PrivaCy

Aug

Posted by Hammbone

Apps, News, Cydia, Jailbreak, Must Have

PrivaCy It has recently come to the attention of angry Cydia users that they are being watched by many of the applications they have installed from the App Store. Very detailed information about you and your usage patterns are being “Phoned Home.”

Sites like I-phone-home have been discussing this in detail, leading to a post on the Dev-Team Blog about one provider in particular: Pinch Media.

Pinch Media, however, is not the only tracking provider: on the iPhone alone there are three other companies: Flurry, Medialets, and Mobclix.

One provider in particular that has caught their attention: Pinch Media.

Being an approved app, it must first ask you for permission to use your location. If you tap “Don’t Allow”, it will ask you again in about a minute, the next time its ad changes. So you either stop using this app (because it pesters you so much about the location question), or you finally submit and tap “OK”. From that point on, your location and path info (your actual physical path through your area each time you launch the app) belongs to Pinch Media, Inc.

Once an iPhone application is Pinch Media enabled, the following information is stored locally:

iPhone’s unique ID
iPhone Model
OS Version
Application version
If the application is cracked/pirated
If your iPhone is jailbroken
time & date you start the application
time & date you close the application
your current latitude & longitude
your gender (if facebook enabled)
your birth month (if facebook enabled)
your birth year (if facebook enabled)

Your data is continually tracked and every use of the application recorded for the life of that application on your phone. Once you have a reliable connection, the information stored locally is sent in automatically to the mother-ship. At no point are you told what the Pinch Media enabled application is doing and at no time are you given an option to “opt-out”. Pinch Media explains itself here.

Pinch Media, however, is not the only tracking provider on the iPhone. There are three other companies: Flurry, Medialets, and Mobclix.

Developers integrate these systems for much the same reason people use Google Analytics: to better understand how their customers use their products. Not all applications using analytics on the back-end are to be feared. For the most part, the data being recorded is anonymous and helps the developers make better apps. The problem is that, as of today, there’s no way to know which apps are the safe ones. Fortunately, for Jailbreakers, there’s a solution, PrivaCy.

PrivaCy is a Settings Panel application that allows you to “selectively opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics” to certain providers such as; Flurry, Medialets, Mobclix and Pinch Media.

PrivaCy can be installed by going into the Cydia section of the Cydia app (or, search for PrivaCy in Cydia). Once installed, you can then go into the stock Settings application > PrivaCy and choose to turn on/off the ability to send anonymous usage statistics for Flurry, Medialets, Mobclix and Pinch Media.

PrivaCy was developed as a team effort with Flurry, Medialets, Mobclix and Pinch Media. They not only gave their blessings, but also their technical expertise in disabling their systems.