it can be very confusing to determine in what jurisdictions you suddenly are liable for collecting either sales or seller's use tax. I ran into this personally while trying to figure out "am I doing business in Michigan, a state that imposes a 6% tax that includes digital goods?": the Michigan Treasury didn't want to commit to an answer, so I was going back/forth with accountants and lawyers for quite a while.)

You are solely responsible for specifying your own tax rates and for updating them if tax rates for your location change. Google won’t apply taxes to your orders if you don’t provide any tax information in the Merchant Center or via the Checkout API, so be sure to keep this information up-to-date. For tax assistance, please consult with a qualified tax professional.

As a developer, I can confirm this.

There are some records with only the zip/country & fake email (xxx@checkout.google.com)

But there are definitely some records with full name, full address, phone,

    e.g. (format only)

    John Doe 
    101/A, 2-14, Queen Road , Hong Kong . 
    HONG KONG ISLAND 
    HONG KONG 
    1234 5678
    johndoe@example.com

I don't see the address or phone number. I do see zip code and email.

It's as it should be: http://marketingland.com/why-im-glad-google-play-gives-devel...

"We can better service them by being able to refund them, look up order status issues, and potentially contact them with issues they may have." Order status issues for apps?

Giving developers the option of contacting users regarding issues is alright ... giving every developer of every app I installed my private phone number is NOT (in my personal opinion).

Order status issues for apps?

How about:

- the download failed, did I actually purchase it?

- has my refund been processed (note that the current setup lets developers have refund policies that are more generous than the Play Store's 15 minutes)?

- did transferring my purchase from another app store work (which often comes up if a developer leaves the other store)?

- why isn't my in-app upgrade working (could be a code bug, could be a processing bug on the in-app purchase, etc.)?

- ...

>Giving developers the option of contacting users regarding issues is alright ... giving every developer of every app I installed my private phone number is NOT (in my personal opinion).

That's... that's not what it is. It's every app you've PAID for. I would argue that giving people you've given money to direct access to be able to fix issues for you if they come up is a benefit.

It isn't giving, it is taking. That is the difference.

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