Android Apps - Required Data / Information

[OnMyWay]

21 minutes ago, Jack Peterson said:

Very good, but did you have to pay for that as I am somewhat a believer in "there is No Free Lunch"

 I so, then they have gotten some detail from you, If not Someones is losing Money EH?

 

17 minutes ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

No you pay nothing unless you are calling a non viber user so in other words if I called my mums landline then I need to buy credit which is much less than normal calls. 

I think what Jack meant was that in some way you are paying.  Which links back to my original concern about an app like PhoneLeash wanting to get so much info from my phone.

Here is a strange coincidence.  You mentioned Viber and that reminded me that my friends have recommended WhatsApp for free calls and text, like Viber.  So I jumped over to their website and happened across something that relates to this whole topic.

https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads?

The weird thing is, WhatsApp is free, as far as I can see.

Here is the text from the link:

Why we don't sell ads

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.
– Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Brian and I spent a combined 20 years at Yahoo!, working hard to keep the site working. And yes, working hard to sell ads, because that's what Yahoo! did. It gathered data and it served pages and it sold ads.

We watched Yahoo! get eclipsed in size and reach by Google... a more efficient and more profitable ad seller. They knew what you were searching for, so they could gather your data more efficiently and sell better ads.

These days companies know literally everything about you, your friends, your interests, and they use it all to sell ads.

When we sat down to start our own thing together three years ago we wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse. We wanted to spend our time building a service people wanted to use because it worked and saved them money and made their lives better in a small way. We knew that we could charge people directly if we could do all those things. We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads.

No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow. We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and disappointed about who they didn't). We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake... and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.

Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it's all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.

Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.

At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That's our product and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.

When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

[Jollygoodfellow]

6 minutes ago, OnMyWay said:

When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

Although I have not had a chance to use viber yet there are no ads on the desktop application or smartphone app. 

[robert k]

Viber may gather information even if they don't show ads. I don't worry about anyone tracking what I think of buying, it's not a problem. If it's a choice of seeing ads for what I was thinking of buying and something I would have no interest in what so ever, what I was searching for is probably a slight improvement. Most of the ads are ones I had already seen in my search anyway and require no thought to dismiss. 

If I really needed to keep things secret I would get an AT&T Tracphone, pay cash for it, buy a load card for it and my name would never be attached to it. It would just be a phone for your alter ego because someone might find who that phone called and that someone with that phone was shopping Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures on e-bay. I have heard them called the "no-track phone". They are fairly cheap and will ship worldwide from Amazon.

[Gratefuled]

18 hours ago, Jack Peterson said:

 I like a phone that does what it says on the Tin (Can) send Texts, make or receive either a text or a call anything else I use my PC, Easy Peezy. I see all these people out and about with Hi tech Stuff, As I said to my daughter wanna be private leave the damn thing at Home But.............. some just can't seem to live without the Internet  They can't all be Warren Buffets that NEED Internet on the Phone otherwise we would not have these Conversations about "Can I live On ?????" privacy, peace & Quiet is something no one will get if we all act like teenagers that have forgotten or just don't know how to hold a conversation. Negative? Hmmmmmmm maybe but

This is why I have a cheap Dumb Phone. So does my wife and our 16 year old. We, as parents are still in control, or should be. Once you lose control you lose the respect of the child. Parents should be the ones who control their child's social network. 

We have allowed our 16 year old to have a Facebook account but we set it up and we can check and see the activity in it. We also used our cell phone number instead of his to monitor who sends messages and requests to be friends. 

PREVENTION IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE CURE

[Neil_Hines]

On 8/25/2016 at 0:13 AM, Jollygoodfellow said:

No you pay nothing unless you are calling a non viber user so in other words if I called my mums landline then I need to buy credit which is much less than normal calls. 

 

Viber it's good for Voice and Video call. But didn't I call in landline number I only call Viber to Viber. Can you suggest me how much it will charge for calling in landline number?

[mogo51]

On 8/25/2016 at 2:09 PM, Jack Peterson said:

 Very good, but did you have to pay for that as I am somewhat a believer in "there is No Free Lunch"

 I so, then they have gotten some detail from you, If not Someones is losing Money EH?

Viber, LIne, Whatsapp are all free and save you heaps on calls overseas.  Before I installed them, I was spending 400bht a month here in Thailand on o/s and local calls, now lucky to be 100.

Of course there is also messenger on Facebook, which seems to be about the best reception.

Edited May 5, 2017 by mogo51

[jpbago]

9 hours ago, mogo51 said:

Of course there is also messenger on Facebook, which seems to be about the best reception.

FB seems to be the fastest and most used in PI. If I write a long message, like more than 10 words, I like to use email as I am slow at texting but....I have to send a message (text) to tell them to read my message (email).

[Jack Peterson]

1 hour ago, jpbago said:

FB seems to be the fastest and most used in PI.

 Now who would have thought that?