google analystics app tracking

[yuppydown00]

so a recent submission has added this

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* Unlock orientation again after some native fixes. Experiment with Google App Analytics.
The app analytics only tracks usage, sends no other information about
what you do with the app. Interested in opinions if anyone thinks this
is too much or maybe should be disabled by default.
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I haven't seen any posts on this yet and this practice is pretty common among most android apps at this point.

my opinion is that it is indeed too much, though not at this stage surprising as many devs try to collect valuable data for future use. I really only noticed this when the app prompted my firewall to block it

If possible may I suggest that either a seperate non tracking build be available or (as mozilla hopefuilly does) have disabled by default.

Given how CyanogenMod eventually turned out (and how one of the leads blogged about how 'painful' it was not to be able mine this data) I do think that the devs for ppsspp need to make it clear what direction they are taking the software so that users are aware that they are (currently) being data mined for usage and (possibly) more in the future, as is usually the case.

[TheDax]

There's a discussion thread on Github about it where Henrik has clarified about what he can see, and what might happen with it.

Short version of what he can see:
1: New users per day
2: Active users per day
3: How many users are from which countries(e.g. "Oh, we have 700 users from Chile.")
4: What Android devices users have(e.g. "Oh, 10% of our userbase uses the Xperia Play!")
5: How long people play/use PPSSPP on average per day

It's experimental and might not make it into an official release. Just stay tuned.

[Henrik]

Thanks for your input, I will be turning it off again very soon, either making it opt in or deleting it. Just want one day of data from early adopters Remember that I have not pushed this onto Google Play or anything, it's just an experiment to see if there's any useful information out there. Using the Git builds is for advanced users so hopefully they read the git log.

[yuppydown00]

(10-09-2013 06:36 PM)Henrik Wrote:  Thanks for your input, I will be turning it off again very soon, either making it opt in or deleting it. Just want one day of data from early adopters Remember that I have not pushed this onto Google Play or anything, it's just an experiment to see if there's any useful information out there. Using the Git builds is for advanced users so hopefully they read the git log.

thanks for the response guys. I went over that thread and it does look like there is a strong slant toward including user tracking in the future. Might I suggest a default off option that also bugs the user about configuring whether they want to be tracked or not.

That way users are drawn into making an active decision on whether to opt in or not. That or continue to be bugged about it (because to do honest if you leave it as default off most users won't have an incentive to change it, if you leave the default to on that would be removing user agency which can make some uncomfortable).

could be a compromise solution if you are really hungry for this and more data later