and things went downhill from there

I read a chilling article today from a news outlet that managed to purchase cell phone data from people who had visited Planned Parenthood. It cost them a whole $160 to get a list of everyone who had visited the clinics based on their phone locations.

Smartphones are really insidious. When one leaves the house, the first two things they usually check before they close the door are that they have their keys and their phone - not necessarily in that order.

Many people have become so dependent on - even addicted to - their smartphones that the thought of leaving home without them can be a cause of genuine anxiety.

What often does not occur to people is that between GPS, and triangulation between cell towers, the movements of their phones can be tracked with frightening accuracy. When we slip the phone into our pocket or purse on our way out the door, we may as well be clamping on one of those tracking bracelets they use for parolees.

For the most part, I am aware of the tracking, and not that bothered by it because my movements are too mundane to attract any interest. But if I lived in a budding theocracy, there are times when the phone would remain home, or at least be shut off for a few hours here and there as I engaged in activities that became more and more legally grey under their leadership.

I did a rage uninstall on my phone today, and left an indignant one-star review on Google Play. It is the first time I have been moved to post a review, but these developers are particularly sketchy.

The strange part of it is that this was in response to a game that I've had for a couple of years. This was one of those typical jewel games where you flip the positions of coloured stones to create rows or columns of the same colour in a race against the clock.

The game has always been an ad-supported, but I've avoided installing ad-blockers on my phone because I can tolerate a few ads to support developers. Originally the ads were pretty unobtrusive, consisting of a small banner at the bottom, and the occasional full-screen ad after clearing a few levels. Over time, the ads became more frequent - usually after clearing 2-3 levels. For a brief span they had ads that would automatically bounce you to the download page for one of their other apps on the Play store, and I came close to dumping the game there, but they reverted that quickly after user complaints.

I did not play the game very often - and usually when I played, it was on long plane trips where I did not have net access, so their ad service behaved itself. Even so, whenever I played the game more recently, I noticed that it was up to popping an ad between every level clear, and then interrupting game-play to display full-screen ads. Again, after users pushed back, they scaled it back to ads ever 2-3 levels, and stopped interrupting in the middle of a level clear.

Today their game hijacked my lock screen with an ad. My phone had got an OS update earlier in the day, and at first I thought that Google had finally gone off the deep end. I closed the ad, and moments later it appeared again. I quickly realized it was tied to the Jewels Star, and I jumped to the play store to see if there were any comments. Sure enough, there was a flood of 1-star reviews by angry people who had encountered the same shenanigans.

The really insulting thing about it is that the developers are responding to the reviewers with a boilerplate response:

"ITREEGAMER June 26, 2017
Hello dear customer, thanks for your feedback and sorry for causing you this problem. We designed this lock-screen in order to make your screen more beautiful and protect your battery while charging. You can close it any time by pressing the button on the top-right corner of the lock screen."

The developers know that they have stepped over a line with this move, but based on their responses, they don't appear to care. I have a niggling suspicion that the company that developed this game may have changed hands at some point, because in spite of their irritating ads earlier, they were at least moderately responsive to the user comments. Now they are nudging the line between irritating and outright malware.

I'd recommend avoiding anything produced by these developers.

I don't know how I should feel about learning that my phone is smarter than I am.

Back in mid October when I learned that we were going to have a flu clinic set up in our office, I put my name on the sign-up sheet and then pulled out my phone and carefully enunciated, "book an appointment for a flu shot on November 30th at 9:45 in the morning."

My phone displayed the details and presented me with a button to confirm the appointment. I wandered back to my desk, and on a whim I checked my desktop calendar. No appointment. It sometimes takes a few minutes for it to sync with my Google calendar, so I worked on something for a few minutes and then checked again. No luck.

I checked my phone's calendar, and the appointment wasn't there either. I sighed, pulled out my phone and booked the appointment again. It confirmed the details and assured me that it was booking the appointment for me. As before, nothing showed up on either of my calendars. I booked it again in slightly more terse tones, and it once again failed to actually populate it anywhere. I finally gave up and entered the appointment manually on my work computer. A few minutes later it showed up on my phone and home computers.

This morning I was looking at my work calendar, and I noticed an appointment on November 30th for a flu shot.

Wait ... what? But I got my shot on October 30th. Why is it on my calendar for November?

Oh.

Right.

Don't you hate it when technology does exactly what you ask it to do?