“Telemetry” as I am sure you know, is a nice euphamism for unwanted user tracking code which f-droid appropriately labels as an anti-feature.
As a user of a FOSS app, having apps sending data and reports on my usage to third parties is not a desirable feature. With the massive data broker market out there, even innocuous debugging data can be deanonymized, aggregated, linked and sold.
Personally I believed this is another reason reddit wanted to get ride of 3rd party apps, Their official app contains tons of spyware and collects identifiable device IDs. Selling this data is a huge market which they can capitalize on.
Im not saying that any of this is happening currently with the way this app has implemented Sentry however this is sort of the point. As a user it is difficult to independently verify what data is being sent as it is likely encrypted. Even if you verify it isn’t happening in the current version, the presence of the code allows for the scope of data collection to be expanded in future versions which could happen as the app developed.
From the users point of view, not having the Sentry user tracking classes in the code at all is the most desirable outcome.
Reddit had several FOSS app including Slide which were completely free of tracking code. It looks like Liftoff and Jerboa are currently clean, it would be nice to try Thunder as well.
Calling Sentry spyware is a bit of stretch. It’s debugging telemetry.
“Telemetry” as I am sure you know, is a nice euphamism for unwanted user tracking code which f-droid appropriately labels as an anti-feature.
As a user of a FOSS app, having apps sending data and reports on my usage to third parties is not a desirable feature. With the massive data broker market out there, even innocuous debugging data can be deanonymized, aggregated, linked and sold.
Personally I believed this is another reason reddit wanted to get ride of 3rd party apps, Their official app contains tons of spyware and collects identifiable device IDs. Selling this data is a huge market which they can capitalize on.
Im not saying that any of this is happening currently with the way this app has implemented Sentry however this is sort of the point. As a user it is difficult to independently verify what data is being sent as it is likely encrypted. Even if you verify it isn’t happening in the current version, the presence of the code allows for the scope of data collection to be expanded in future versions which could happen as the app developed.
From the users point of view, not having the Sentry user tracking classes in the code at all is the most desirable outcome.
Reddit had several FOSS app including Slide which were completely free of tracking code. It looks like Liftoff and Jerboa are currently clean, it would be nice to try Thunder as well.