After going through the iOS Databases Tracking Usage video, where Chris teaches you how to track state items for the learning app e.g. the module/ lesson the user left off of. I was impressed that you could detect, whenever the user made the app go into the background, and use that as a trigger to write to the database.
However, this begs the question: what is permissible, when it comes to user tracking? How has this changed over the past year with Apple’s privacy policies/ the European General Data Protection Regulation? How does the App Store approval process affect this?
For example, with the ability to track the user’s state, you could also easily determine how long the user was active in your app, what time of day the user accesses your app, and likely also grab the location.
Many analytics services, including Firebase analytics, can do this. It’s dependent on whether you tie the data to a specific user. So say you tie all the data you’re tracking to a user’s email in your backend database, or create a random UID for the user so it’s anonymous
Note you can’t get the user’s location unless they authorize it.
During the App Store process you check a specific box for what your app tracks. Here’s a list of the data you have to say you do or don’t track.
You can see this in the App Store at the bottom of an app listing
If I had an app, where I had the user’s purchase history, would I be allowed to send a notification to the user, when the product ge or she bought is on sale again?
