Overcast 4.2: The Privacy Update
In Overcast 4.2, the login screen now prominently encourages anonymous accounts by default.
[…]
Finally, you can now change your account between email-based and anonymous whenever you want.
[…]
One of the ways publishers try to get around the limitations of the current model is by embedding remote images or invisible “tracking pixels” in each episode’s HTML show notes. When displayed in most apps, the images are automatically loaded from an analytics server, which can then record and track more information about you.
In Overcast 4.2, much like Mail (and for the same reason), remote images don’t load by default. A tappable placeholder shows you where each image will load from, and you can decide whether to load it or not.
You still need an e-mail address if you want to play episodes from the Web site or use it to upload your own audio files. It seems like the latter could be implemented in the app itself, e.g. give me an Overcast folder in iCloud Drive, which I can drag and drop into from my Mac, and have the app either upload those files to the server or cache them directly from iCloud. This would also address the current limitation of only being able to upload one file at a time.
1 Comment RSS · Twitter
[…] sounds cool, and I’d like to see iCloud Drive support in Overcast. However, I’m surprised that they are able to make this a premium feature. I thought you […]
