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Comment by snowwolf | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why Ring is being specifically called out for this practice. This combination of “trackers” are very common in the app ecosystem as they perform much the same analytics functions used on the web ecosystem (e.g. Branch offers ad campaign attribution - did this user sign up from an ad campaign and which one so I can work out ad ROI). I’d hazard a guess that analysis of the apps on your phone (Android and iOS) would result in well over 50% of them using some combination of these services.

What’s more interesting is that it could be argued these fall under the intent of the EU cookie directive (even though in a lot of cases they don’t actually use cookies). The only app I have seen asking for cookie like consent is Airbnb (who use all of these same services and more)

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I think several companies are routinely called out for nefarious privacy invasions. Ring is extra interesting because of the hypocrisy in claiming they're in the home security business, while actually gathering and selling information that can be be directly counter-productive in that effort (such as when a customer is likely to be home or not).

The thing is they aren’t actually selling that data. All the services mentioned are paid services that ring are paying to use. And ironically they sprang up to fill a need because Google and Apple made it almost impossible to do app install attribution to protect people’s privacy. So we now get more invasive tracking to work around that.

> The thing is they aren’t actually selling that data.

Says who, the company itself? Why install trackers if you're not going to use them?

They aren’t trackers in that respect. Read up on the companies in question. They basically provide analytics to mobile apps so they can better understand their customers to allow them to improve the experience of the app.

It’s the equivalent of Google Analytics.

Now how those companies then use the data they collect as part of providing analytics is another question (and why lots of people prefer to block Google Analytics for example)

OK, not technically trackers, but certainly spyware.

Bingo! Spyware. Let's call it what it really is.

The data is none of your damn business. Or Ring's business. Or anyone else's business except my own!

> This combination of “trackers” are very common in the app ecosystem

True. This is why I have to firewall off all apps so that they can't communicate out without my permission. This is also the primary reason why I'm leaving the smartphone ecosystem entirely.

The invasiveness of apps is intolerable to me, getting worse, and getting increasingly hard to mitigate.

Word! I never really installed much on my smartphone to begin with. If you ask me, a lot of services and app developers have this horrible sense of entitlement to all kinds of information about their users. It creeps me out.

Indeed. What i thought. There is nothing weird with an app doing this. Just because its a doorbell app doesnt make it different?

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