[m463]

They have no power to change it and no credible alternatives.

Apple and Google create systems that make it possible to harvest data with no user control possible. Neither provide the ability to see or stop data leaving your mobile device.

They do this so they can attract developers to their platform.

They do provide "controls" to prevent some sort of data access to prevent mindful users from leaving the platform.

It's just that the control have the same sort of ambiguity as a privacy policy. Many people still don't understand that "location services" really means two-way, or that bluetooth can be a proxy for very fine-grained location tracking.

I hope that we finally get alternative phones (say pinephone or purism) because I firmly believe there's a HUGE market opportunity for this sort of thing.

[sumedh]

Your cell phone service provider can collect and sell this data as well, its not just Apple and Google.