Clear Beta and Privacy

[oregontrail]

Hi, I have been a member of the clear TestFlight for a while. I really enjoy using the app, especially the multi-touch gesture to gather and move around multiple items at once. That one makes me smile every time I use it.

However, I have not switched to the Clear beta out of privacy concerns. My lists sometimes contain sensitive or proprietary information which I would like to keep private. There are at least two things which concern me.

1. I can’t tell whether or not the backup system for the new Clear is based on iCloud. When using iCloud storage, it’s my understanding that only my phone and possibly Apple can view or decrypt that information, and it is not shared with the developer of the app unless explicitly uploaded to the developer’s servers.

2. With pre-release software, it is common for the app to send crash dumps to the developer in case of a problem. I am concerned that these crash dumps might include my list information.

It is also not clear to me in general how Clear uses my list data and how (or how not) that data might be available to be viewed by the developers or other third parties (for example a log aggregation service or other developer tools).

Lastly, I would prefer for even the iCloud backup to be encrypted with a key that is derived locally in the app using PBKDF2 or similar.

[phillryu]

Double checked on this stuff for you.

1. The backup is stored in your iCloud yeah. We don’t have access to it.

2. When you get a crash in Clear, you have an option popup to send a report. This report/zip does not include your personal list data, it logs via abstracted number IDs so we have a sense of you did this with this item, etc. but no idea what the item was.

3. We have some basic analytics that helps us with design. (For instance, very interesting how few people regularly clear their completed items!) But the actual contents of your lists stay private on your device. We can just see overall that someone just created a new item, or checked off an item, etc. All anonymized.