Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day

New submitter postglock (917809) writes "Swype is a popular third-party keyboard for Android phones (and also available for Windows phones and other platforms). It's currently the second-most-popular paid keyboard in Google Play (behind SwiftKey), and the 17th highest of all paid apps. Recently, users have discovered that it's been accessing location data extremely frequently, making almost 4000 requests per day, or 2.5 requests per minute. The developers claim that this is to facilitate implementation of 'regional dialects,' but cannot explain why such frequent polling is required, or why this still occurs if the regional function is disabled. Some custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod can block this tracking, but most users would be unaware that such tracking is even occurring." Readers in the linked thread don't all seem to see the same thing; if you are a Swype user, do you see thousands of location requests, none, or something in between?

Comments

Re:This sounds more like incompetence...

[TheRaven64]

The Google Keyboard for Android sends what you're typing to Google servers 'to improve suggestions,' so I don't think that asking for your location a lot is the worst invasion of privacy of a mainstream on-screen keyboard app. The AOSP keyboard also requires a phenomenal list of permissions, including the ability to download files without notification, read contacts, modify or delete contents of USB storage and view accounts on the device. No idea why it needs all of these things - I wouldn't mind so much if it had access to all of my data for improving predictions if it didn't also have the ability to make network connections.

Can someone blow the lid on Android Apps?

[Tasha26]

Each time an App wanted to update in the last 6 months, it was to increase its access to areas of my Samsung phone that I thought were completely un-necessary for it to work properly. Makes you wonder who in the Google Store is rubber stamping the ok on such Apps! When will privacy groups wake up and start lawsuits against App makers and/or Google? Maybe it will fist require a popular tech website to run a Top-10 Worst Privacy Infringing Apps in Google store.

Onr reason more to not use it

[houghi]

If anytime, they should only do that when I launch it the first time. And otherwise, it should look at the setings my phone is using and ONLy as a way to sufets what you want, not to set it.

Mind you, they are not the only ones who think language and location are related. Among others, Google does this too. It does not look at my browser settings (which are in English) but instead guesses from my IP what language I should prefer. I live in Belgium aand guessing the language by location is wrong a LOT of the times.

There is a reason why my browser setting is in English. That is because I WANT it in English. And just because I visit my parents in Spain or my sister in Germany or friends in the USofA does not mean there is any change in preferece in my language.

To me it is broken by design.