Jan 26, 2010

All about Meridian's data collection

Since version 0.7.1 of Meridian Noble, free version of Meridian starts to collect anonymous user data for developing.
The mechanism  is using Flurry and Google Analytics, which will collect data for:
  • Meridian Errors. This is most important, as with this we can get information for debugging without requesting users to install Log Collections or so on.
  • The actions of Meridian, like one video play, browsing using which tab, headset button pressed, etc. This is used for counting what mechanism is more used, so we'll do more effort on those features.
  • Your device model, carrier, and firmware version. This is used for device-dependant features priority, for example, if there's still a lot of people using Android 1.5 devices, Meridian will keep supporting 1.5, instead of going to a minimum 1.6 release.
And Meridian will NOT collect the informations like:
  • Meridian does NOT collect what's in your phone or SD card. We will be reported you played a music or video, from artist or album, but we don't know what it actually is.
  • Meridian does NOT collect anything related to your Google account, like your account name, mail, calendar, everything.
  • Meridian does NOT collect your location information, other than which country you live (using IP information). At the very first 0.7.0 it did, but now removed.
  • Meridian does NOT collect your call information. It only knows the phone is hooked or not.
  • Meridian does NOT collect your phone number, messages, or contacts.
This data collection can be disabled in Pro version. For Pro version info please check here.

5 comments:

Dirk said...

Thanks for the clarification on the data collection. In most people's minds that phrase means data-mining of phone numbers, address books, instant messages, etc. It sounds like you really meant debugging logs for errors and crashes.

I and registering for Pro version now. This is by far the best media player on the Market.

Jorge said...

I love this media player but I don't know if I can trust what this post says about what's collected and what's not

Romulus said...

Thank you Carl, your advise is very helpful.
The data is so useful for us, but if we lose you customers due to the collection, it's just stupid.

Romulus said...

Jorge: Your doubt is correct for internet security, so here the reason you can trust Meridian:
Android requires permission for many features. For example, you can find some Contact replacement apps on the Market, and you will see they require the "Your Contacts" permission. Without this, apps can't touch your private data.
Meridian requires six permissions, and none of them can touch your calling, contacts, Google account, or so on.
That's the good point for Android, so developers and users can trust each other.

Unknown said...

Music