Hacker News Reader

Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

from the appeal: "My app helps people avoid pornography by monitoring their actions and reporting those actions to the person they specify"

from the features list: "...is hard to circumvent...", "option to remove the icon in the status bar", "Accountability partners are notified if you ever disable the app".

it's straight up spyware. it doesn't help you "avoid pornography" by blocking it like you would do if you actually wanted to avoid pornography, just by spying on you. Just because you put "for personal use only, wink wink, nudge nudge" in the description it doesn't make it any less of an app designed to invisibly and remotely monitor the activities on somebody else's phone. This is exactly what the Google Play guidelines forbid, and if you didn't read them before you published your app that's on you. Consider yourself lucky that you got away with it for this long.

View on HN

You seem to have made up your mind on the intent of the creator, and the intent of its users. A constructive response however would have noted how you think apps with non-malicious intent, targeting people who genuinely want this type of functionality, can distinguish themselves.

When I read your response I imagine a description of a hammer, which has "powerful striking force", and "a reinforced tapered claw", and "extra long handle for extra reach and leverage." Clearly this is nudge nudge, wink wink, targeting people who want to use it to hit other people.

As someone who has installed productivity apps that were too easy to remove and specifically appreciates one of the features you derisively called out, I think you owe the creator an apology.

non-malicious apps can distinguish themselves by following the google play guidelines on security and privacy - if you are monitoring the user, you have to have a persistent notification. you can't secretly monitor somebody's behaviour and then claim your app isn't a spying tool.

We can't possibly know what the intentions of the creator are, but it is definitely against the rules and for good reason:

Smartphones Are Used To Stalk, Control Domestic Abuse Victims:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/09/15/346149...

>85 percent of the shelters we surveyed say they're working directly with victims whose abusers tracked them using GPS. Seventy-five percent say they're working with victims whose abusers eavesdropped on their conversation remotely — using hidden mobile apps. And nearly half the shelters we surveyed have a policy against using Facebook on premises, because they are concerned a stalker can pinpoint location.

And with this sort of "use case" in mind, the vague name "Ever Accountable", innocuous-looking icon, and evasive description all work to the advantage of abusive users, by making it unclear to device owners exactly what this program is and what it's doing.

> A constructive response however would have noted how you think apps with non-malicious intent, targeting people who genuinely want this type of functionality, can distinguish themselves.

I would've thought this was obvious. As stated in the comment that you're responding to, a persistent notification in the status bar.

As I understand it the purpose of the app is that given you know your wife is watching your internet history, you won't go on youporn.

So how does this monitoring help you clean up your internet activities if you don't know you are being monitored? While the app should let the guardian know when it is being disabled, it also needs to let you disable it and more importantly let you know that it is running.

Once those 2 things are removed it is no longer a productivity app, but a spy app.

From the take-down advice from Google:

"After a regular review, we have determined that this app is promoted as a means of carrying out spying or surreptitious tracking of others."

Of others. It's clearly not spying on other people.

It's clearly intended for spying on the person using the device, who may not be the person who owns the device. The obvious example is the use case espoused by the application: you are a business who loans business phones to your staff, or you are a parent wanting to keep tabs on your child, so you install this software, turn on the option to not show in the status bar, and get reports of all activity from the person actually using that corporate phone.

The intended use case is actually a bit stranger: users are intended to install this on their own phone to report their behavior to one or more "accountability partners" so that they will be publicly shamed if they view undesirable material, e.g. pornography.

Spyware is typically unknown to the user, hence the word "spy". In this case, the developer is 100% transparent and users are paying for these features.

Tracking and accountability are accurate descriptions here.

In real life, people can and do install apps on the devices of other people.

You ignore this possibility, but let's not pretend: The app can be installed by a suspicious family member who knows the password (as many family members do, in the real off-HN world), and then hidden from the user of the device.

This is absolutely the definition of spyware, even if the author either A) sincerely believes there is a legitimate purpose here, or B) contrived a clever cover story for it.

I don't know which is true, A or B, but it's quite remarkable that people would supposedly sign their real names to reviews of such an app.

And google plus can be installed and configured to share location with someone else. Yet it's a clearly just a social app, though it doesn't show a notification that it's sharing your location.

Just because something can be used maliciously doesn't make it malicious. When people take that idea to the next level, we get abuse like Microsoft shutting down no-ip.

I'm not familiar with the Google Plus location sharing, but I seem to recall using the old Google location sharing app, and receiving a periodic email from Google reminding me that it was turned on.

Google's spyware policy is crystal clear that "Apps that track device user behavior must present users with a full-time persistent notification and icon that clearly identifies the app."

This deliberately violated that policy, and promoted the feature (disabling the notification) that violates the policy.

It clearly was spyware as defined by the Google policy.

Incidentally, pretty much every page of the Ever Accountable website also contains violations of the Android Brand Guidelines [1] with regard to the use of the Android and Google Play trademarks.

[1] http://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/brand....

I am having a hard time understanding your target audience. Why would anyone willingly give someone else a list of all the things they have been upto.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com