Spotify wrapped started this trend seems other apps are following through. Seeing a summary of things you did with there app. Kind of gives you a hint how much other things are being tracked.
data retention
It’s the opposite - most regulatory frameworks require that you only retain data if you have a “legitimate purpose” for holding on to it; providing app features absolutely is a legitimate purpose, so by having a “wrapped” you can justify holding on to everything a user does - after all, you need it to provide features.
Nope. Especially under GDPR. To use an example of Spotify - having a “wrapped” is not part of the core offering and is not necessary for the service to work. Meaning they need your permission to store that data (or other legal framework).
I love hearing about how protective the GDPR is and wish it was a worldwide initiative with the teeth to truly protect humanity from themselves.
That’s interesting never thought of that.
Isn’t that just basic data they already kept track of?
A boring dystopia
Not really sure what you mean basic but if tracking someone’s clicks on certain button, or features and can be traced back to you. It’s actually kind off putting so much for making your information anonymise which most companies claim.
But for Spotify they are tracking how many times you played different songs. Not trying to defend them, but for a music service I’m pretty sure they need to track that kind of information regardless. Might as well tally it up and show your own data to you
They only need aggregate data for that, they don’t need them to be assigned to a specific user account.
Music players have been keeping play counts since before the invention of the iPod. It’s a datapoint that users have come to expect. I actually wish services like Spotify or Apple Music did a better job of displaying this data throughout the year rather than just in end of year infographics.
Like I dunno, Google is literally collating your location data, I hardly think music plays is top secret info.
If they did that it would be far too easy for people to boost listens and ratings with bots
I use the journalling app Daylio, which has a wrapped feature. It’s all done locally, on device. Not every implementation of this feature is spying on you.
This app is pretty cool. Just saying this because it let me export my data when I wanted to stop using it. Which is not a common feature in proprietary software so hats off to the devs.
not a common feature in proprietary software
Just so you know, the GDPR mandates that you can at any time get a full export of all your personal data from anyone who’s processing it in a common, machine readable format. It is laudable though to have that integrated as a feature in the software, rather than jumping through hoops contacting support etc.
If it just uses data that is on your device right now, that is okay. But if it keeps track on things, even on your device, it can lead to security vulnerabilities, depending how it is stored how long it is kept.
And most importantly, enshittification and automatic updates could easily change that policy to retroactively hoover up all that precious data. This stuff is insanely valuable too.
Not saying daylio is doing it or going to. Just that keeping data comes with a risk. ideally, there should be clear documentation what is being kept, where and for how long.
You’re right, I should just refuse to trust any developers and go back to the paper journal I never used.
Yes to part one. You should not trust devs that do opt out data collection of any kind. If you‘re interested in a funny way to learn about this stuff, check out „security nightmares“ from the recent 38c3 congress.
I suggest you keep track of your thoughts and moods with open source apps.
Daylio does not do “opt-out data collection”. IT doesn’t even have “opt-in”.
Yes, and while that’s a fine ideal, it does not always produce well-made or polished applications. For myself, Daylio is a medical/mental health app that assisted with my diagnosis of Bipolar disorder. Unfortunately FOSS apps related to medical stuff are not the greatest or most widely developed.
It’s also a fun way to see how good their data is
For a few of the apps, the data was very limited and/or very wrong. That made me happy
The only app I have that does such a thing does it because it’s deliberately gamified to help you build a good habit and tracking/summarizing your achievements for that year. IMO any other kind of app doing that is a gigantic red flag and you ought to delete it and find a replacement in the F-Droid repository (which consists entirely of Free Software that is much less likely to contain those sorts of dark patterns and other antifeatures) instead.
The only software that could do that for me was Steam; saying when I played which games how long, and if it appeared to be on a Steam Deck or not. It did not nearly track all the Deck data, it seems if the Deck has no Internet connection for long enough it kind of just discards data it held and it never gets synced to Steam. For my desktop it was accurate, but only the game time stats it already let me know it tracks.
Since nothing else could “wrap” my annual data I think I’m going fine.
