Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day

New submitter postglock (917809) writes "Swype is a popular third-party keyboard for Android phones (and also available for Windows phones and other platforms). It's currently the second-most-popular paid keyboard in Google Play (behind SwiftKey), and the 17th highest of all paid apps. Recently, users have discovered that it's been accessing location data extremely frequently, making almost 4000 requests per day, or 2.5 requests per minute. The developers claim that this is to facilitate implementation of 'regional dialects,' but cannot explain why such frequent polling is required, or why this still occurs if the regional function is disabled. Some custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod can block this tracking, but most users would be unaware that such tracking is even occurring." Readers in the linked thread don't all seem to see the same thing; if you are a Swype user, do you see thousands of location requests, none, or something in between?

This sounds more like incompetence...

[Torp]

... than malice.
Or malice (location tracking) plus gross incompetence in implementation.

Re:This sounds more like incompetence...

[mrxak]

Either way, I'm glad I don't use Swype.

Re:Either way

[mrxak]

Hey, at least those cans and string aren't draining our batteries unnecessarily and uploading our every move to some company doing who knows what with it.

Can someone blow the lid on Android Apps?

[Tasha26]

Each time an App wanted to update in the last 6 months, it was to increase its access to areas of my Samsung phone that I thought were completely un-necessary for it to work properly. Makes you wonder who in the Google Store is rubber stamping the ok on such Apps! When will privacy groups wake up and start lawsuits against App makers and/or Google? Maybe it will fist require a popular tech website to run a Top-10 Worst Privacy Infringing Apps in Google store.