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.
That’s interesting never thought of that.
Isn’t that just basic data they already kept track of?
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
But “wrapped” type things aren’t using button press telemetry. They’re using data that the user wants access to anyways, like their Spotify play history, or Duolingo lesson progress.
It doesn’t even make sense to anonymize that data because people want to see their play history, not what was popular last week.
I doubt it.
The kind of data used for “wrapped” type summaries are usually the kind of data that users want to be tracked because it powers features they want.
Like Spotify wrapped is based of Spotify play history, and being able to see your recently played songs is a feature people want.
Duolingo wrapped is based on lesson progress, and it has to track your progress else it doesn’t know what lesson you’re doing.
idk what other apps do this, it’s pretty rare for me, but afaict it’s all just normal stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of privacy problems that apps try to fuck with, but I don’t think that yearly wrapped is likely to be one of them.
Yeah I don’t mind apps keeping track of how I’ve been using them. But if duolingo tells me where my friend got married and congratulates me on keeping my streak through that then we’re gonna have some concerns
Lucy does keep saying that she is always listening rather ominously
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.
Just to add on, it’s not just they let you export data in a cool PDF, it also lets you export the data as a CSV so it can be parsed by other things.
Antenna-Pod does it this way as well.
My to do list app had a wrapped and I was deeply displeased to see it.
Do tell
“You bought $300 worth of candles every month!”
Don’t remind me 😔
What’s the candle for?
That’s for him, his app, their data brokers, and their 198 ad partners to know!
Or you too if you buy the data 😇💸
Use Fossify notes
What do you mean by that?
It’s not my job to educate you
Hahahaha
perfect 👌
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
That actually requires very little data compared to the amount of data being collected. They collect absolutely everything all the time.
The whole ‘wrapped’ summaries thing dovetails perfectly into social media narcissism. It’s quite a spectacle to witness.
Edit: the phrase I was looking for came to me:
Sharing ‘wrapped’ anything is solid gold self-absorbed dipshittery.
I enjoy it for retro achievements because it said I spent 60 hours playing Dragon.Quest 8 for the PS2. But that’s probably because it’s all free.
And oddly enough it was the only wrapped I got as I don’t do subscription based stuff.
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.
Which apps do that? None of mind have suggested anything.
