Improved opt-out methods for Pinch Analytics

It’s always been possible to implement an application-level opt-out for Pinch Analytics, simply by giving the user a preference and only initializing the analytics library when the user has not opted-out. In response to some of our developers’ requests, we’ve completed two initiatives to make it easier for device owners to opt-out of Pinch Analytics’ anonymous data collection.

First, we’ve released a new version of our Pinch Analytics library that makes it even easier to add application-level opt-outs. When the device owner opts-out, no anonymous usage data is collection, and all anonymous usage data for that application cached on the phone is deleted. We’ve made the opt-out code as flexible as possible, so the opt-out mechanism can be placed inside the application itself or within the Settings application. Developers who wish to add these optional opt-outs can find full documentation and sample code within our developer portal.

Second, we reached out to one of the main developers in the jailbroken community and asked if the system-wide opt-out not possible on unaltered iPhones could be implemented for jailbroken iPhones. We don’t recommend jailbreaking your iPhone, but since a significant minority of iPhone users do (about 8% at the moment), we wanted to provide the opt-out for that community. Many thanks to the iPhone Dev Team, who made this possible on short notice.

As saurik described it in the package release notes,

Developers integrate these systems for much the same reason people use Google Analytics: to better understand how their customers use their products.

Unfortunately, due to the restrictions Apple places on their App Store, these providers are unable to directly interface with the users they affect.

Instead, they rely on developers of every single application to document what information is being logged, and allow users to “opt-out” if they desire.

Thanks to applicatons like redsn0w and Cydia, however, these restrictions are no longer important: a system-wide global “opt-out” setting is now possible.

Pinch Media realized this fact, and took the lead in contacting me regarding getting this feature out there to all the users of jailbroken devices: they care.

With BigBoss, we then contacted all of the other providers, getting not only their blessing, but also their technical expertise in disabling their systems.

The result is PrivaCy: a new Settings panel that allows you to selectively opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics to each of these providers.

This extension was a team effort, and was able to be executed as quickly as it was thanks to the help and interest of the companies involved.

We anticipate a modest decrease in the reliability of our jailbroken iPhone statistics due to this new application – developers who use Pinch Analytics to evaluate whether to build new features specifically for jailbroken users should take this into account, as should developers using the overall statistics in our newsletter to decide whether to build applications for the jailbroken ecosystem.

System-wide opt-outs for non-jailbroken-phones will be implemented should they become technically possible.