Suggest HN : A black-list of apps that breach our trust? | Hacker News Reader

Suggest HN : A black-list of apps that breach our trust?

7 pointskirubakaran6 comments

I installed Venmo Android app recently. Though I clicked "skip" when they asked me if I wanted to invite friends, they emailed my whole contact list anyway. I guess their rationale is that this email they sent out is a notification that I signed up, not an invitation from me.

My contact list includes my professional contacts. This is quite embarrassing.

I try to avoid mobile apps as much as possible for this reason, except when it is clear from the permissions dialog that they can't make me look like a fool. I still slipped up :-(

It would be great to have a blacklist of apps, especially the "popular" ones, that breach our trust.

Thoughts?

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I thought about an idea related to this. What if there was some kind of a browser extension/app that detects and notifies you if you visit a site that uses dark pattern or have been known to employ stupid tactics like "send us an email to cancel paid subscription and we will get back to you". May be make it more specific use case when you are actually trying to sign-up or entering your credit card details, then notify you of their shady practices. The information will be submitted by users themselves. So if you come across a dark pattern site, you immediately click "Report this" and may be even fill in the criteria like "cannot cancel online" with some comments. It then gets centrally stored on the server and everytime another user visits that same site who has installed this browser extension, they get a minimally invasive notification of some sort ?

You have to work with white-lists, not black-list when dealing with such high numbers of shitty apps. In theory this should be done by the app store provider, just let in non-malicious software.

Make a blacklist app!

A subreddit-powered blacklist app so people can submit the what & why!

I'll definitely do it even if there is a little bit of interest. I'm thinking a small set of check boxes that you can click for an app ("spams contact list", "downloads your email" etc).

LinkedIn is one such app that should be blacklisted.

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