Introducing Cover

Re:Introducing Cover by mortenjorck on Thursday October 24, 2013 @03:25PM (#6607310)

The real product here is almost certainly an analytics service. From Cover's privacy policy at https://www.coverscreen.com/privacy:

  Cover records the following items: 

  The list of apps installed on your phone, including which apps are
  on your homescreen and dock

  The number of times you run an app, including the time and place 
  where you ran it (specifically, the cell tower or wifi network you 
  were connected to, or that you were located within a geographic area 
  you identified such as home or work)

  The number of times you turn on your phone (i.e. view your Cover 
  lockscreen), and what you do subsequently: launch an app, slide open 
  the cover, or simply turn the screen back off (e.g. just glance at 
  the clock).

  Information from connected Bluetooth devices, such as the Bluetooth 
  device ID of your car.

  Information from the sensors in your phone, such as the 
  accelerometer, gyroscope, and GPS (though GPS is used exceptionally 
  sparingly in order to save your battery).

  The system starts to collect data as soon as you install Cover. The 
  data collection continues until you remove Cover from your phone. 

  The data is uploaded from your phone over a secured connection to 
  our servers.

Cover is tracking every app you launch on your phone, when you launch it, where you are when you launch it, and even what angle you're holding your phone when you launch it. Privacy concerns notwithstanding, sounds like valuable data.

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Re:Introducing Cover by jqueryin on Thursday October 24, 2013 @04:50PM (#6607863)

I'd suggest that a portion of the funding go towards a re-write of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm not one to mess with having holes in legal documents that could later bite me in the ass.

It's glaringly obvious they did not hire a lawyer to write their Privacy Policy or Terms of Service. I understand they mention "human readable" in the beginning of the Privacy Policy, but does this really hold up in court? In the Terms of Service, they make mention to "You" as opposed to "Client", "Customer", etc, with no definition.

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Re:Introducing Cover by jelled on Thursday October 24, 2013 @06:24PM (#6608430)

Hold up in court to what?

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Re:Introducing Cover by e12e on Friday October 25, 2013 @03:43AM (#6610292)

Yeah, I was excited until I got the point about "our servers". Why would they need any data on their servers just to know when I need to read email?

But it's a good idea, hopefully easy to copy and release as an actual app (something I define as an executable that runs *on' a device, not a glorified json interpreter and exchange system).

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Re:Introducing Cover by Derander on Friday October 25, 2013 @06:18AM (#6610703)

There is probably useful analysis that they can perform in aggregate across all of their users. Perhaps people who read email are more likely to do <x> at a certain time and that signal is only noticeable with more data than you as an individual generate.

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Re:Introducing Cover by talmand on Friday October 25, 2013 @10:46AM (#6611906)

Seems that type of analysis is not really helpful in the long run. It should be catering to me, not what it thinks I need based on other people's habits. If my habits are completely different than everybody else's, then the results it provides are almost always off. Then it has to figure things out again solely using me, which it should have done in the first place.

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Re:Introducing Cover by mayankkumar on Friday October 25, 2013 @03:58AM (#6610321)

It would be interesting to read the app permissions on Google Play when this app launches.

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Re:Introducing Cover by talmand on Friday October 25, 2013 @10:47AM (#6611913)

It sounds like it requires everything.

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