Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matt B.]

> Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2013 16:57:57 +0100
> From: mpt at canonical.com
> To: ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com
> Subject: Re: Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?
> 
> > I agree this is a good model. Still, I worry about the possibility
> > of having a lot of "are you sure" dialogs in a nicely integrated 
> > application.
> 
> That's a reasonable concern. But I haven't thought of a case where an
> app would needfully request more than one or two privileges at a time.
> Have you?
>
>
> Cheers
> - -- 
> mpt


I too am concerned about a lot of "are you sure" dialogs. I think people are just looking for a way to learn/know what apps are connecting to the internet (and why). Like I described how VLC asks to connect for downloading album art/info and tells you why it would be connecting to the internet. Once the user responds to this dialogue there are no more dialogues--ever. The App asks for permission to connect to the internet for a specific purpose. If the user says No, it would be up to the user to go into settings and reset this. The user should not be presented this prompt each time the App starts/runs.

I think users want control over whether an App connects or not. Not that they want a prompt for each event (which can get annoying). They simply want an App to ask for the privilege of internet access and state the reason why. From this point forward the user does not experience any more prompts--but the user still has some means (via the OS) of monitoring App internet connection behavior in general. The user can discover (has some interface I guess) that can inform of what Apps are connecting and based on a previous dialogue presented to the user can explain/understand those connections he/she is seeing.

With many Apps, not allowing internet access doesn't impair the App. But the App itself keeps trying to connect to the internet to do non-essential functions. This is bad App design, and I choose not to use Apps that behave this way. 

The TRICK is how to learn that the App is behaving this way! 

It can be hard for users to know what Apps are behaving this way. When I learn of this behavior, I uninstall the App and find a better behaving one. For other Apps, I use an App setting (preferable) or OS setting (not desirable) to say "don't connect to internet for this"--and once I do this I do not have to deal with anymore prompts. It is the best balance between smooth OS experience and constant nagging that makes OS unusable.

So I think the most useful OS service is to somehow give users awareness of App internet connection behavior so users CAN learn that they need to make a settings adjustment IN THE APP or simply uninstall the App and look for one that isn't so promiscuous with the internet. This I think is the privacy/security function of the OS that is so important--providing some means of "finding out" which Apps are connecting to the internet, which informs the user and allows him/her to decide whether to adjust settings in the App or uninstall it. The OS having to block an App from internet access or access to the Contacts list seems like it is having to compensate for bad App design (cause the settings that control this should really be in the App). Not to mention a resource drag on the OS having to do this. So I would think the OS really shouldn't deal with this or devote resources to it.

So I think the main point is: the most important OS function here is find some means/interface/mechanism to apprise users of App Internet Connection Behavior. Android in a way does this: this App will access So & So--informing the user of what to expect which allows user to make an informed decision about whether to install the App or not. But MPT is absolutely right in saying this design is incomplete. Because Android says nothing to whether the App has settings that can adjust how it behaves with respect to the internet. And the user won't fully understand the Apps behavior and what options it has with respect to this behavior until he/she installs and uses the App for a time.
 		 	   		  
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