What is the color of the fur of the cat who will be the first one to start chewing on your leg after you die alone at home and leave all of your pets without any food or water for days?
That one made me pause. For any single people with pets (like me), please sign up for http://DeathSwitch.com or a similar service.
Spyware is typically unknown to the user, hence the word "spy". In this case, the developer is 100% transparent and users are paying for these features.
Tracking and accountability are accurate descriptions here.
In real life, people can and do install apps on the devices of other people.
You ignore this possibility, but let's not pretend: The app can be installed by a suspicious family member who knows the password (as many family members do, in the real off-HN world), and then hidden from the user of the device.
This is absolutely the definition of spyware, even if the author either A) sincerely believes there is a legitimate purpose here, or B) contrived a clever cover story for it.
I don't know which is true, A or B, but it's quite remarkable that people would supposedly sign their real names to reviews of such an app.
And google plus can be installed and configured to share location with someone else. Yet it's a clearly just a social app, though it doesn't show a notification that it's sharing your location.
Just because something can be used maliciously doesn't make it malicious. When people take that idea to the next level, we get abuse like Microsoft shutting down no-ip.
I'm not familiar with the Google Plus location sharing, but I seem to recall using the old Google location sharing app, and receiving a periodic email from Google reminding me that it was turned on.
Google's spyware policy is crystal clear that "Apps that track device user behavior must present users with a full-time persistent notification and icon that clearly identifies the app."
This deliberately violated that policy, and promoted the feature (disabling the notification) that violates the policy.
It clearly was spyware as defined by the Google policy.
Incidentally, pretty much every page of the Ever Accountable website also contains violations of the Android Brand Guidelines [1] with regard to the use of the Android and Google Play trademarks.
Personally, I've tried five times to make small purchases with Bitcoin (this was several years ago). In all cases I was ripped off and never received product.
It's not going to be government regulations that kill Bitcoin, its the associations with illicit drugs, child pornography, and dishonesty of vendors like Robocoin.
On the other hand, I've been into Bitcoin since early 2011, have made hundreds of purchases with Bitcoin, gotten made for major contract jobs in Bitcoin, paid other contractors in Bitcoin, and never been ripped off. You just have to exercise some caution and do your due diligence.
Unfortunately, Bitcoin has attracted more than its fair share of scammers -- in part because the core community was at one time pretty naive -- but it's also full of honest people who are attracted to Bitcoin for ideological reasons, and fellow technophiles who are happy to engage in honest commerce with other people.
That's OK. As long as there is a large enough population using Bitcoin to create a small economy, that's fine with me. Right now, I get paid in Bitcoin, and pay for about 40%-50% of my household expenses in Bitcoin (and increasing monthly).
For people who are attracted to Bitcoin for ideological or technological reasons, mass adoption would be nice, but it's not as important to us as it is to the massive wave of "to the moon!" speculators who came in last fall.
On IRC, somebody once put a bug bounty of 2BTC for a geometric problem. I fixed the bug in two hours (including the time it took to look up the geometry formulas...) and did receive the bitcoin. This was at the time that Bitcoin was trending $850 each.
It seems to me though, that due to bitcoin's relative newness and grey market status, you're going to see a lot of scammers and bad businessmen related to it. It's high risk in that sense, and you need to do your research. Give it time, and the bad business practices will be weeded out, and stability will come. This is the pain of early adoption.
I made multiple purchases with Bitcoin both small and large (in particular I've been buying air tickets exclusively with Bitcoin for the past year) and have never been scammed.
People have gotten very used to some of the niceties and existing organizations that have evolved around normal currency (Over a lot of years. Probably a few orders magnitude more years than how long Bitcoin has even existed). Such a safety net does not exist for Bitcoin, yet.
It's just a matter of people realizing that fact, and re-acting accordingly. Be more cautious, perhaps come up with some sort of novel organization to fill this need, even.
How do they know?