Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Apps/iOS FAQ

Great FAQ overall! One part jumped out at me:

“As an iOS user, you have already agreed to Apple's Terms and Conditions for the iOS version running on your device. Please refer to section 4, ===Consent to Use of Data===, for more information about how they handle your Location and other usage data.”

That sounds a little heavy-handed. Seems like chastising the user for throwing away their privacy. Do we really need to tell iOS users that Apple can track them when Location Services is turned on? Or is that a "sky is blue" thing?

If we do feel the need to warn them, then how about wording along these lines:

“Of course, Apple can use your location information. See section 4, Consent to Use of Data, in their Terms of Use for more information.”

Also it says the "app itself" doesn’t record our location, but what about WMF servers? How do they handle the location queries that they receive? Is it linked to or can it be correlated with user name or IP address?

P.S. I’m logged in to the app (automatically somehow), but button here says “Add topic anonymously”. Didn’t notice that until I scrolled further. Don’t really want to share my IP address, but also don’t want to and try copying all I’ve written to somewhere else and back out of this screen. —Pelagic

Nevermind, copied text to clipboard and pasted it back after signing in.

Have boldly made the change. See also this discussion about the effect on translations.

Still curious about whether the app location data is retained server-side. It would be a lot more specific than the geo-IP information that is used for language selection on the website.

Those changes look good (in terms of softening the language about Apple's location terms.

To your question about the servers on our side, we only send location when the user runs a search on the Places screen. It is sent as an anonymous search query, and is not tied in any way to the user account or device information. It does send IP, as all web requests do, but that IP is not retained over the long term and is not permanently associated with any account or search history. Hope that helps. Feel free to clarify the existing language or suggest changes to make this clearer to folks.