Apps doing year wrapped gives you a hint on how are you being tracked. There is probably a legal issue there somewhere like data retention.

Norah (pup/it/she)

I use the journalling app Daylio, which has a wrapped feature. It's all done locally, on device. Not every implementation of this feature is spying on you.

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I love hearing about how protective the GDPR is and wish it was a worldwide initiative with the teeth to truly protect humanity from themselves.

haui

If it just uses data that is on your device right now, that is okay. But if it keeps track on things, even on your device, it can lead to security vulnerabilities, depending how it is stored how long it is kept.

And most importantly, enshittification and automatic updates could easily change that policy to retroactively hoover up all that precious data. This stuff is insanely valuable too.

Not saying daylio is doing it or going to. Just that keeping data comes with a risk. ideally, there should be clear documentation what is being kept, where and for how long.

Norah (pup/it/she)

You're right, I should just refuse to trust any developers and go back to the paper journal I never used.

haui

Yes to part one. You should not trust devs that do opt out data collection of any kind. If you‘re interested in a funny way to learn about this stuff, check out „security nightmares“ from the recent 38c3 congress.

I suggest you keep track of your thoughts and moods with open source apps.

Norah (pup/it/she)

Daylio does not do "opt-out data collection". IT doesn't even have "opt-in".

Yes, and while that's a fine ideal, it does not always produce well-made or polished applications. For myself, Daylio is a medical/mental health app that assisted with my diagnosis of Bipolar disorder. Unfortunately FOSS apps related to medical stuff are not the greatest or most widely developed.

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This app is pretty cool. Just saying this because it let me export my data when I wanted to stop using it. Which is not a common feature in proprietary software so hats off to the devs.

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not a common feature in proprietary software

Just so you know, the GDPR mandates that you can at any time get a full export of all your personal data from anyone who's processing it in a common, machine readable format. It is laudable though to have that integrated as a feature in the software, rather than jumping through hoops contacting support etc.

shastaxc

If they did that it would be far too easy for people to boost listens and ratings with bots

Fonzie!

The only software that could do that for me was Steam; saying when I played which games how long, and if it appeared to be on a Steam Deck or not. It did not nearly track all the Deck data, it seems if the Deck has no Internet connection for long enough it kind of just discards data it held and it never gets synced to Steam. For my desktop it was accurate, but only the game time stats it already let me know it tracks.

Since nothing else could “wrap” my annual data I think I'm going fine.

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Just to add on, it's not just they let you export data in a cool PDF, it also lets you export the data as a CSV so it can be parsed by other things.

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Which apps do that? None of mind have suggested anything.

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I'm aware of spotify, youtube, and to a lesser extent strava and duolingo.

I don't use either one of them, but people have posted screenshots from all those on social media.

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Yeah, I try not to install apps from major companies and use 3rd party when possible. O always just assume that those are tracking you even if they say they aren't

Justin

the difference is that mp3 players didn't upload all that information to an American datacenter. Also tracking times of day, building profiles on listeners, etc.

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Yep, if there's a third party app available I'll take those instead, or for the likes of spotify I just download my music for offline playback. Not a fan of streaming in general, I'm a big proponent of file ownership. A bit different for youtube videos that I treat as disposable (consume it once and likely never again), but for music and movies, I need to hold on to the files. Even if I got legitimate access through Netflix or Prime, if it's good, I'll download a copy for archiving purposes.

For other apps I'll try to get a FOSS alternative or if that fails (or is butt ugly) I'll go with a small dev on google play instead.

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Antenna-Pod does it this way as well.

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I just use Grayjay for youtube.

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But "wrapped" type things aren't using button press telemetry. They're using data that the user wants access to anyways, like their Spotify play history, or Duolingo lesson progress.

It doesn't even make sense to anonymize that data because people want to see their play history, not what was popular last week.

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They need that assigned to specific use accounts so that people can look at their play history. A thing that people often want to do with their music players.