I dunno, I get what they’re saying. On my phone I much rather use a native app if it’s available than a website, even if they have a dedicated mobile version. Navigation is much better, UI is better, etc.
The app is asking for a million permissions that are completely unnecessary. They are just as much of a data kraken as facbeook, google and apple, with the exception of people being fully transparent about professional achievements and qualifications. That’s a definite reason to never give them access to my phone.
It’s not though. Do you have the app? I do. On iOS you can literally see what it has already requested to have access to, and if you said yes or no.
The app has never requested access to my contacts, meaning it has zero access to my contacts. Location? Not even once. Search history? Never. Like this isn’t even hard to prove. I just took this screenshot an hour ago:
See? Linkedin has never requested access to my contacts, which is the very first thing listed in the screenshot on this thread about what information it may get access to. People seem to be overlooking the word “may”. It may have access to your contacts…if you try to do something specifically with your phone contacts and then it asks you if it can and you say yes. Outside of that? No access.
The only data that the app has access to is what I do on the app, which is exactly the same data that it has access to when I access linkedin via their website in a web browser.
when i don’t use a site often, i don’t want to waste 200MB of space installing the app.
it’s fine for an app to have more functions than the website, but some companies cripple their mobile website functions just to get people to download the app so they can track user behavior more. sites that do that just make me stop using them. looking at you, tripadvisor and yelp.
Sure, but on iOS at least you can simply deny any tracking requests. I just looked and out of the listed data points on the App Store that the app might collect, it has access to literally none of them other than “other data”, which in my case is my photos since I have uploaded photos to linked in. I can retract that permission at will too.
It hasn’t even requested access to my contacts, for example. If it had it would show in the contacts section in the iOS settings menu here:
there are a bunch of other things they can track that aren’t considered “tracking requests”. time you spend on each page, whether you click a new popup, etc.
Websites can track clicks like you said, but on top of that, apps can track where exactly on the screen you tap, how long you scroll, where on the page you paused to look, etc.
If you read the link you sent, you’ll see that those tools don’t exist on most websites - it’s a dedicated software for screen recording so product managers can understand how users use the site.
It’s actually a great example to highlight what I said - on most websites, you can’t track detailed user behavior, only clicks and the time of the click. You need to install software to find that out. On apps, you can track where the user scrolls, where they stop scrolling/scroll more slowly, and a lot more.
On a website, all you know is that the user took 2 minutes between loading the page and clicking button X. On an app, you can see that the user scrolled on the right edge (probably right handed), paused along the way at section A, exited the app (maybe they got a notification), came back to scroll down and click on button X.
I dunno, I get what they’re saying. On my phone I much rather use a native app if it’s available than a website, even if they have a dedicated mobile version. Navigation is much better, UI is better, etc.
The app is asking for a million permissions that are completely unnecessary. They are just as much of a data kraken as facbeook, google and apple, with the exception of people being fully transparent about professional achievements and qualifications. That’s a definite reason to never give them access to my phone.
It’s not though. Do you have the app? I do. On iOS you can literally see what it has already requested to have access to, and if you said yes or no.
The app has never requested access to my contacts, meaning it has zero access to my contacts. Location? Not even once. Search history? Never. Like this isn’t even hard to prove. I just took this screenshot an hour ago:
https://imgur.com/a/1Sl4dyq
See? Linkedin has never requested access to my contacts, which is the very first thing listed in the screenshot on this thread about what information it may get access to. People seem to be overlooking the word “may”. It may have access to your contacts…if you try to do something specifically with your phone contacts and then it asks you if it can and you say yes. Outside of that? No access.
The only data that the app has access to is what I do on the app, which is exactly the same data that it has access to when I access linkedin via their website in a web browser.
when i don’t use a site often, i don’t want to waste 200MB of space installing the app.
it’s fine for an app to have more functions than the website, but some companies cripple their mobile website functions just to get people to download the app so they can track user behavior more. sites that do that just make me stop using them. looking at you, tripadvisor and yelp.
Which is fair. If it’s something you use all the time, obviously an app is usually going to be the way to go.
But the reason they want you to install the app is so they can send push notifications and track you more effectively
Sure, but on iOS at least you can simply deny any tracking requests. I just looked and out of the listed data points on the App Store that the app might collect, it has access to literally none of them other than “other data”, which in my case is my photos since I have uploaded photos to linked in. I can retract that permission at will too.
It hasn’t even requested access to my contacts, for example. If it had it would show in the contacts section in the iOS settings menu here:
https://imgur.com/a/1Sl4dyq
there are a bunch of other things they can track that aren’t considered “tracking requests”. time you spend on each page, whether you click a new popup, etc.
Whether you click a new popup on what? In the Linkedin app?
On the website they’re already tracking how long you spend on each page and everything you click on.
Websites can track clicks like you said, but on top of that, apps can track where exactly on the screen you tap, how long you scroll, where on the page you paused to look, etc.
Websites have been tracking that exact same stuff for years.
https://www.hotjar.com/blog/session-recording-tools/#
If you read the link you sent, you’ll see that those tools don’t exist on most websites - it’s a dedicated software for screen recording so product managers can understand how users use the site.
It’s actually a great example to highlight what I said - on most websites, you can’t track detailed user behavior, only clicks and the time of the click. You need to install software to find that out. On apps, you can track where the user scrolls, where they stop scrolling/scroll more slowly, and a lot more.
On a website, all you know is that the user took 2 minutes between loading the page and clicking button X. On an app, you can see that the user scrolled on the right edge (probably right handed), paused along the way at section A, exited the app (maybe they got a notification), came back to scroll down and click on button X.
The point is that any website can get that data if they want to.