Saurik releases PrivaCy

We all know the great man behind the creation of Cydia, Saurik aka Jay Freeman. Well he has outdone himself this time by creating a system preference called PrivaCy for iPhone and iPod that allows the user to decide whether they want App development companies to be able to take statistical information from any iDevice that is using their apps.

In his Cydia release notes he says this:

It has recently come to the attention of angry Cydia users that they are being watched by many of the applications they have installed from the App Store.

Sites like I-phone-home have been discussing this in detail, leading to a post on the Dev-Team Blog about one provider in particular: Pinch Media.

Pinch Media, however, is not the only tracking provider: on the iPhone alone there are three other companies:
Flurry, Medialets, and Mobclix.

Developers integrate these systems for much the same reason people use Google Analytics: to better understand how their customers use their products.

Unfortunately, due to the restrictions Apple places on their App Store, these providers are unable to directly interface with the users they affect.

Instead, they rely on developers of every single application to document what information is being logged, and allow users to “opt-out” if they desire.

Thanks to applicatons like redsn0w and Cydia, however, these restrictions are no longer important: a system-wide global “opt-out” setting is now possible.

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.

This is a major step in the bid for iPhone freedom and breaking the shackles of Big Brother (Apple).

PrivaCy is available in Cydia now for all iDevices running 3.0