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Comment by bschne

1 year ago

I think a relative of mine once almost signed up for another market research thing that would have done essentially this, redirecting all their phone's internet traffic through a VPN & proxy controlled by the market research company, including installing their Cert. They would have received some small compensation for it, and of course consented to having it installed. I don't recall the company being misleading about anything, exactly. That being said, while I generally am not in favor of overly paternalistic policies, I wonder how meaningful the consent of someone with relatively little technical knowledge for something like this really is. They were not misleading about things, but also didn't fully spell things in a way that would really drive home what was going on for someone unaware.

Just because some market research companies do informed disclosure, says nothing at all about how Onavo did this (and Onavo didn't advertise themselves to users as "market research company", just as some free neat app that would categorize your internet data usage).