DEV Community

Cover image for Every app wants your data now. I built four that don't.

Every app wants your data now. I built four that don't.

Akhouri Anmol Kumar on October 15, 2026

Description: "Telemetry, bloatware and accounts-for-everything have become the default. A look at how we got here, how to check for yourself, and f...
Collapse
 
akhourianmolkumar profile image
Akhouri Anmol Kumar •

@effessdev
bro you are Indian too, what is your opinion on India lol.

Collapse
 
effessdev profile image
EffessDev •

"mixed" 😂

Collapse
 
akhourianmolkumar profile image
Akhouri Anmol Kumar •

lol, mine too.

Thread Thread
 
akhourianmolkumar profile image
Comment deleted
Thread Thread
 
effessdev profile image
EffessDev •

Yep! Now it works 👍

Thread Thread
 
akhourianmolkumar profile image
Akhouri Anmol Kumar •

yeah I thought I've to fix the auth bruhh but yeah now I'm happy now try it.

Collapse
 
sinarezaei profile image
Sina Rezaei •

I like the idea of making privacy an architectural decision rather than a promise in a privacy policy. There's one thing I'd add, though: reproducible builds and independent verification would make these apps much easier to trust.

For example, with a Windows security utility that handles encrypted vaults, I'd want to inspect its outbound connections during normal use, password checks, failed authentication attempts, and update checks, not just when the app first launches. A tool can appear completely offline during startup and still make conditional requests later.

There's also a distinction between having no telemetry and having no external dependencies. An app might collect nothing itself but still rely on an update service or a third-party component that introduces its own network behavior.

Publishing the source code, documenting every network-dependent feature, and providing release hashes or signed binaries would give users a way to verify that the executable they're running matches what the developer intended to ship.

For me, that's the interesting challenge with privacy-first software: not just collecting less data, but making the trust assumptions visible and testable.

Collapse
 
sebastian_sterhaug_f1661 profile image
Sebastian Østerhaug •

Dorogeo

Collapse
 
flatinpt profile image
flatin.pt •

Two gaps in the five-minute test. A firewall block still lets the DNS lookup through, so the resolver sees a query every time the app starts, and that by itself is a usage signal. Watch DNS, not only TCP connections.
The other is conditional traffic. Nothing phones home on a clean run. It shows up on first launch, on an update check thirty days in, or inside an error handler. Force a failure and move the system clock forward before you decide an app is quiet.