Invasiveness Score Criteria
This is an indicator of how much effort a vendor is making to coerce the customer indirectly.
Scoring:
- +1 if answer is in customers favor
- +0 unconfirmed
- -1 if answer works against the customer
| Criteria | Description | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility | Are there unused product/feature references that cannot be hidden? | This often manifests as social networks or other services that show up in menus and cannot be deleted, even if the service isn't being used. This is nothing more than an attempt to keep product references in the customers face and to make it look ubiquitous. |
| Trials | Preloaded software for use on a trial basis | Not necessarily a bad thing and very much a judgement call. At the advocacy we are taking a hardline stance that this is a computer dogging practice that has gone amok with services popping up to help people "clean" newly bought computers before they can even use them. When it's all said and done this preinstalled "Trials" practice is just a mad scramble to get into the customers face first. A tactic for the manufacture to make money selling their customers resources as advertising space. |
| Opt-Outs | This criteria score addresses cases where the end user is required to opt-out of features most people would never opt into. | Not all "opt-outs" are a bad thing. Cases where a function or features pose security or privacy risks if turned off should be "opt-out." This criteria score refers to the tactic of providing the ability to "opt-out" of a product function that works more in favor of the vendor company than the end user primarily to provide plausible deniability that the end user is being forced to paticipate. |
| Unremovable | Are there third party applications that cannot be removed? | This is a difficult criteria to describe objectively."Essential software" can have different meanings to different people. The advocacy position is again a hard line in the interest of the sanctity of the customer's personal space. In short, we do not yet know of a "social network" specific device that requires this type of connectivity in support of its basic purpose. So one litmus test is that if one cannot delete software accessing unused social networks the product fails this criteria. |
| SiphoningThere are many names and practices for doing this, from passive collection and tracking through "Like" buttons to nefarious network scanning activities. We just lump the whole practice into one category of "Siphoning." | Is the product a participant in practices that collect data on customers unbeknown to them or without their consent? | We'll get a little philosophical in explaining the chosen name for this criteria. The "siphoning" of customer data from across the network, or by tools like phones sold to meet customer needs, drains off more than the data itself. It drains trust. It drains hope. It drains confidence. When people feel taken advantage of in this way they grow to feeling powerless to stop an unseen adversary, they lose trust in those with whom they transact and they lose hope of ever being able to do anything about it. |