Notice the settings all greyed out? The web link (xfinity.com/myxfi) they tell you to go to is just a page telling you the same “webpage is no longer available, please download our app” bs.
(I don’t normally use chrome btw, just used chrome to make sure there isn’t any weird browser compatibility issue.)
Traffic within your network. So if you have digitized your (G-rated legitimately purchased) media collection, and stream that from a PC to your phone on your home network, they could potentially track that, if they control your router.
As your ISP, they wouldn’t be able to see any of that traffic otherwise.
Every device connected to the network, their Mac addresses, any unencrypted traffic. There are lots of local IoT devices that assume they’re safe behind your router. They could get info on everything you watch on TV if you have a Roku (and probably other ones too), see when you open your fridge, your thermostat
A browser limits what kind of tracking they can do, while an app gives them full control over telemetry and usage data collection. Go look at the permissions for some of those bespoke apps, and you’ll quickly realize that they’re basically using it to profile the fuck out of you.
I never understood this point. In a browser you can track every cursor movement, every keystroke, every scroll action, every loss of focus, and send it to your servers in real time, all without the user noticing. How is tracking easier in an app?
The app can do all that, plus - if permitted - track the phone’s real world physical location, harvest the phone owner’s full contact list, turn on their microphone and camera, and browse their camera photograph history.
I think if more people understood that, we would see a lot less app usage.
All those permissions have good and worthwhile uses, but they’re not only being used in those good and worthwhile ways.
Edit: My shower thought: this must be some kind of “Golden Age” for hit men. I bet they spend their workday on all the murder with barely any on the detective work. I bet their profit-to-cost is sky high in the age of the smart phone.
It takes more development to push an app. They want you to download the app so they can track you even when you’re off the site and then they sell that data to advertisers.
Apps became popular in the early days of ios and android for a few reasons.
Network speeds at the time were slower so you could save a lot of loading time by downloading the “app version” of a product and essentially having all of the images and media essentially preloaded to a device.
Hardware was a lot weaker in those early days of smartphones by a large margin so it also helped to have an optimized version of your website even if that website was something that was otherwise basic. If you had social features there was also the benefit of better integrated notifications(which browsers have now but didnt back in 06/07). Also the internet of the mid to late 00s was riddled with mouse centric hover menus, and Flash multimedia and this was not mobile phone friendly.
Then there is just marketing. Theres an app for that! Its funny that ios traps people in so thoroughly into not using another message app than what’s built in when the early days of the iphone were marked with downloading and exploring all kinds of different apps. Android emulated this approach and even before advertisers and businesses realized they could lock users in and track everything they did there was a rush to make apps simply because smart phone users wanted apps. I remember working customer service for a website years ago and our site worked fine on mobile and I had some customers complain because “apps are the future” and its like I dont see why you’d need a purpose built app for this one site, and for our many faults our mobile experience is actually pretty solid!
Of course after all was said and done there was a revelation made by the new age era of social media and web development. You could use dedicated apps as a way to track people to sell advertising dollars and also make it easier to keep them captive specifically on your service. Afterall they arent even using a browser to access your stuff theyre using your app to access your service, and get notifications, and get custom tailor made advertising and content and stay on your app forever and ever and ever.
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