Privacy Policy Update

Last year I wrote about my Privacy Policy, outlining the approach I take on my mobile apps, and trying to justify the trade-offs I’m making.

This is a follow-up on what’s changed in the mean time.

Removing Crashlytics and Fabric

I’ve been trying to remove 3rd party code from my apps as much as possible.

This is a really more of a practical concern - fewer dependencies makes it easier to change the code/keep up to date on OS changes/be agile - than privacy worries (not really knowing what 3rd party libraries are actually doing).

Therefore I decided to remove Crashlytics and Fabric from my own apps.

Both Apple and Google offer built-in basic analytics and crash reporting via the App Store Connect and Play Store servers respectively. I realised for my own apps, this is perfectly sufficient for what I need.

All I really care about is finding out about crashes or issues, plus every so often knowing the breakdown of OS versions my users have so as to plan when I can drop support for older devices.

This isn’t an anti-Google stance, as I’m still using Firebase and Google Mobile Ads. It’s just why give my user’s data away any more than I need to?

Summary

Your mileage may vary, and I’m not sure I’d advise this approach for all my clients, but I’m happy this will work well for me and my users.