3PHealth Blog
The real reason no one wants to solve the Privacy problem
Friday, January 6th, 2012
It’s all about the “Benjamin’s” . Here’s a simple graphics that says it all…
The guy on the left represents the Mobile OS manufacturers. In exchange for “free” they want access to your privacy so they can sell more ads. They’ve invested an incredible amount of money in infrastructure to support you. And as the old saying goes “pie is not free at the truck stop”. Someone has to pay for all this “stuff”.
So whose the guy on the right? Well right now he’s the Enterprise user and he’s got a real problem. The lack of consistent privacy controls across devices prohibits them from extending their Web strategy to Mobile users. Lots of people are now bringing their own devices to work (BYOD) and corporations are looking for ways to integrate their current Web services with those devices. The problem – the current Mobile browsers (with the exception of RIM, Opera and Mozilla) don’t allow for plugins that could be used to increase privacy.
So why not switch to the alternate browsers? Well RIM means a Blackberry, Opera means everything goes through their servers in Norway. Which leaves Mozilla – it supports plugins but there aren’t any that increase privacy. And there’s no developers building anything for them. (Because the current browsers that come with the device are “good enough”).
Which if you think about it leaves a huge opportunity open to someone enterprising enough (pun intended) to build a new browser, one that gives you a Choice in what can be shared and with whom.
PS. The W3C solution is just a guideline and offers no complete solution. As for “self-regulation”, well everyone agrees that doesn’t work unless there’s an incentive.
So there you have it – there’s no financial incentive to solve the Privacy problem – simply because there’s too much money in NOT solving it. As for the Enterprise – therein lies the opportunity.
Why is Privacy such a hard problem to solve?
Friday, January 6th, 2012
Back in October I wrote a blog post titled “Privacy on the Internet is NOT “binary” Since then i’ve been giving Privacy a lot more thought. And so it seems has the IETF (The Internet Engineering Task Force)
From the IETF draft document published, November 14, 2011… (link)
[snip]
The goal ( of this protocol ) is to allow a user to express their personal preference regarding cross-site tracking ( using an HTTP X request header ) to each server and web application that they communicate with via HTTP, thereby allowing each server to either adjust their behavior to meet the user’s expectations or reach a separate agreement with the userto satisfy both parties. Key to that notion of expression is that it MUST reflect the user’s preference, not the preference of some institutional or network-imposed mechanism outside the user’s control.
[/snip]
In short they want the browser to send a message to the server that says don’t track me. So I thought I would check back in to see how much progress they are making? It’s a little techie but worth a read.
Privacy is a really tough problem to solve. My personal opinion is that the W3C is on the right track, however without the ability to influence to the Browser manufacturers there is little chance for implementation. It’s going to require changes to the browser and to the Web server. Changing the HTTP protocol doesn’t solve anything – as it’s just a communication mechanism. What you have to change is both end of the pipe – and that is going to take some real innovation. (hint www.3pmobile.com)
Here’s the closed issues with some notes to follow along with.
ISSUE-2: What is the meaning of DNT (Do Not Track) header?
[CLOSED] “Does the presence of a DNT header field on requests always indicate an explicit choice”.
The answer we agreed upon is “yes”.
[Peter notes]… means that if the Web server sees this header in the browser requesting the page then the user has said explicitly that they do not wished to be tracked.
ISSUE-50: Are DNT headers sent to first parties? Yes
ISSUE-70: Does a past HTTP request with DNT set affect future HTTP requests? No
ISSUE-40: Enable Do Not Track just for a session, rather than being stored
[CLOSED] Resolved in DNT Call 2011-10-26: The user agents are free to send different DNT values for different sessions. We agreed that this is a user-interface issue and out of scope on its own.
[Peter notes…] this means that the browser can send a do not track header for one session but then change to another value in another session – obviously the hard part is figuring out how to implement this. Think of a whitelist (which would need to be added to the browser) so that the user can select which Web sites that can track them. This is beyond the scope of the W3C to implement – the browser OEM’s will have to do it.
ISSUE-68: Should there be functionality for syncing preferences about tracking across different browsers?
[CLOSED] Resolved in DNT Call 2011-10-26: The user agents may or may not sync. However, this is out of scope for this spec.
[Peter notes…] this is a big problem – what happens if I switch browsers? How does it remember my privacy settings?
ISSUE-42: Feedback to the user from the browser when Do Not Track is turned on
C. Postponed Issues
ISSUE-44: Ability to measure/detect who is honoring Do Not Track at a technical level
[POSTPONED] The info at the well-known URI declares whether a server promises to follow DNT. Whether it actually does (or just pretends to do so) is hard to determine and should be addressed later.
