The Creepy Line ⇥ phetdreams.tumblr.com

Eric Schmidt, October 2010:

“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,”

Australian app developer Dan Nolan, February 2013:

Let me make this crystal clear, every App purchase you make on Google Play gives the developer your name, suburb and email address with no indication that this information is actually being transferred. With the information I have available to me through the checkout portal I could track down and harass users who left negative reviews or refunded the app purchase.

Seems like an easy fix — don’t record app purchases the same way physical purchases are made — but that’s a lot of very personal information that’s floating around. Google is already requiring people to use their real name when reviewing apps. Via John Gruber.