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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Why is this an issue?

These aren't advertising trackers. They're not selling your data.

They're name-brand, industry-standard product analytics, for measuring the usage of app features etc. They're for improving UX and the product generally. I mean, one of them is solely for crash reporting.

This is zero privacy or security risk here. This is standard for essentially any commercial app. There is absolutely nothing unique or different or exceptional about LastPass here. And there is nothing about being a password manager that somehow makes this inappropriate. It's not like it's uploading your passwords to its analytics or anything.

Seriously, this is just spreading FUD. I get that a lot of people hate LastPass for a lot of reasons, but this isn't a good reason.

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First, who said it's an issue that you have to care about? People feel different things are issues.

Not sure how facts are FUD. The submission here is saying "got 7 trackers in it" which are facts. What those trackers are tracking is irrelevant. They are tracking you and your usage, and get more information that way compared to if they only used backend tracking.

"This is standard for essentially any commercial app" sounds more like FUD that this submission, as that statement is obviously easy to check if it's true or not. In this case, I don't think it's true, as many apps don't do client-side tracking. I made a quick check for one competitor of lastpass (1password - https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.agilebi...) and they have 0 trackers. 1password is commercial and pretty big at this point, so your statement is not necessarily true in all industries/usages.

Of course facts aren't FUD. I'm responding to a lot of comments here which assume this is a bad thing, which I think is obviously why it's being upvoted as well.

And I'm not sure you understand the term FUD. You're saying my comment spreads fear and uncertainty? It's literally the opposite, I'm saying this particular thing isn't something to worry about.

Mobile apps aren't like webpages where most actions generate backend calls whose logs can be analyzed as an alternative. If 1password isn't using 3rd-party analytics, they probably rolled their own. No big difference. In any case, my point remains true -- client-side analytics is standard for essentially any commercial app, in order to improve the UX. There are exceptions of course, like for any rule, but it doesn't change the fact it's still standard.

> I'm responding to a lot of comments here which assume this is a bad thing

Yeah, my bad. I guess I assumed since you replied to the top-level story and not a specific comment, that you were answering to the story itself and not comments.

> And I'm not sure you understand the term FUD. You're saying my comment spreads fear and uncertainty?

No, I'm not saying that your entire comment is sounding like FUD. I'm saying that the specific part I quoted sounds like FUD, as it's easy to disprove it.

Compare it to 1Password with it's 0 trackers.

https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.agilebi...

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