[p49k]

FYI, this post is essentially an advertisement. The one app found to be the “good” one which doesn’t share data is also the same company that did the research and published the report, which means they could have manipulated any number of data points to get the result that favors them, such as the criteria for what a “top 20” app is, the number of apps to analyze (20), etc.

Feel like it should be disclosed in the title; maybe my fault, but I got pretty far into reading this before realizing it was essentially an ad.

[marinosbern]

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this. I absolutely understand your concerns and I would be equally skeptical if I was reading this. Ultimately, anyone is free to repeat this analysis independently and see for themselves. Everything presented in our report is evidenced, recorded and cross-checked very extensively over a long period of time in anticipation of this. You'll also notice that we try to include as many references as possible to independent analyses and articles

Re manipulation of app pool, we searched very extensively both on our own and using outside services like AppFollow and AppFigures to get global rankings and these really were the top 20 we could find. You'll see that by the last one, we are reaching single-digit ratings, so we capped it at that. There are some other apps that match the "safety" keyword, but are not relevant to this study. For example an enterprise app for managing OSHA reports or a passive police scanner. If you can point us to an app that should be on the list, we will happily update this

Re more disclosure, this definitely should be read critically and with the understanding that we are one of the people in the space. From my point of view, I see the word "Parachute" on the URL, nav bar logo and author before getting to the title of the blog post. If you have a suggestion on how to better elucidate this, please let me know. We do believe that companies have the right to shine light on something, even if it's in the space in which they operate, but the reader should be fully aware of this at all times

[rndgermandude]

>If you have a suggestion on how to better elucidate this, please let me know.

Put it in the actual text. I don't necessarily look at urls, navbars, logos, authors.

Prefixing the text with something like the following would go a long way: Notice: This analysis was performed by Parachute, one of the companies competing in this space. We tried to keep it fair and balanced, regardless, and invite the readers to fact-check our statements and data, which we have made available as well.

[marinosbern]

Done! Thanks so much for suggesting!

[vorpalhex]

I'd be curious about LiveSafe - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livesafe.a...

[marinosbern]

Here you go — findings for LiveSafe:

Branch, Crashlytics, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager

Our understanding is that it's an enterprise app not available to consumers, which is why we did not list its findings in the report