[LINK] A new way around end user privacy controls?

[Jan Whitaker]

Padvocates (and linkers)

This morning a member of the Link discussion group sent round a link 
to an apps enabler for Windows and Macs, called Bluestacks, 
http://www.bluestacks.com/. That software allows for the use of 
smartphone/tablet apps on a regular laptop. I decided I'd have a go, 
thinking I need even more time fillers/wasters (ha!). Here's what I 
discovered about how this works.

The bluestacks software is actually a browser replacement as well as 
an Android installer. So if you go to the apps stores to login to get 
an app, you are provided with their software, say Angry Birds, and a 
link to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy for 
the company/app (if you look hard enough). If you read it, all those 
avoidance strategies we who care about privacy install in our 
browsers are no longer available because these apps are running in a 
3rd party environment -- bluestacks. Of course the policy gives the 
app company the right to just about anything they want, just because 
they expose all that in the policy you have to agree to in order to 
use their software. To top that, the only reason I even saw the link 
to their policy was by clicking on an 'Info' icon and the screen that 
scrolls up as a result lists a link to the Privacy Policy and the 
License agreement. Better be quick, too, to click it.

Another thing the bluestacks software does is automatically install 
Facebook. I was going to keep that, but then after discovering how 
the software actually works, deleted it. Trust Facebook outside a 
regular browser? No way. It also installs Twitter, which I haven't 
heard much about in terms of privacy problems, so I'll leave it for now.

My quandary is what to do about the game I installed. I can uninstall 
it. But I can't protect myself from how it operates. I guess I could 
run it in sandbox. Hmmm... must give that some thought.

Just thought I'd put this out there as a new point of tension.

Jan


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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