Last week I wrote an article about how certain applications are spying on you and tracking some of your personal data. Although the practice is legal, it is nonetheless very controversial.
Thanks to the collaboration of Saurik, BigBoss, and the major companies tracking your apps stats, it is now possible to opt out of being spied on via an application appropriately named PricaCy.
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.
I am positively surprised to see how the major tracking providers were proactive and willing to address the matter by collaborating with Saurik and BigBoss.
If you’re slightly concerned about your privacy, I suggest you download PrivaCy, which is available for free from Cydia. Hopefully, Apple will release a similar feature to allow the opt out from data tracking for non-jailbroken iPhones also.