We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it

Re:We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Ap... by mirimir on Monday June 17, 2019 @04:57PM (#20207295)

Yeah, that jumped out at me too.

> We could set up a VPN service and analyze the traffic passing through our servers to learn which social media services mobile devices were communicating with, and using this data we could estimate the time spent on different services and block access to them when users exceeded their self-determined limits.

I mean, I use VPN services all the time. But doing that for an app to track social media usage? That's at least crazy, and arguably deceptive.

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Re:We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Ap... by em-bee on Monday June 17, 2019 @11:50PM (#20209637)

if it's done with the express consent of the user and the data is not sold, i don't see the problem. it's only a matter of who i trust with my usage data. if it's not the vpn, then it's my isp.

but, wouldn't a local 'fake' vpn be enough to capture all that locally on the phone? there is no need to send traffic to a remote server for this purpose. or does apple not allow that? it works fine on android.

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Re:We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Ap... by tmikaeld on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @01:17AM (#20209987)

iOS doesn't allow it, it's much more restrictive than Android when it comes to sandboxing. There's also no shared storage between apps, on iOS your have to transfer files from app to app.

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