[Peter notes…] This one is really difficult. How do you know at the technical level if some is really honoring your request for privacy or is just pretending?
ISSUE-64: How does site preference management work with DNT
[POSTPONED] To what extent cookies can be used for preference management (such as storing a language preference) will be resolved later.
[Peter notes…] This is another tough one. On Mobile cookies do not work very well. And the problem then becomes how do it store privacy data in them for a later use?
Choice-Browsing the Internet of the Future
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
In my last two blog posts I talked about why Mobile apps don’t matter anymore (Part I & Part II). I finished the blogs with a quote, “In the future – the ONLY Mobile app you’ll need will be the Browser”. My personal opinion is that with now close to 3/4’s of a million apps between the top two Mobile operating systems how can someone hope to come up with something new and, (key part here) sustainable?
6 years ago almost to the day we set out to solve that problem. Our focus was simple – users should have a Choice when it came to sharing their private information on the web. They should also have a better, faster, more personal experience. Like most things – at the end, everything appears deceptively simple (as it should be).
A simple analogy would be like pulling your car up to the gas pump – you now have a choice – “Regular, Unleaded or Premium Unleaded”. There are no changes required to the infrastructure (well maybe a newer car), but for the most part virtually every engine can run on either of the three grades of gas. However if you pay a little more – then your engine runs a little better.
That’s the way it should be with the Internet – if you’re willing to share a little more data with those content providers you trust, then the experience should be faster, more personal, and more rewarding. We summarized those things as the Three P’s… Faster Performance, Better Privacy, More Personalization.
And now we’ve released Choice for Android (and soon for iPhone). A mobile app (or a mobile browser, you decide) that for the first time allows you to deliver a faster experience, one tailored to the capabilities of the device, the operating system, the carrier network and most importantly to “Me” the user.
And just to show you we haven’t lost touch with those native app we’ve introduced something new for the first time ever – we call them contextual menus. Browser menus that take into account your context and the web services context, and then adapt and change in real time. Giving you the user and the content provider millions of different uses for a single mobile app – the browser.
Why Mobile apps don’t matter anymore – Part II
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
In my previous post “Why Mobile apps don’t matter anymore” I talked about why the number of Mobile apps doesn’t mean anything anymore.
This blog adds one more item – Money
Go to a VC today with a Mobile app and see if they’ll fund it? It better be one incredible CROSS platform Mobile app before they’ll even consider it.
Why?
Because it’s all about the money. The distribution method (choke point) is the app store. A NO from Apple means that market is closed to you. Ok, now all you have left is Android and Windows Mobile. Still not bad – but is it enough that people will flock to your app and download it in the numbers that eventually makes money for the VC.
I wouldn’t bet on it.
And that’s really all it boils down to in the end. It’s not whether or not a customer feels safe about buying a phone, it’s nothing to do with the number of apps – that’s so 2011.
No in the future – 2012 and beyond, it’s going to be how you monetize that app. And there’s only one truly cross platform app out there today which fulfills that promise and that’s the browser. And that’s the place where the next round of innovation is going to take place.
Stay tuned for my upcoming blog – “In the future – the ONLY Mobile app you’ll need will be the Browser”
Why Mobile apps don’t matter anymore
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
We all remember that famous quote “if you need a stylus for your tablet you’ve failed”. Well “if you need 500,000 apps for your phone you’ve failed”.
Seriously think about it. People cannot deal with 100 apps let alone 500,000. 99% of the apps are merely features not apps. For example how many features are there in Microsoft office – probably over a thousand (but not 500,000). How many API’s are there in Apple’s iOS? No idea – but it’s not 500,000
Do you see the point here – the number of apps doesn’t count. What counts is the apps that I really need. And for us mere mortals that usually no more than 10, maybe 25 and never exceeds 50
There’s big debates going on about why Windows Phone 7 hasn’t take off – link and Scoble responds that it’s about the apps and customers wanting to feel “safe” – link
I don’t think so. Windows Phone 7 has a superior user interface to both iPhone and Android – it has 40,000 apps (if you feel the need) and what it really has (and no one is paying attention to) is seamless integration into the Enterprise. Microsoft owns the Enterprise – what it was missing was a real phone OS that played nicely with IIS and their cloud solution. Now it has one. No other phone OS comes close to that level of integration.
So what if Round 1 went to iPhone and Android. In a few years no one will care. What they will care about is integration into the one thing that really counts – the Web. And nobody will do it as well as Microsoft.
We’re now coming to the end of the first innings – App fatigue is setting in, I don’t need more features in my phone, what I need is better battery life, better connectivity to where the real content is – the Web.
And my next post will be about just that – Why the only app you’ll ever need is a browser.